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The Spanish Language developed from Vulgar Latin , with influence from Basque in the north and Arabic in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance Languages ). Typical features of Spanish diachronic Phonology include Lenition (Latin ''vita'', Spanish ''vida''; Latin ''lupus'', Spanish ''lobo''), Palatalization (Latin ''annum'', Spanish ''año'') and diphthongation of short E/O from vulgar Latin (Latin ''terra'', Spanish ''tierra''; Latin ''novus'', Spanish ''nuevo''; Latin ''tempus'', Spanish ''tiempo''; Latin ''ferrum'', Spanish ''fierro'' and now ''hierro''). Similar phenomena can be found in most other Romance Languages as well, especially after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD reduced cultural contact with Rome. EXTERNAL HISTORY The standard Spanish language is also called Castilian . In its earliest form, and up through approximately the fifteenth century, the language is customarily called Old Spanish. From approximately the sixteenth century on, it is called Modern Spanish. Spanish of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is sometimes called "classical" Spanish. Unlike English and French, it is not customary to speak of a "middle" stage in the development of Spanish. Castilian Spanish originated, after the decline of the Roman Empire , as a continuation of Spoken Latin in the Cordillera Cantábrica , in northern Spain, in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, but others claim it came from ''Franco-Navarrese'' and Gothic-Castilian dialects in the 11th century AD. With the '' Reconquista '', this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the provincial dialects, at the same time as it borrowed massively from the vocabulary of Moorish Arabic and was influenced by ''Mozarabe'' (the Romance speech of Christians living in Moorish territory) and medieval Judeo-Spanish ( Ladino ). These languages all but 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 ( El Cid ) — and by the narrative poems about them that were recited in Castilian even outside the original territory of that dialect. The first steps toward standardization of written Castilian were taken in the thirteenth century by King Alfonso X Of Castile , known as Alfonso el Sabio. 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 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 . The Spanish Royal Academy was founded in 1713, largely with the purpose of preserving the "purity" of 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. Each of the Spanish-speaking countries has an analogous language academy, and an Association Of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951. The language was brought to the Americas ( Latin America , especially Mexico , Central America and western South America ), and to the Federated States Of Micronesia , Guam , Marianas , Palau and the Philippines , by the Spanish Colonization which began in the 16th Century . The Spanish failed to exercise land claims over the Solomon Islands and Micronesia , where a map reader can find some geographic place names in Spanish, but no major Spanish cultural influence is felt in distant, often isolated islands in the three centuries of Spanish administrative rule in these areas later acquired by the Germans and Americans by 1900. The Catholic Church preached Christianity to the Natives in selected local languages such as Mayan , Aztecan , Guaraní , Quechua and Aymará in the Americas, and Tagalog in the Philippines, rather than Spanish, for ease of conversion and to separate them from the direct influence of the non-missionary Spaniards, held by the church to be "evil", uncivilized and unfavorable for the natives, and to further expand assimilation of natives to the introduced Spanish culture. In the Americas its usage was continued by the descendants of the Spaniards, whether by the large population of Spanish ''criollos'' or by what had then become the mixed Spanish-Amerindian ('' Mestizo s'') majority. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th Century , the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population to strengthen national unity, and the encouragement of all natives to become fluent in Spanish has had a certain amount of success, except in very isolated parts of the former Spanish colonies. The still Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico encouraged more immigrants from Spain in the late 19th century, and similarly other Latin American countries such as Argentina , nearby Uruguay and to a lesser extent Chile , Mexico , Panama and Venezuela , attracted waves of European Spanish and non-Spanish, Caucasian immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There, the countries' large (or sizable minority) population groups of second- and third-generation descendants adopted the Spanish language as part of their governments' official assimilation policies to include Europeans who were Catholics and agreed to take an oath of allegiance to their chosen nation's government. In the Philippines , this process did not occur for several reasons. It was isolated as the only Spanish colony in Asia, far removed from all of Spain's colonies in the Americas. Rather than being a direct colony of Spain, the Philippines was in fact a colony of another Spanish colony, New Spain , and was administered from Mexico City , thereby lessening the ties and interest of Spain proper, and disabling the large scale Spanish migration experienced across the Americas. From the Spanish claim on these islands in 1535 to the late 1800s, the Philippines was the only "direct" European colony in terms of cultural influences in Southeast Asia . In comparison to its counterparts in Spanish America, the Philippine population was, and still is, almost exclusively native, and mixed Spanish-Filipinos (Filipino Mestizo s) were few in number, while Spaniards (of which a great many were actually Mexican '' Criollo s'') accounted for even fewer than the ''Mestizos''. Following the Spanish-American War the small number of Spaniards and Latin Americans present in the country eventually returned to New Spain ( Mexico ) and Spain, or a smaller wave of ''Hispano-Filipinos'' had settled in US-annexed Hawaii and the western US in the early 1900s (see Filipino American s). Ultimately, at the culmination of the Philippine-American War many of the already minuscule ''Mestizo'' population was decimated as casualties of war. English was then declared an official language. Spanish finally ceased to be an official language of the Philippines in 1973 . A Creole Language called Chabacano developed as a Lingua Franca in the south when the Spaniards built forts to combat the Muslim s and imported workers from all over the country. The local languages, then and now, are not mutually intelligible. However, Spanish like English (but more preferable) is still studied by educated Filipinos and professionals who might emigrate to Mexico. Unlike the Philippines, when Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States as consequence of the same Spanish-American War , its population was by then almost entirely of Spanish and mixed Afro-Caribbean Spanish ('' Mulatto '' and '' Mestizo '') descent , thereby enabling the retention of their inherited Spanish language as a mother tongue while co-existing with the American imposed English as co-official. Puerto Rico has received immigration from Europe, when Spanish colonial officials invited farmers and island fishers from Corsica , the Canary Islands , the Azores , Greece , Malta , Italy and Ireland , while millions of Puerto Ricans went to the mainland US in the 20th century. (see Puerto Rican and Puerto Ricans In The United States ). A similar situation occurred in the American Southwest including California , Arizona , New Mexico and Texas , where Spaniards, then Californios (Spanish criollos in California) followed by Chicano s ( Mexican Americans ) and later Mexican immigrants, maintained Spanish alive before, during and after the American appropriation of those territories, since the 1500s. Spanish continues to be used by millions of citizens and immigrants from Latin America to the United States (for example, many Cuban Americans arrived in Miami, Florida beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, and followed by other Latin American groups. The local majority is now Spanish-speaking). Spanish is now treated as the country's "second language," and over 5 percent of the US population are Spanish-speaking, but most Latino / Hispanic Americans are bilingual or also regularly speak English. In the 20th Century , Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara after periods of Spanish colonial rule, and it is also studied and spoken in former French and Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia, but it is not the main languages of these areas. It is also spoken in parts of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City , at first by immigrants from Puerto Rico, and later by other Latin American immigrants who arrived there in the late 20th century. In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War , but native inhabitants may speak Chamorro an Austronesian language, some German and later English, Japanese and Korean introduced in the early 20th century, and some languages introduced by immigrants from the Philippines and Southeast Asia. for Catalonia, Basque , a non Indo-European language for the Basque provinces, and Galician , akin to Portuguese, for Galicia. Since the early 1980s after Spain became a multi-party democracy, these regional and minority languages have rebounded in common usage as secondary languages, but Castilian Spanish remains the universal language of the Spanish people. INFLUENCES See Also: Influences on the Spanish language Possible Basque influence Many Castilians who took part in the Reconquista and later repopulation Campaigns were of Basque lineage and this is evidenced by many Place Name s throughout Spain . The change from Latin 'f-' to Spanish 'h-' (discussed at length below) is commonly ascribed to the influence of Basque speakers for a few reasons. The change from f to h was first documented in the areas around Castile and La Rioja , areas where many Basques were known to have lived. The change to h took place to a greater degree in the Gascon Language in Gascony in France , an area also inhabited by Basques. The Basque Language lacked the f sound and thus substituted it with h, the closest thing to f in that language. There are some difficulties with attributing this change to Basque though. There is no hard evidence that , Italian and Sardinian . In fact, the change from f to h is one of the most common Phonological changes in all kinds of world languages and is not peculiar to Romance Languages . According to the explanations which negate or downplay Basque influence, the change occurred in the affected dialects wholly independent of each other as the result of internal change (i.e. linguistic factors, not outside influence). It is also possible that the two forces worked in concert and reinforced each other. Possible Celtic influence Two specific types of Lenition , the Voicing of Voiceless Consonant s and the Elision of Voiced Consonant s (both of which are discussed at greater length below), are the Phonological changes of Spanish which are most often attributed to the influence of Celtic Language s. While examples of these two types of lenition are ubiquitous and well-documented in Spanish , two Assumption s need to be made if these two types of lenition are to be attributed to patterns of lenition in Celtic languages. The first assumption is that a population of Bilingual Celtiberian - Romance speakers existed long enough to have had an influence on the development of Castilian . The second assumption is that Continental Celtic , an Extinct branch of Celtic , did indeed exhibit the types of lenition which are known to exist in modern Insular Celtic Languages . (Furthermore, it should be noted that such lenitions are a very common kind of change in languages all around the world, and similar phenomena are found also in Romance languages such as Corsican and Sardinian, where no Celtic causation is plausible; the Spanish development may therefore just be an internal process, not due to outside influence.) Germanic influence Although Germanic Languages by most accounts affected the Phonological development very little, many Spanish Words Of Germanic Origin are very common in all varieties of everyday Spanish. The words for Cardinal Directions (norte, este, sur, oeste) are all taken from Germanic words ( North , East , South and West in Modern English ) after the contact with Atlantic sailors. Arabic influence See Also: Arabic influence on the Spanish language An important number of Spanish Noun s start with the syllable ''al-'' (such as ''alcohol'' " Alcohol ", ''alcoba'' " Alcove , room", ''almohada'' " Pillow ", ''algodón'' " Cotton ", ''alcalde'' " Mayor ", ''alcázar'' " Castle ", ''alfalfa'' " Alfalfa ", ''almirante'' " Admiral " (with an added -d- by erroneous association with the Latin Prefix '' Ad- ''), ''almíbar'' " Syrup ", ''alcatraz'' " Albatross ", ''álcali'' " Alkali ", ''alquimia'' " Alchemy ", ''algoritmo'' " Algorithm ", ''álgebra'' " Algebra ", ''albacora'' " Albacore ", ''Alhambra'' "Red Castle", ''Al-Andalus'' " Andalusia " (note that Al-Andalus is how Arabs referred to the land inhabited by the Vandals, since Arabic does not have a "v" sound) have Arabic origins, as well as many that start with ''at-'', ''az-'' and others (such as ''azufre'' " Sulfur " and ''ataúd'' " Coffin ", ''azúcar'' " Sugar ", ''azul'' " Blue , Azure "), ''azafrán'' " Saffron ". This is due to the interpretation of the Arabic Proclitic definite article ''al'' as part of the following word. ADDITION OF THE DEFINITE ARTICLE INTERNAL HISTORY At first just one of many Dialect s of Iberian Romance spoken in Iberia , the dialect of Castile eventually became identified as ''the'' Spanish Language (called Español or Castellano in Spanish ). This is due in large part to the Cultural Hegemony of the Castilians during and after the Reconquista . Modern Spanish is strikingly different from Latin , its main source language, in many ways, but determining exactly ''when'' these changes took place is often problematic. The main Reason for this lack of hard Evidence is the fact that the system of Orthography used by speakers of Iberian Romance in the Middle Ages was extremely similar to if not identical to that of Classical Latin . While there were undoubtedly Phonological and Morphemic differences between Iberian Romance and Latin (and later, between Castilian and Iberian Romance ), most of these differences were not reflected in writing until after the Reconquista and even later. Abandonment of phonological length At a very early time in the development of Romance , the distinction between Latin Long Vowel s and Short Vowel s was very slight and the number of Minimal Pair s based on Vowel Length is much smaller than in Latin.
Syncope 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: Later, unstressed vowels were lost between other combinations of consonants: Diphthongization Diphthongization in Spanish typically happens to Latin short mid vowels (e, o) that are stressed, as the conjugation of Modern Spanish verbs can attest: yo quiero, nosotros quer'''e'''mos; yo p'''ue'''do, vosotros p'''o'''déis; etc. Monophthongization Many of the examples of Monophthong ization in Spanish actually occurred in Latin itself. The change from ''ae'' to ''e'' is thought in some instances to be a product of the influence of the Faliscan and Umbrian dialects. Learned words and consonant cluster simplification Learned words became increasingly frequent with the works of Alfonso X in the mid-to-late 1200s . Many of these words contained Consonant Cluster s which had usually been reduced to simpler consonant clusters or single Consonant s 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 {Link without Title} -, -'''pt'''-, -'''gn'''-, -'''mn'''-, and -'''mpt'''-. Most of the simplified forms have since reverted back to the learned forms or are now considered to be uneducated. 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 coexistenece (and sometimes Competition ) 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 (sometimes intentionally as an Archaism ), but have since been relegated mostly to popular and uneducated speech. Occasionally, both forms exist in Modern Spanish with different Nuance s of meaning or in Idiom atic usage. Afición is a 'fondness for' of 'taste for' while '''afección''' is 'affection,' or 'illness.' Modern Spanish '''respeto''' is 'respect' while '''con respecto a''' means 'with regard to.' Modern sound changes By the 16th Century the consonantal system of "Castilian" Spanish underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from such Related Romance Languages as Portuguese , Ladino and Catalan :
Later is the merger, in most dialects, of the palatal lateral and non-lateral consonants and (historical) into a single non-lateral consonant, generally a palatal fricative (but also postalveolar and/or affricate in some dialects). This merger is called '' Yeísmo '' (from the name of the letter ''y'') (Hammond 2001). SEE ALSO
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