Influences on the Spanish language

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The Spanish language has a long history of borrowing words, expressions and subtler features of other languages it has come in contact with.

Spanish developed from Vulgar Latin, with influence from Celtiberian, Basque and Arabic, and Visigothic in the north of the Iberian Peninsula.

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[edit] Formative influences

As Spanish went through its first stages of development in Spain, it received influences from neighbouring related languages, and from Basque, which is a language isolate and thus completely unrelated to Spanish in origin. Umbrian and Oscan influences have also been postulated.

[edit] Visigothic

Spain was controlled by the Visigoths between the 5th and 8th century. However, the linguistic influence of the Visigothic language (an East Germanic language) on Spanish was relatively limited, because the invaders were already Romanized and also spoke their own dialect of Latin. Besides a few military words, Spanish borrowed the following from Visigothic:

  • A new noun declension (nominative -â, oblique -âne), which was used mostly with proper names (whence modern Spanish Froilán and also guardián).
  • The adjectivizing suffix -engo (Germanic -ing), as in abolengo.
  • The suffixes -iz, -ez, -oz, now found in surnames (Pérez, Torres, López, Ruiz, etc.), from Germanic patronymics in -iks.

[edit] Arabic

Main article: Arabic influence on the Spanish language

Spain was then (711 CE) invaded by Islamic forces, which brought the Arabic language to the Peninsula. Over the course of the following centuries, Spanish borrowed words from Arabic in many semantic fields:

  • Common everyday items such as alcoba "alcove, room", aldea "village", alfombra "carpet", almohada "pillow", guitarra "guitar";
  • Government and military terms such as alcázar "fortress" (curiously, Arab itself took the word from Latin castrum, castle), alcalde "mayor", barrio "ward, neighborhood";
  • Legal terms such as asesino "assassin, murderer", rehén "hostage", tarifa "tariff, fee", arancel "fee";
  • Food and beverage names such as aceite "oil", arroz "rice", espinaca "spinach", naranja "orange", café "coffee";
  • Masonry and craftsmanship terms such as albañil "mason", tabique "dividing wall", adoquín "paving stone", alfarero "potter", taza "cup", jarra "pitcher";
  • Chemical substances and materials such as alcohol "alcohol", álcali "alkali", adobe "adobe", laca "lacquer";
  • Mathematical and astronomical terms such as cero "zero", cifra "cipher, figure", álgebra "algebra", cénit "zenith", guarismo "number, figure";
  • Expressions such as ojalá ("may it be that. ..", originally "May Allah want. .."), albricias "joy!".

As is obvious, many of these borrowings (especially in the scientific field) were then passed on to other languages (English got most of them via French).

Most of the Spanish words starting with the particle -al- have their origin in Arabic. It's estimated that about 4000 words in Spanish are of Arabic origin.

Morphological borrowing was scarce. The suffíx -í (deriving adjectives from place names, in as iraquí "Iraqi, Iraq's") is an example.

[edit] 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 names throughout Spain. The change from Latin 'f-' to Spanish 'h-' (discussed at length below) was once 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 medieval Basque had an h sound, but there is also no hard evidence that it didn't. Adding to this is the fact that the f to h phenomenon is not peculiar to Spanish. In fact, the change from f to h is one of the most common phonological changes in all kinds of world 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.

[edit] Possible Celtic influence

Two specific types of lenition, the voicing of voiceless consonants and the elision of voiced consonants (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 languages. While examples of these two types of lenition are ubiquitous and well-documented in Spanish, two assumptions 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.)

[edit] 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.

[edit] Influences from Native American languages

The last Moorish kingdom fell to Spanish forces in 1492, shortly before the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Americas. Spanish settlers then came in contact with a host of native languages. Most of these were wiped out or severely reduced in number of speakers and distribution area during the conquest, but Spanish adopted a number of words from some of them. The following list is by no means exhaustive.

  • From Nahuatl: tomate "tomato", chocolate "chocolate", ajolote "axolotl", cacao "cocoa", coyote "coyote".
  • From Quechua cóndor "condor" (orig. kuntur), cancha "playing field", alpaca, caucho, coca, guano, gaucho (orig. wakcha "poor person"), guanaco, llama (the animal), puma, pampa "plains, flat terrain".
  • from Guaraní caracú "bone marrow", catinga "body odor", chamamé, tapera "ruins", jaguar, yaguareté "jaguar", mate (an infusion, orig. mati "pumpkin")..
  • From Carib caimán "caimán", huracán "hurricane".
  • From Tupi caníbal "cannibal", capibara (the largest rodent on Earth), jacarandá (a tree).

Those words referring to local features or animals might be limited to regional usage, but many others like condor, canoa or chocolate are extended even to other languages.

[edit] Modern borrowings

Spanish borrowed words from other European languages (its close neighbors such as Catalan, other Romance languages like French (this particularly during the Neoclassicist to Napoleonic periods, when French language and culture became the fashion at the royal court) and Italian, and Germanic languages like English). For example:

  • chao, chau "bye" from Italian ciao (sometimes co-existing with adiós)
  • carnet from French
  • chofer "chauffeur" from French (co-existing with "conductor")
  • elenco "team" from Italian (co-existing with equipo)
  • sandwich, from English (Originally bocadillo o emparedado)
  • briquet from French (used in Colombia, co-existing with encendedor)
  • Capot from French
  • Fútbol from English (football) (originally balompié)
  • Gendarme from French (Prison guards).
 Please help improve this section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.


[edit] Recent borrowings

In recent times, Spanish has borrowed many words and expressions from English, especially in the fields of computers and the Internet. In many cases, technical expressions which superficially employ common Spanish words are in fact calques from English equivalents. For example, disco duro is a literal translation of "hard disk". Words like blog, chat, and weblog are used, though bitácora (from cuaderno de bitácora, the captain's log on a boat) is also common.

 Please help improve this section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.


[edit] Words of non-Latin origin

Seventy-five percent of Spanish words have come from Latin[1] and were in use in Spain before the Common Era. The remaining 25 percent come from other languages. Of these languages (and language families), the four which have contributed the most words are Arabic, Indigenous languages of the Americas, Germanic, and Celtic in roughly that order.

[edit] Lists of Spanish etymology

African – Americas – Arabic – Austronesian – Basque/Iberian – Celtic – Chinese – Etruscan – French – Germanic – Indo-Aryan – Iranian – Italic – Semitic – Turkic – uncertain – various origins.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ A new history of Spanish literature By Richard Eugene Chandler, Kessel Schwartz

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources