Old Spanish language

Old Spanish (, , ; ), also known as Old Castilian or Medieval Spanish, refers to the varieties of Ibero-Romance spoken predominantly in Castile and environs during the Middle Ages. The earliest, longest, and most famous literary composition in Old Spanish is the (c. 1140–1207).

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs

Diphthongs

Consonants

( and were apico-alveolar.)

and

These were still distinct phonemes in Old Spanish, judging by the consistency with which the graphemes and were distinguished. Nevertheless, the two could be confused in consonant clusters (as in ~ “dawn”) or in word-initial position, perhaps after or a pause. and appear to have merged in word-initial position by about 1400 and in all other environments by the mid–late 16th century at the latest.

At an archaic stage, the realizations of (from Latin ) would have been approximately as follows:

* before or
* before or
* or before
By early Old Spanish, had been replaced with before all vowels and possibly before as well.

In later Old Spanish, surviving and / were modified to in urban speech, likely due to the influx of numerous French and Occitan speakers (and their particular pronunciation of Latin) beginning in the twelfth century. Various words with were then borrowed into Spanish, leading to minimal pairs like “form” (a borrowing) and “shoemaker's last” (inherited from Latin ). The result was a new phoneme , distinct from .

Possibly realized as after pauses or certain consonants (judging by outcomes in Judeo-Spanish).

Development of sibilants to modern Spanish

# deaffricated to .
# devoiced and merged into .
# was retracted to .
# (depending on dialect) merged into or fronted to .

Orthography

Scripts

Old Spanish was generally written in some variation of the Latin script. It was also sometimes written in Arabic script in a practice called Aljamiado.

These sounds were spelt and respectively. was often abbreviated to , which went on to become the normal spelling of in Modern Spanish.

Graeco-Latin diagraphs

Old Spanish featured the digraphs , , , and which were simplified to , , , in Modern Spanish. Examples include:
* (modern )
* (modern )
* (modern )
* (modern )

⟨y⟩

often stood for in word-initial position. In this context it has since been respelt to in Modern Spanish.

Sibilants

(The following table does not account for sandhi contexts.)

Morphology

In Old Spanish, perfect constructions of movement verbs, such as ('(to) go') and ('(to) come'), were formed using the auxiliary verb ('(to) be'), as in Italian and French: was used instead of ('The women have arrived in Castile').

Possession was expressed with the verb (Modern Spanish , '(to) have'), rather than : was used instead of ('Pedro has two daughters').

In the perfect tenses, the past participle often agreed with the gender and number of the direct object: was used instead of Modern Spanish ('María has sung two songs'). However, that was inconsistent even in the earliest texts.

The prospective aspect was formed with the verb ('(to) go') along with the verb in infinitive, with the difference that Modern Spanish includes the preposition :

: ('' Cantar de mio Cid'', 691)
: (Modern Spanish equivalent)

Personal pronouns and substantives were placed after the verb in any tense or mood unless a stressed word was before the verb.

The future and the conditional tenses were not yet fully grammaticalised as inflections; rather, they were still periphrastic formations of the verb in the present or imperfect indicative followed by the infinitive of a main verb. Pronouns, therefore, by the general placement rules, could be inserted between the main verb and the auxiliary in these periphrastic tenses, as still occurs with Portuguese ( mesoclisis):

: ('' Fazienda de Ultra Mar'', 194)
: (literal translation into Modern Spanish)
: (literal translation into Portuguese)
: And he said: "I will return to Jerusalem." (English translation)

: ('' Cantar de mio Cid'', 92)
: (Modern Spanish equivalent)
: (Portuguese equivalent)
: I will pawn them it for whatever it be reasonable (English translation)

When there was a stressed word before the verb, the pronouns would go before the verb: .

Generally, an unstressed pronoun and a verb in simple sentences combined into one word. In a compound sentence, the pronoun was found in the beginning of the clause: = .

The future subjunctive was in common use ( in the second example above) but it is generally now found only in legal or solemn discourse and in the spoken language in some dialects, particularly in areas of Venezuela, to replace the imperfect subjunctive. It was used similarly to its Modern Portuguese counterpart, in place of the modern present subjunctive in a subordinate clause after , etc., when an event in the future is referenced:

:
: (''Cantar de mio Cid'', 223–224)

:
: (Modern Spanish equivalent)

:
: (Portuguese equivalent.)

: If you do so and fortune is favourable toward me,
: I will send to your altar fine and rich offerings (English translation)

Vocabulary

Sample text

The following is a sample from (lines 330–365), with abbreviations resolved, punctuation (the original has none), and some modernized letters.A recording with reconstructed mediaeval pronunciation can be accesse
here
reconstructed according to contemporary phonetics (by Jabier Elorrieta). Below is the original Old Spanish text in the first column, along with the same text in Modern Spanish in the second column and an English translation in the third column.

The poem

See also

* History of the Spanish language
* Early Modern Spanish (Middle Spanish)
* Judeo-Spanish preserves some of the sounds and terms of Old Spanish that have been lost in Modern Spanish.

Notes

References

Bibliography

*
*
*
*
*

External links

An explanation of the development of Mediaeval Spanish sibilants in Castile and Andalusia.



(part of Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Old Spanish Language
History of the Spanish language
Spanish language, Old
Languages attested from the 12th century