Spanish from Latin - more information.

Hannah's Google-fu proved worthier than mine this week:  when she typed search terms into the box looking for useful information to support our current project of building Spanish onto Latin, she found this in-depth article:  "Spanish for Speakers of Latin."  The author (who is not the site owner) appears to be a hobbyist rather than a professional linguist.   Probably for this reason, the article is concise and user-friendly (at least for me, a would-be language nerd).

(Because, really, I'm a would-be everything nerd who has not quite enough time on her hands.)

So the paper begins like this:

This page is intended to introduce an English speaker familiar with Latin and learning Spanish to the correspondences and differences between the two languages and the skills necessary to apply knowledge of Latin in studying Spanish.

 

1. The Historical Background
2. Orthography & Pronunciation
3. Patterns of Phonetic Transformation
4. Grammatical Development
5. Essential Derivatives
6. Portuguese

 

I am by no means an expert on the matter. I am not even fluent in Spanish. This is just my own set of observations, which may not be wholly accurate.

Come on -- doesn't that just make you want to keep going?  It does me!  

Here's a bite from each section:

Historical background:

[lots of stuff preceding it]

This is how Spanish has come to establish itself today. By a series of lucky coincidences, it has become more and more like English. First, note that the Goths, Franks, Saxons, and Vikings all spoke related Germanic languages. When these various tribes began to learn Latin, they naturally preferred ways of saying things that were closest to what they already knew. When the English were conquered by the Normans (Vikings from Normandy who spoke Old French), they subsequently replaced over nine tenths of their language with Norman French, and later imported a slew of words directly from Latin. Thus both Spanish and English derive from a base of Germanic language speakers learning dialects of vulgar Latin from adjacent regions. The upshot is that the feel of Spanish, including the structure, the vocabulary, and the very way of looking at things, is very much like English, much more so than Latin is, and far more so than, say, Sanskrit. But because Spanish is directly derived from Latin, whereas English has had Latin grafted on somewhat gradually and haphazardly, a knowledge of the original Latin still contributes a great deal more to understanding Spanish and is very helpful for dealing with both languages.

Orthography and Pronunciation has subsections on accents, vowels, and consonants.  Here is a bit from the vowel section:

The vowels of Spanish are the same as in Latin, except that all distinction of quantity is lost, and y is treated as identical to i. They are pronounced like the Latin long vowels but are generally held for only a very short time. This feature of the language allows Spanish speakers to comfortably speak at nearly twice the rate of English. English speakers should particularly be aware that there is no y sound at the end of the vowels e and i, nor a w sound at the end of o and u.

e.g.: lego as Latin lego (not as leygow)

Diphthongs are basically as in Latin, but ae and oe are written ai and oi, with the former no longer forming a diphthong.

e.g. traer as tra-ér, two syllables

e.g. traigo, as trai-go, two syllables

The letter u, when following g or q and preceding e or i, is silent, unless it has a dieresis (¨). This is the only silent vowel in Spanish. Otherwise u follows the same rules that apply in Latin, as for becoming a w sound. Note that instead of writing qü, Spanish simply changes to cu. Therefore remember that unlike Latin, qu always equals k.

The Patterns of Phonetic Transformation section includes vowel shifts, consonant shifts, initial letters, final letters.  For example:

A word beginning with a voiceless consonant followed by l, i.e., cl, fl, or pl, would usually change to begin with ll (likewise in Portuguese to ch and in Italian to chi, fi, and pi). This seems to be the origin of nearly all Spanish words beginning with ll. But in Latin, these combinations did not exist within a word, except in compounds; ll there usually derives from palatized ll within a Latin word.

e.g.: clamare → llamar

e.g.: flamma → llama

e.g.: planum → llano

e.g.: illa → ella

Grammatical Development covers a number of topics.  I thought the development of the Spanish adverb ending -mente was particularly cool, especially since it parallels the development of the English adverb ending -wise.

Vulgar Latin developed a new, simple way to form adverbs from adjectives. It was to use the adjective (in the ablative feminine singular, of course) to modify mente, in the ablative, to form the phrase with — mind, or rather with — manner. This is paralelled in English with the suffix -wise, as in likewise, clockwise. In Spanish, the -mente forms a suffix on the adjective.

e.g.: timida mente → tímidamente, fearfully (originally, with fearful mind)

e.g.: frecuenti mente → frecuentemente, frequently

Essential Derivatives tells you, among other things, how to spot a non-Latin word:

First it should be pointed out that about a fifth of all Spanish words were not derived from Latin. Most of these came from Gothic and Arabic (see the history above), though of course many others are from Basque (a peculiar little non-Indo-European language that somehow survived in a little pocket of the Pyrenees), French, English, etc.

The fortunate thing about Gothic words is that they tend to have old or everyday English cognates.

e.g.: norte = north

e.g.: guerra = war

And Arabic words tend to bear the distinctive al- prefix (Arabic for the), sometimes assimilated.

e.g.: al-manākh → almanaque

e.g.: al-roz → arroz

...and provides an extremely useful list of corresponding particles:

ille → el	ad → a	altero → otro	ad horam → ahora
illa → (el)la	de → de	nos alteros → nosotros	deunde → donde
illos → (el)los	in → en	vostra mercede → usted	inter → entre
uno → un(o)	cum → con	multo → mucho	magis → más
una → una	sine → sin	pauco → poco	minus → menos
sic → sí	per → por	tanto → tanto	tam → tan
ad sic → así	pro → para	bene → bien	tam bene → también
non → no	super → sobre	illic → allí	tam paucum → tampoco
si → si	quem → quien	jam → ya	toto → todo
et → e → y	aliquem → alguién	heri → ayer	tota via → todavía
aut → ot → o	quid → que	hodie → hoy	post → (des)pues
nec → ni	quando → cuando	semper → siempre	vice → vez
quam → que	quanto → cuanto	numquam → nuncuan → nunca	facit → hace
qui → que	qualis → cual	quomodo → quomo → como

And finally a word of encouragement: 

Once Spanish and Latin are learnt, it is no great feat to pick up at least a reading knowledge of Portuguese...

After reading through all that, I think I believe him!

This article pretty much gives me all I needed to make my "learn a little Spanish based on your Latin" project into a full-on introduction to practical linguistics.  What isn't included here, can be tracked down based on what is included here.  I'm feeling more and more optimistic about this actually working.

 

Comments

[MelanieB]

Oooh this is cool. I've never studied Spanish; but know a smattering just from growing up in Texas. But this makes it easier to deploy my Latin knowledge. I like your point about practical linguistics too.