science

Influences on the Spanish language

Influences on the Spanish language is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Influences on the Spanish language rather than just read about it. In short: Spanish is a Romance language which developed from Vulgar Latin in central areas of the Iberian Peninsula and has absorbed many loanwords from other Romance languages like French, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, and Italian. Spanish also has lexical influences from Arabic and from Paleohispanic languages such as Iberian, Celtiberian and Basque.

Key takeaways

Influences on the Spanish language belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Influences on the Spanish language to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Influences on the Spanish language from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Spanish is a Romance language which developed from Vulgar Latin in central areas of the Iberian Peninsula and has absorbed many loanwords from other Romance languages like French, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, and Italian. Spanish also has lexical influences from Arabic and from Paleohispanic languages such as Iberian, Celtiberian and Basque. In the Americas, Spanish is now spoken by people of a great variety of cultural backgrounds, including those of Amerindian and African heritage. The extensive contact with native American languages especially has resulted in the adoption of many lexical items from these languages, not only in local dialects of Spanish, but throughout the language as a whole.

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

Celtiberian 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 that are most often attributed to the influence of Celtic languages; they have also been attributed to the influence of the Basque language. 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–Vulgar Latin speakers existed long enough to have had an influence on the development of Old Spanish. The second assumption is that Continental Celtic, an extinct branch of Celtic, did indeed exhibit the types of lenition that are known to exist in modern Insular Celtic languages. Alternatively, the Spanish development may therefore just be a natural internal process, not due to outside influence.

Basque influence Many Castilians who took part in the Reconquista and later repopulation campaigns of Muslim Iberia were of Basque lineage and this is evidenced by many place names throughout Spain. The change from Latin 'f-' to Spanish 'h-' 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 northern Castile and La Rioja, areas that are close to the Basque-speaking area. The change to [h] took place to a greater degree in the Gascon language in Gascony, in southwestern France, an area that is close to the Basque Country too. The claim is that 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, however. There is no hard evidence that medieval Basque did or did not have an [f] sound. Presumably early borrowings of forms with initial [f] into Basque were usually received as [p] or [b] (e.g. FESTA > Basque pesta or besta, depending on the dialect), rather than [h]. Adding to this is the fact that the f-to-h lenition 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 that 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. Another claim of Basque influence in Spanish is the voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant [s̺], a sound roughly intermediate between laminodental [s] and palatal [ʃ]; this sound also appears in other Ibero-Romance languages and in Catalan. The apico-alveolar retracted sibilant might be a result of bilingualism of speakers of Basque and Vulgar Latin.

Germanic Spain was controlled by the Visigoths between the 5th and 8th centuries. However, the influence of the Gothic language (an East Germanic language) on Spanish was minimal because the invaders were already somewhat Romanized, were secluded in the upper echelons of society, and generally did not intermarry with the natives. Besides a few military words, Spanish borrowed the following from Gothic:

A new noun declension (nominative -ā, oblique -āne), which originated from the Gothic n-stem declension. This was used mostly with proper names, e.g., Old Spanish Fruela ~ Froilán (for the same person) and also guardia "guard" ~ guardián "guardian" (from Gothic nominative wardja, accusative wardjan). The originally adjectivizing suffix -engo (Germanic -ing), as in abolengo 'ancestry' (cf. abuelo 'grandfather'), abadengo 'abbatial', realengo 'belonging to the Crown', camarlengo 'chamberlain'. Perhaps the originally patronymic surname suffixes in -z (as in Díaz, Pérez, López, Ruiz, Muñoz, etc.) is from numerous Latinized Gothic genitives in -īcī, from original -iks. Thus, Roderic(us) (→ Ruy) → Roderīcī 'son of Roderick' → Rodriz → Ruiz. A few words of Gothic origin, e.g., ganso 'goose' (← *gans), rueca 'distaff' (← *rokko), tascar 'to beat hemp or flax' (← *taskōn), triscar 'to set, tease' (← þriskan 'to thresh'), ataviar 'to attire, adorn' (← *attaujan 'to mend'). Although Germanic languages by most accounts affected the phonological development very little, Spanish words of Germanic origin are present in all varieties of Modern Spanish. Many of the Spanish words of Germanic origin were already present in Vulgar Latin, and so they are shared with other Romance languages. Other Germanic words were borrowed in more recent times; for example, the words for the cardinal directions (norte, este, sur, oeste — 'north', 'east', 'south', 'west') are not documented until late in the 15th century. These direction words are thought to be from Old English, probably by way of French.

Arabic

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Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Influences on the Spanish language

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Influences on the Spanish language claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Influences on the Spanish language before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Influences on the Spanish language ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Influences on the Spanish language

In research: Influences on the Spanish language appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Influences on the Spanish language in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Influences on the Spanish language is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics History of the Spanish language, Language contact, Spanish etymology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Influences on the Spanish language outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Influences on the Spanish language in 20 minutes

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Close the page and write down what Influences on the Spanish language means in your own words.
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Frequently asked questions

What is Influences on the Spanish language in simple terms?

Why does Influences on the Spanish language matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Influences on the Spanish language?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Influences on the Spanish language.