History of the Spanish language
The language known today as Spanish is derived from a dialect of spoken Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 218 BC, and which evolved in central parts of the Iberian Peninsula after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. A written standard was developed in the cities of Toledo and Madrid. Over the past 1,000 years, the language expanded south to the Mediterranean Sea, and was later transferred to the Spanish colonial empire, most notably to the Americas. Today it is the official language of 20 countries, as well as an official language of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations.
Main distinguishing features of the language
The development of Spanish phonology is distinguished from those of other nearby Romance languages by several features:- diphthongization of Latin stressed short E and O in closed syllables as well as open
- devoicing and further development of the medieval Spanish sibilants, producing the velar fricative in words such as caja, hijo, gente, and —in many dialects of Spain, including the prestige varieties of Madrid, Toledo, etc.—the interdental in words such as cinco, hacer, and lazo
- debuccalization and eventual loss of Latin initial in most contexts, marked in modern spelling by the silent ⟨h⟩ of words such as hablar, hilo, hoja
- early fricativization of palatal
- development of initial PL-, CL-, FL- into palatal in many words, e.g., plorare → llorar, clamare → llamar, flamma → llama; cf. Portuguese chorar, chamar, chama, Catalan plorar, clamar, flama)
- Vulgar Latin initial -, G remains before, and, subsequently disappearing in an unstressed syllable
- palatalization of Latin -NN- and -LL- into and .
- the phonemic merger of and, making, for example, the noun tubo and the verb tuvo phonetically equivalent
- spirantization of,, and →, and —not only from original Latin B, D, and G, but also from Latin P, T, and C
Spanish verbal morphology continues the use of some Latin synthetic forms that were replaced by analytic ones in spoken French and Italian, and the Spanish subjunctive mood maintains separate present and past-tense forms.
Spanish syntax provides overt marking for some direct objects, and uses clitic doubling with indirect objects, in which a "redundant" pronoun appears even in the presence of an explicit noun phrase. With regard to subject pronouns, Spanish is a pro-drop language, meaning that the verb phrase can often stand alone without the use of a subject pronoun. Compared to other Romance languages, Spanish has a somewhat freer syntax with relatively fewer restrictions on subject-verb-object word order.
Due to prolonged language contact with other languages, the Spanish lexicon contains loanwords from Basque, Hispano-Celtic, Iberian, Germanic, Arabic and indigenous languages of the Americas.
Accents—used in Modern Spanish to mark the vowel of the stressed syllable in words where stress is not predictable from rules—came into use sporadically in the 15th century, and massively in the 16th century. Their use began to be standardized with the advent of the Spanish Royal Academy in the 18th century. See also Spanish orthography.
External history
The standard Spanish language is also called Castilian in its original variant, and in order to distinguish it from other languages native to parts of Spain, such as Galician, Catalan, Basque, etc. In its earliest documented form, and up through approximately the 15th century, the language is customarily called Old Spanish. From approximately the 16th century on, it is called Modern Spanish. Spanish of the 16th and 17th centuries is sometimes called "classical" Spanish, referring to the literary accomplishments of that period. Unlike English and French, it is not customary to speak of a "middle" stage in the development of Spanish.Origins
Castilian Spanish originated as a continuation of spoken Latin in several areas of northern and central Spain. Eventually, the variety spoken in the city of Toledo around the 13th century became the basis for the written standard. With the Reconquista, this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the local Romance dialects, at the same time as it borrowed many words from Moorish Arabic and was influenced by Mozarabic and medieval Judaeo-Spanish. These languages had vanished in the Iberian Peninsula by the late 16th century.The prestige of Castile and its language was propagated partly by the exploits of Castilian heroes in the battles of the Reconquista—among them Fernán González and Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar —and by the narrative poems about them that were recited in Castilian even outside the original territory of that dialect.
The "first written Spanish" was traditionally considered to have appeared in the Glosas Emilianenses located in San Millán de la Cogolla, La Rioja. These are "glosses" added between the lines of a manuscript that was written earlier in Latin. Nowadays the language of the Glosas Emilianenses is considered to be closer to the Navarro-Aragonese language than to Spanish proper. Estimates of their date vary from the late 10th to the early 11th century.
The first steps toward standardization of written Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King Alfonso X of Castile, known as Alfonso el Sabio, in his court in Toledo. He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian, of extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge.
Antonio de Nebrija wrote the first grammar of Spanish, Gramática de la lengua castellana, and presented it, in 1492, to Queen Isabella, who is said to have had an early appreciation of the usefulness of the language as a tool of hegemony, as if anticipating the empire that was about to be founded with the voyages of Columbus.
Because Old Spanish resembles the modern written language to a relatively high degree, a reader of Modern Spanish can learn to read medieval documents without much difficulty.
The Spanish Royal Academy was founded in 1713, largely with the purpose of standardizing the language. The Academy published its first dictionary in six volumes over the period 1726–1739, and its first grammar in 1771, and it continues to produce new editions of both from time to time. Today, each of the Spanish-speaking countries has an analogous language academy, and an Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951.
America
Beginning in 1492, the Spanish discovery and colonization brought the language to the Americas, where it is spoken today, as well as to several island groups in the Pacific where it is no longer spoken by any large numbers of people: the Philippines, Palau, the Marianas, and what is today the Federated States of Micronesia.Use of the language in the Americas was continued by descendants of the Spaniards: Spanish criollos and Mestizos. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century, the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population, including the Amerindian majority, to strengthen national unity, and nowadays it is the first and official language of the resulting republics, except in very isolated parts of the former Spanish colonies.
In the late 19th century, the still-Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico encouraged more immigrants from Spain, and similarly other Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, and to a lesser extent Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, attracted waves of European immigration, Spanish and non-Spanish, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There, the countries' large population groups of second- and third-generation descendants adopted the Spanish language as part of their governments' official assimilation policies to include Europeans. In some countries, they had to be Catholics and agreed to take an oath of allegiance to their chosen nation's government.
When Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States as a consequence of the Spanish–American War, its population—almost entirely of Spanish and mixed Afro-Caribbean/Spanish descent—retained its inherited Spanish language as a mother tongue, in co-existence with the American-imposed English as co-official. In the 20th century, more than a million Puerto Ricans migrated to the mainland U.S..
A similar situation occurred in the American Southwest, including California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where Spaniards, then criollos followed by Chicanos and later Mexican immigrants, kept the Spanish language alive before, during and after the American appropriation of those territories following the Mexican–American War. Spanish continues to be used by millions of citizens and immigrants to the United States from Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. Spanish is now treated as the country's "second language," and over 5 percent of the U.S. population are Spanish-speaking, but most Latino/Hispanic Americans are bilingual or also regularly speak English.
Africa
The presence of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea dates from the late 18th century, and it was adopted as the official language when independence was granted in 1968.Spanish is widely spoken in Western Sahara, which was a protectorate/colony of Spain from the 1880s to the 1970s.
Judaeo-Spanish
In 1492 Spain expelled its Jewish population. Their Judaeo-Spanish language, called Ladino, developed along its own lines and continues to be spoken by a dwindling number of speakers, mainly in Israel, Turkey, and Greece.In the Pacific
In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War, but is no longer spoken there by any significant number of people. As part of Chile since 1888, Spanish is spoken by most people in Easter Island along with Rapa Nui language.Spain
declared Spanish as the only official language in Spain, and to this day it is the most widely used language in government, business, public education, the workplace, cultural arts, and the media. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the Spanish parliament agreed to allow provinces to use, speak, and print official documents in three other languages: Catalan for Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencia; Basque for theBasque provinces and Navarre, and Galician for Galicia. Since 1975, following the death of Franco, Spain has become a multi-party democracy and decentralized country, constituted in autonomous communities. Under this system, some languages of Spain—such as Aranese, Basque, Catalan/Valencian, and Galician—have gained co-official status in their respective geographical areas. Others—such as Aragonese, Asturian and Leonese—have been recognized by regional governments.
International projection
When the United Nations organization was founded in 1945, Spanish was designated one of its five official languages.The list of Nobel laureates in Literature includes eleven authors who wrote in Spanish.
Influences
The mention of "influences" on the Spanish language refers primarily to lexical borrowing. Throughout its history, Spanish has accepted loanwords, first from pre-Roman languages, and later from Greek, from Germanic languages, from neighboring Romance languages, from Arabic, from Native American languages, and from English.The most frequently used word that entered Spanish from Basque is "left". Basque is perhaps most evident in some common Spanish surnames, including García and Echeverría. Basque place names also are prominent throughout Spain, because many Castilians who took part in the Reconquista and repopulation of Moorish Iberia by Christians were of Basque lineage. Iberian and Celtiberian likewise are thought to have contributed place names to Spain. Words of everyday use that are attributed to Celtic sources include camino "road", carro "cart", colmena "hive", and cerveza "beer". Suffixes such as -iego: mujeriego "womanizer" and -ego: gallego "Galician" are also attributed to Celtic sources.
Influence of Basque phonology is credited by some researchers with softening the Spanish labiodentals: turning labiodental to bilabial, and ultimately deleting labiodental. Others negate or downplay Basque phonological influence, claiming that these changes occurred in the affected dialects wholly as a result of factors internal to the language, not outside influence. It is also possible that the two forces, internal and external, worked in concert and reinforced each other.
Some words of Greek origin were already present in the spoken Latin that became Spanish. Additionally, many Greek words formed part of the language of the Church. Spanish also borrowed Ancient Greek vocabulary in the areas of medical, technical, and scientific language, beginning as early as the 13th century.
The influence of Germanic languages is, by most accounts, very little on phonological development, but rather is found mainly in the Spanish lexicon. Words of Germanic origin are common in all varieties of Spanish. The modern words for the cardinal directions, for example, are all taken from Germanic words, after the contact with Atlantic sailors. These words did not exist in Spanish prior to the 15th century. Instead, "north" and "south" were septentrion and meridion respectively, while "east" was oriente, and "west" was occidente. These older words for "east" and "west" continue to have some use in Modern Spanish.
In 711 Spain was invaded by Moors, who brought the Arabic language to the Peninsula. From then until the fall of the Emirate of Granada, Spanish borrowed words from Arabic, such as alcalde "mayor", álgebra "algebra", and zanahoria "carrot". It is thought that the bilingualism of the Mozarabs facilitated the transfer of vocabulary from Arabic to Castilian.
The neighboring Romance languages—Portuguese/Galician, Catalan, French, and Occitan—contributed greatly to the Spanish lexicon throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. Borrowing from Italian occurred most frequently in the 16th and 17th centuries, due largely to the influence of the Italian Renaissance.
With the development of the Spanish Empire in the New World came lexical borrowing from indigenous languages of the Americas, especially vocabulary dealing with flora, fauna, and cultural concepts unique to the Americas.
Borrowing from English has become especially strong, beginning in the 20th century, with words borrowed from many fields of activity, including sports, technology, and commerce.
The incorporation into Spanish of learned, or "bookish" words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is arguably another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Spanish-speakers were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Spanish. The form of Latin that Spaniards spoke and the loanwords came from was Classical Latin, but also Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin used in original works of the time.
Internal history
Spanish shares with other Romance languages most of the phonological and grammatical changes that characterized Vulgar Latin, such as the abandonment of distinctive vowel length, the loss of the case system for nouns, and the loss of deponent verbs.Syncope
in the history of Spanish refers to the loss of an unstressed vowel from the syllable immediately preceding or following the stressed syllable. Early in its history, Spanish lost such vowels where they preceded or followed R or L, and between S and T.| Environment | Latin words | Spanish words |
| _r | aperīre, humerum, litteram, operam, honorāre | abrir, hombro, letra, obra, honrar |
| r_ | eremum, viridem | yermo, verde |
| _l | acūculam, fabulam, insulam, populum | aguja, habla, isla, pueblo |
| l_ | sōlitārium | soltero |
| s_t | positum, consūtūram | puesto, costura |
Later, after the time of intervocalic voicing, unstressed vowels were lost between other combinations of consonants:
| Environment | Latin words | Spanish words |
| b_t | cubitum, dēbitam, dūbitam | codo, deuda, duda |
| c_m, c_p, c_t | decimum, acceptōre, recitāre | diezmo, azor, rezar |
| d_c | undecim, vindicāre | once, vengar |
| f_c | advērificāre | averiguar |
| m_c, m_n, m_t | hāmiceolum, hominem, comitem | anzuelo, hombre, conde |
| n_c, n_t | dominicum, bonitāte, cuminitiāre | domingo, bondad, comenzar |
| p_t | capitālem, computāre, hospitālem | caudal, contar, hostal |
| s_c, s_n | quassicāre, rassicāre, asinum, fraxinum | cascar, rascar, asno, fresno |
| t_c, t_n | masticāre, portaticum, trīticum, retinam | mascar/masticar, portazgo, trigo, rienda |
Words capital, computar, hospital, recitar and vindicar are learned words; cf. capitālem, computāre, hospitālem, recitāre, and vindicāre and alternate forms caudal, contar, hostal, rezar, and vengar.
Elision
While voiceless intervocalic consonants regularly became voiced, many voiced intervocalic stops were dropped from words altogether through a process called elision. Latin between vowels usually changed to in Old Spanish, while Latin became . In modern times the two phonemes merged into , realized as between vowels. Latin voiced stops—,, and, which are represented orthographically as B, D, and G respectively—and also occurred in intervocalic positions also underwent lenition:,, and, but appeared in Spanish also through learned words from Classical Latin.| Consonant | Latin word | Spanish word |
| b → ∅ | vendēbat | vendía |
| d → ∅ | comedere, vidēre, hodie, cadēre, pede, quō modō | comer, ver, hoy, caer, pie, cómo |
| g → ∅ | cōgitāre, digitum, legere, ligāre, lēgāle | cuidar, dedo, leer, liar, leal |
Many forms with d and g preserved, e.g. ligar, legal, crudo, are learned words ; cf. the alternate forms liar, leal and Old Spanish cruo and its Latin origin crūdus.
Voicing and spirantization
In virtually all the Western Romance languages, the Latin voiceless stops—,, and, which are represented orthographically as P, T, and C respectively—where they occurred in an "intervocalic" environment, underwent one, two, or three successive stages of lenition, from voicing to spirantization to, in some cases, elision. In Spanish these three consonants generally undergo both voicing and spirantization, resulting in voiced fricatives:,, and, respectively. Although it was once speculated that this change came about as a transfer of phonological features from substrate Celtic and Basque languages, which were in geographical proximity to Iberian Vulgar Latin, it is now widely recognized that such change is a natural internal development. Intervocalic,, and reappeared in Spanish through learned words from Classical Latin and also appeared in Spanish through consonant cluster simplification from Vulgar Latin, and Latin voiced stops—,, and, which are represented orthographically as B, D, and G respectively—and also occurred in intervocalic positions also underwent lenition:,, and, but appeared in Spanish also through learned words from Classical Latin and also appeared in Spanish through consonant cluster simplification from Vulgar Latin.The phonological environment of these changes is not only between vowels but also after a vowel and before a sonorant consonant such as —but not the reverse.
| Consonants | Latin word | Spanish word |
| p → b | aperīre, cooperīre, lupum, operam, populum, capram, superāre1 | abrir, cubrir, lobo, obra, pueblo, cabra, sobrar |
| t → d | cīvitātem, cubitum, latum, mūtāre, scūtum, stātus, petram | ciudad, codo, lado, mudar, escudo, estado, piedra |
| c → g | focum, lacum, locum, pacāre, sacrātum, aqua | fuego, lago, luego, pagar, sagrado, agua |
1Latin superāre produced both sobrar and its learned doublet superar.
The verb decir, in its various conjugated forms, exemplifies different phonetic changes, depending on whether the letter
| Forms with → | Forms with → | - | - | - | - |
| English | Latin | Spanish | English | Latin | Spanish |
| To say, to tell It says, it tells | dīcere dīcit | decir dice | I say, I tell May it tell | dīcō dīcat | digo diga |
| To do, to make It does, it makes | facere facit | hacer hace | I do, I make May it make | faciō > *facō faciat > *facat | hago haga |
Diphthongization in open and closed syllables
The stressed short E and O of Latin undergo diphthongization in many of the Western Romance languages. In Spanish this change occurs regardless of syllable shape, in contrast to French and Italian, where it takes place only in open syllables, and in greater contrast to Catalan and Portuguese—neighboring languages on the Iberian Peninsula—where this diphthongization does not occur at all. As a result, Spanish phonology exhibits a five-vowel system, not the seven-vowel system that is typical of most other Western Romance languages. The stressed short and reappeared in Spanish through learned words from Classical Latin and appeared in Spanish that evolved from short vowels and from Vulgar Latin and retention of long vowels and from Vulgar Latin.Learned words and consonant cluster simplification
Learned words—that is, "bookish" words transmitted partly through writing and thus affected by their Latin form—became increasingly frequent with the works of Alfonso X in the mid-to-late 13th century. Many of these words contained consonant clusters which, in oral transmission, had been reduced to simpler consonant clusters or single consonants in previous centuries. This same process affected many of these new, more academic, words, especially when the words extended into popular usage in the Old Spanish period. Some of the consonant clusters affected were -ct-, -ct-, -pt-, -gn-, -mn-, -mpt-, and -nct-. Most of the simplified forms have since reverted to the learned forms or are now considered to be uneducated.| Consonant cluster | Latin form | Learned form | Old Spanish form | Modern Spanish form |
| ct → t | effectum, perfectum, respectum, aspectum, dīstrīctus, sectam | efecto, perfecto, respecto, aspecto, districto, secta | efeto, perfeto, respeto, aspeto, distrito, seta, | efecto, perfecto, respeto/respecto, aspecto, distrito, secta |
| ct → cc → c | affectiōnem, lectiōnem, perfectiōnem | affección, lección, perfección | afición, lición, perfeción | afición/afección, lección, perfección |
| pt → t | acceptāre, baptismum, conceptum | aceptar, baptismo, concepto | acetar, bautismo, conceto | aceptar, bautismo, concepto |
| gn → n | dīgnum, magnīficum, signīficāre | digno, magnífico, significar | dino, manífigo, sinifigar | digno, magnífico, significar |
| mn → n | columnam, solemnitātem, alūmnus | columna, solemnidad, alumno | coluna, solenidad, aluno | columna, solemnidad, alumno |
| mpt → nt | promptum, exemptum | prompto, exempto | pronto, exento | pronto, exento |
| nct → nt | sanctus, distīnctum | sancto, distincto | santo, distinto | santo, distinto |
Most of these words have modern forms which more closely resemble Latin than Old Spanish. In Old Spanish, the simplified forms were acceptable forms which were in coexistence with the learned forms. The Spanish educational system, and later the Real Academia Española, with their demand that all consonants of a word be pronounced, steadily drove most simplified forms from existence. Many of the simplified forms were used in literary works in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but have since been relegated mostly to popular and uneducated speech. Occasionally, both forms exist in Modern Spanish with different meanings or in idiomatic usage: for example afición is a 'fondness ' or 'taste ', while afección is 'illness'; Modern Spanish respeto is ' respect', while con respecto a means 'with regard to'.
Most words with consonant clusters in syllable-final position are loanwords from Classical Latin, examples are: transporte, transmitir, instalar, constante, obstante, obstruir, perspectiva, istmo. A syllable-final position cannot be more than one consonant in most dialects in colloquial speech, reflecting Vulgar Latin background. Realizations like,,,,,, and are very common, and in many cases, they are considered acceptable even in formal speech.
Another type of consonant cluster simplification involves "double" plosives that reduced to single: -pp-, -tt-, -cc-, -bb-, -dd-, -gg- > -p-, -t-, -c-, -b-, -d-, -g-. The simplified Spanish outcomes of the Latin voiced series -bb-, -dd-, -gg- remain voiced, inducing phonemic merger with intervocalic /b/, /d/, /g/ that issued from voicing of Latin /p/, /t/, /k/, so that all are subject to the same phonetic realization as voiced fricatives:,, and, respectively.
| Consonant | Latin word | Spanish word |
| bb → b | abad | |
| dd → d | +, | añadir, adicción |
| gg → g | agravar | |
| pp → p | , | copa, cepo |
| tt → t | ,,, | gato, gota, cuatro, letra |
| cc → c | ,, | vaca, pecar, seco |
Vocalization
The term "vocalization" refers to the change from a consonant to the vowel-like sound of a glide. Some syllable-final consonants, regardless of whether they were already syllable-final in Latin or brought into that position by syncope, became glides. Labials yielded the rounded glide , while the velar c produced the palatal glide .| Change | Latin word | Intermediate form | Spanish word |
| p → w | baptistam, capitālem | , cabdal | bautista, caudal |
| b → w | dēbitam | debda | deuda |
| b → w → Ø | cubitum, dubitāre | cobdo, dubdar | codo, dudar |
| v → w | cīvitātem | cibdad | ciudad |
| ct → ch | octō, nōctem | *oito, *noite | ocho, noche |
Betacism
Most Romance languages have maintained the distinction between a phoneme and a phoneme : a voiced bilabial stop and a voiced, usually labiodental, fricative, respectively. Instances of the phoneme could be inherited directly from Latin , or they could result from the voicing of Latin between vowels. The phoneme was generally derived either from an allophone of Latin between vowels or from the Latin phoneme corresponding to the letter ⟨v⟩. In most Romance-speaking regions, had labiodental articulation, but in Old Spanish, which still distinguished /b/ and /v/, the latter was probably realized as a bilabial fricative. The contrast between the two phonemes was neutralized in certain environments, as the fricative also occurred as an allophone of /b/ between vowels, after a vowel, and after certain consonants in Old Spanish. The similarity between the stop and fricative resulted in their complete merger entirely by the end of the Old Spanish period. In Modern Spanish, the letters ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩ represent the same phoneme, which is generally realized as the fricative except when utterance-initial or after a nasal consonant, when it is realized as the stop. The same situation prevails in northern Portuguese dialects, including Galician, but the other Portuguese dialects maintain the distinction. The merger of and also occurs in Standard Catalan in eastern Catalonia, but the distinction is retained in Standard Valencian spoken in eastern Catalonia and some areas in southern Catalonia, in the Balearic dialect, as well as in Alguerese.In Modern Spanish, from the 16th century onward, the choice of orthographic ⟨b⟩ or ⟨v⟩ depends mainly on the etymology of the word. The orthography attempts to mimic the Latin spelling, rather than to keep the pronunciation-based spelling of Old Spanish. Thus, Old Spanish bever "to drink", bivir/vivir "to live" become beber, vivir, respectively, following the Latin spelling bibere, vīvere. The Spanish placename Córdoba, often spelled Cordova in Old Spanish, now reflects the spelling used by the city's Roman founders, "Corduba".
Latin ''f-'' to Spanish ''h-'' to null
F was almost always initial in Latin words, and in Spanish most of them passed through a stage in which the consonant eventually developed to and then was lost phonologically. Spelling conventions have grapheme ⟨h⟩ used in words such as humo 'smoke', hormiga 'ant', hígado 'liver', but in terms of both structure and pronunciation, the initial consonant has been lost:,,. It is thought that ⟨f⟩ represented the labiodental in Latin, which underwent a series of lenition to become, successively, bilabial and then glottal , and it was then lost altogether in most varieties; ⟨h⟩ is assumed to have been "silent" in Vulgar Latin. The first written evidence of the process dates from 863, when the Latin name Forticius was written as Ortiço, which might have been pronounced with initial but certainly not. The replacement of ⟨f⟩ by ⟨h⟩ in spelling is not frequent before the 16th century, but that is thought not to reflect preservation of. Rather, ⟨f⟩ was consistently used to represent until the phoneme reappeared in the language. Then, it became necessary to distinguish both phonemes in spelling.The change from to occurred in the Romance speech of Old Castile and Gascon, but nowhere else nearby. Since both areas were historically bilingual with Basque, and Basque once had but no, it is often suggested that the change was caused by Basque influence. However, this is contested by many linguists.
Most current instances of ⟨f⟩ are either learned words, loanwords of Arabic and Greek origin, or words whose initial ⟨f⟩ in Old Spanish is followed by a non-vowel, as in frente, flor, fiesta, fuerte. That, along with the effect of preservation of regionally, accounts for modern doublets such as Fernando and Hernando , fierro and hierro, and fondo and hondo. Also, hacer is the rootword of satisfacer, and hecho is the rootword of satisfecho.
| Consonants | Latin word | Old Spanish form | Modern Spanish word |
| f- → h- | fabulāri, facere, faciendam, factum, faminem, farīnam, fēminam, fīcatum, fīlium, folia, fōrmōsum, fūmum, fungum, furcam | fablar, fazer, fazienda, feito, fambre, farina, fembra, fígado, fijo, foja, formoso, fumo, fongo, forca | hablar, hacer, hacienda, hecho, hambre, harina, hembra, hígado, hijo, hoja, hermoso, humo, hongo, horca |
Fabulāri is translated as "make stories", opposed to its Spanish derivative hablar which means "speak" or "to talk".
Silent Latin ''h-''
'H' is originally pronounced in Classical Latin, but became silent in Vulgar Latin. Thus, words were spelled without any such consonant in Old Spanish; in Modern Spanish, from the 16th century onward, it attempts to mimic the Latin spelling rather than continue Old Spanish orthography.| Consonants | Latin word | Old Spanish form | Modern Spanish word |
| h- → ∅ → h- | habēbat, habēre, habuī, hodiē, hominem, honorāre, hospitālem, humerum | avié; aver; ove; oy; omne, omre, ombre; onrar; ostal; ombro | había, haber, hube, hoy, hombre, honrar, hostal/hospital, hombro |
Modern development of the Old Spanish sibilants
During the 16th century, the three voiced sibilant phonemes—dental, apico-alveolar, and palato-alveolar lost their voicing and merged with their voiceless counterparts:,, and . The character ⟨ç⟩, called ⟨c⟩ cedilla, originated in Old Spanish but has been replaced by ⟨z⟩ in the modern language.Additionally, the affricate lost its stop component, to become a laminodental fricative,. As a result, the sound system then contained two sibilant fricative phonemes whose contrast depended entirely on a subtle distinction between their places of articulation: apicoalveolar, in the case of the, and laminodental, in the case of the new fricative sibilant, which was derived from the affricate. The distinction between the sounds grew in the dialects of northern and central Spain by paradigmatic dissimilation, but dialects in Andalusia and the Americas merged both sounds.
The dissimilation in the northern and central dialects occurred with the laminodental fricative moving forward to an interdental place of articulation, losing its sibilance to become. The sound is represented in modern spelling by ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ and by ⟨z⟩ elsewhere. In the south of Spain, the deaffrication of resulted in a direct merger with, as both were homorganic,, and the new phoneme became either laminodental or . In general, coastal regions of Andalusia preferred, and more inland regions preferred .
During the colonization of the Americas, most settlers came from the south of Spain; that is the cause, according to almost all scholars, for nearly all Spanish-speakers in the New World still speaking a language variety derived largely from the Western Andalusian and Canarian dialects.
Meanwhile, the alveopalatal fricative, the result of the merger of voiceless with voiced , was moved backwards in all dialects, to become velar, uvular or glottal .
Interchange of the liquids /l/ and /r/
One unusual feature of Spanish etymology is the way in which the liquids and have sometimes replaced each other in words derived from Latin, French and other sources. For example, Spanish milagro, "miracle", is derived from Latin miraculum. More rarely, this process has involved consonants like and . Here is an incomplete list of such words:- ancla, "anchor", Latin ancora
- albedrío, "will, whim, fancy", Latin arbitrium, "judgment, decision, will"
- algalia, "catheter", ἐργαλεία ergaleía, "tools"
- alimaña, "", Latin, animalĭa, "animals"
- alma, "soul", Latin anima
- alondra, "lark", Latin alaudula
- altramuz, "lupin", Hispanic Arabic
- árbol, "tree", Latin arbor
- Argelia, "Algeria "
- azufre, sulfur, Latin sulphur
- azul, "blue", لازورد lāzaward "lapis lazuli"
- blandir, "to ", French brandir
- bolsa, ", ", Latin bursa
- cárcel, "", Latin carcer
- calambre, "cramp, electric shock", French crampe
- Catalina, Latin Catharina
- chaflán, "", French chanfrein.
- cilantro, "coriander", Latin coriandrum
- cimbrar, "shake, sway, swish", Latin cymula, "sprout, shoot "
- coronel, "colonel", French colonel, from Italian colonnello
- Cristóbal, Germanic Christoffer, from Latin Christopherus
- cuartel, "", French quartier
- dintel, "", Old French lintel
- escolta, "", Italian scorta
- espuela, "spur", Gothic *spaúra
- estrella, "star", from Latin stella
- flete, ", ", French fret
- fraile, "friar", Provençal fraire, from Latin frater, "brother"
- franela, "flannel", French flanelle
- frasco, ":wikt:flask|flask", Germanic flasko
- guirnalda, "garland", older Spanish guirlanda, cf. French guirlande
- golondrina, "swallow ", Latin hirundo
- lirio, "lily, iris", Latin lilium
- mármol, "marble", Latin marmor
- miércoles, "Wednesday", Latin Mercuri , "Mercury's "
- milagro, "miracle", Latin miraculum
- nivel, "", Latin libellum, "little balance", from libra, "balance"
- olor, ", scent", Latin odor
- papel, "paper", Catalan paper, Latin papyrus
- palabra, "", Latin parabola
- peligro, "", Latin periculum
- plática, ", ", Latin practica
- quilate, "carat", قيراط qīrāṭ "carat" < κεράτιον "carob seed"
- recluta, "", French recrute
- regaliz, "liquorice", Late Latin liquiritia
- roble, "oak", Latin robur, "strong"
- silo, "silo", Latin sirus from Greek siros, "pit for storing grain"
- surco, ", ", Latin sulcus
- taladro, "drill", Latin tarātrum < Celtic tarātron
- temblar, ", Latin tremulāre
- templar, "temper, warm up", Latin temperō"
- tiniebla, "darkness", Latin tenebrae''
Yeísmo
For a long time, it was known as a trait of the Andalusian dialect, and it seems to have reached Madrid and other cities of central and northern Spain only in the last 100 years or so. Since more than half of the early settlers of Spanish America came from Andalusia, most Spanish-speaking regions of the Americas have yeísmo, but there are pockets in which the sounds are still distinguished. Native-speakers of neighboring languages, such as Galician, Astur-Leonese, Basque, Aragonese, Occitan and Catalan, usually do not feature yeísmo in their Spanish since those languages retain the phoneme.
A related trait that has also been documented sporadically for several hundred years is rehilamiento, the pronunciation of as a sibilant fricative or even an affricate, which is common among non-native Spanish speakers as well. The current pronunciation varies greatly depending on the geographical dialect and sociolect. Rioplatense Spanish is particularly known for the pronunciation of both and original. A further development, the unvoiced pronunciation, during the second half of the twentieth century came to characterize the speech of "most younger residents of Buenos Aires" and continues to spread throughout Argentina.