Spanish vocabulary

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As a Romance language, the 'vocabulary of Spanish consists of about 90% words derived from Latin, 8% from Arabic, and the bulk of the rest from Germanic, Basque, Celtic, or New World languages such as Quechua, Nahuatl, and Carib.[citation needed]

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[edit] Latin base

Although many Spanish words can look and sound strikingly different from their Latin etymons, there are a number of well-understood processes that occurred as Spanish was developing from Latin. The Spanish word milagro (From Latin miraculum 'miracle') illustrates four such processes.

1. Suffix/Collapse of the Latin neuter: The neuter, singular suffix -um was changed to -o. Nearly all Latin nouns of the neuter declension were collapsed into the Latin masculine declension (ending in -us) and were thus treated the same and had the same -o ending.
2. Voicing: The unvoiced /k/ of Latin miraculum became the voiced /g/ of Spanish milagro. This was a very frequent occurrence, especially when the originally unvoiced consonant appeared Intervocalically.
3. Metathesis: /l/ and /r/) in Latin miraculum switched their order. Although most consonants are subject to metathesis, it is more common when the switched consonants are alike (i.e. both liquid, both nasal, etc)
4. Syncope (elision): The Spanish milagro is a three-syllable word derived from a four-syllable one. Vowels (in this case the -u- from the penultimate syllable of 'miraculum') are often elided for many reasons, some of which may be simplicity, euphony, or ease of articulation. This process is common in many languages. Although there are many examples of syncope in Spanish, this development in Italo-Western languages was fairly late and not as extensive as in Eastern Romance languages.

Although there are many cognates with Spanish and other Romance languages, sometimes Spanish words derive from a different Latin word.

One example is the word for "brother":

The first three derive from Latin frater while the latter three derive from Latin germanus

Some words are contractions or corruptions of older compound terms. Semana ('week') is a shortening of the phrase siete mañanas ('seven mornings'). Como ('how') derives from Latin quo modo, ('in which manner').

The verbs ser and estar (both translate as 'to be' in English but have nuances in their meaning) have origins in Latin. Ser derives from Latin esse, ('to be') and estar derives from stare, ('to stand').

[edit] Arabic loanwords

See also: Arabic influence on the Spanish language

Many words beginning with al- are from Arabic.

  • alacrán ← العقرب al-ʿáqrab ('scorpion')
  • albaricoquero ← البرقوق al-barqūq ('apricot tree')
  • alcancía ← al-kanzíyya ('money box')
  • alfajor ← ﺍﻞﻓﺸﺮ al-fašúr ('alfajor')

This is not to say that all or even most words beginning with al- come from Arabic. A number of such words go back to Proto-Indo-European (thus they are not loanwords). It is often the case that such words have replaced Latin-derived words rather than introducing new concepts so that there exit words with the same or similar meanings in French or Italian that derive from Latin.

[edit] See also

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