eDELE.org Excellentia Didáctica: Español como Lengua Extranjera Online Preparation for DELE Exams (Spanish as Foreign Language)

WORKBOOK #1

History and Origins of the

First modern novel in a First grammar handbook European language for a European language

W.P. Steenkamp D. Litt. et Phil. © eDELE s.a. 2013

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THE SPANISH [CASTILIAN] LANGUAGE : ORIGINS AND HISTORY

1. Why bother with the roots? In many ways, the ability to talk is what separates our species from other animals. Language separates groups of humans from each other as distinct cultures. Even today – within one language – how we talk that language separates us into social classes. Language has been with us for millennia, with the modern languages of today having evolved along routes as contorted as the geographical routes that led our species to populate the far corners of the planet. Yet our “globalised” world of today is very recent – before that, peoples (and their languages) existed and developed very much in isolation, giving rise to important divergence and idiosyncrasies. The latter is particularly true because of the reality that languages were “created” from the bottom up, by the common folk – only relatively recently have linguists and national academies begun to standardise, but always based on the real-world meanderings that (for better or worse) had become embedded in the tongue spoken by the populace.

It therefore stands to reason that, for the speaker of one language, the grammatical structure of any foreign language will firstly be different, and secondly may lead him/her to even question whether it has any logic, or to call its structure “stupid”. The easy junior school-style remedy is to simply insist that “that’s how it is; you have no option but to memorise it by route learning”. That, however, is not how the adult mind works – we want to understand, to get to know the answer to the “why”. And such answers do exist, because – as the product of the spontaneous free will and ingenuity of millions of intelligent human beings over many centuries, all of them intent on communicating clearly – every language self-evidently does have some kind of underlying structural logic. Much like life in an ant colony has its intelligent structure and sensible answers to its why’s and wherefores, even though it all grew naturally, without dictate.

It is also obvious that humans build and adapt on the basis of what they have received from their forebears. This is why knowing the essence of its history is a useful tool in unveiling the logic that does exist in the grammatical structure of modern Spanish. Once you comprehend how Spanish differs from your own language, and have mentally plugged into its different structural logic, you will find learning Spanish so much easier and more rewarding. You will also be better able to extract value from the commercially available study materials and handbooks, which – typically yet lamentably – tend to be based on mere route learning and a book chapter structure that simply presents each tense / set of conjugations sequentially, as if disconnected from any overarching plan.

The study goal of this Workbook is therefore to help the student contextualise and differentiate modern Spanish in relation to his/her own tongue, the world family of languages, and understand that it does indeed “make sense” (and not only to the 406 million native Spanish speakers and 60 million 2nd language speakers of our planet) as will be further elucidated when we introduce the Structure of Spanish Grammar in Workbook #2.

2. Names of the language (Source: Wikipedia)

In and in some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish (español) is also called castellano (Castilian), that is, the language of the region of Castile, contrasting it with

2 other formally recognised regional languages spoken in parts of Spain such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan. Native speakers of these regional languages prefer the term castellano for what we foreigners commonly call Spanish, as they consider their own languages to be equally "Spanish". The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. the rest of the Spanish languages) which enjoy concurrent official status in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications but from 1713 to 1923 called the language castellano. The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Spanish Royal Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms, español and castellano, are regarded as synonymous and equally valid. Two etymologies for español have been suggested. The Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval word Hispaniolus, 'from—or pertaining to—'. Other authorities attribute it to a supposed *hispaniōne, with the same meaning.

3. Pre-History

Modern Spanish derives from the single language spoken around 5,000 – 3700 before the Common Era over much of what is today Europe and the Indus Valley in India. This Proto- Indo-European language (PIE) is the common ancestor of the most important modern Indo-European languages (although in Europe and on the other languages not related to PIE do exist, such as Basque). Scholars estimate that PIE may have originally been spoken as a single language (before divergence began) by people who were centred between the Vistula River in Poland and the Caucuses mountains to the East, or in the Anatolian region of present-day Turkey. Important languages derived from PIE that show clear inter-relationship in the roots of verbs and in their grammar, include Sanskrit and classical Greek and Latin.

Almost counter-intuitively, PIE was not a simple primitive language at all, but in fact a hugely complex one – much more so than modern languages such as Spanish, which have undergone significant simplification over the millennia. For example, PIE used three numbers (singular, dual and plural – as opposed to two in Spanish, singular and plural). PIE also used more moods (“mood” = the “state of mind” that determines which set of verb terminations to employ when conjugating verbs, such as the for giving commands). In modern Spanish everything related to actions that are uncertain, irreal, or reflect wishes, fears, desires etc., are subsumed into one mood, the subjunctive. PIE, on the other hand, used the subjunctive only for the irrealis, and another mood (with its own conjugations), the optative, for wishes, desires, fears etc. PIE thus had a complex system of morphology. Nouns used a sophisticated system of declension and verbs used a similarly sophisticated system of conjugation.

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As is explained in Wikipedia: The Indo-European verb system is complex. Verbs were classed as stative (verbs that depict a state of being), imperfective (verbs depicting ongoing, habitual or repeated action) or perfective (verbs depicting a completed action or actions viewed as an entire process). PIE verbs have at least four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative), two voices (active and medio- passive) as well as three persons (first, second and third) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs were also marked by a highly developed system of participles, one for each combination of tense and mood, and an assorted array of verbal nouns and adjectival formations.

4. Romance / Latin / Italic roots of Castilian

The modern (such as Italian, Castilian, Catalan, French and Romanian) form a subfamily of the Indo-European (other subfamilies are the Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic, Armenian, Albanian and Greek). The Romance languages derive from Vulgar Latin, which in turn originated from the of the , which was an Italic language (i.e., the now extinct languages stemming from PIE spoken in the Italian peninsula, such as Latin, Umbrian, Oscan and Faliscan). Latin’s daughter languages, the Romance languages that took root in the old Empire, are the only survivors of the original , via Latin and Vulgar Latin.

The emerged from the Old Italic alphabets, which in turn were derived from the Greek and Phoenician scripts. Historical Latin came from the prehistoric language of the Latium region, specifically around the River Tiber, where Roman civilization first developed.

Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering of the Latin language spoken from earliest times in Italy, as well as including the dialects which evolved beyond Italy in other parts of the . From it developed the early Romance languages, with the latter first represented in writings around the 9th century.

5. The emergence of Spanish (Castilian) The Spanish language as such, evolved from Vulgar Latin (colloquial Latin), which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 209 B.. Prior to that time, several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages)—unrelated to Latin, and some of them unrelated even to Indo-European—were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Basque (still spoken today), Iberian, and Celtiberian.

The early Iberians left few traces of their language in modern Spanish: Some of these words are: arroyo(small stream), García(family name), sapo(toad), manteca (lard), cachorro (puppy).

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Toward the end of the sixth century before the Common Era (BCE), a nomadic tribe from central Europe known as the moved into the area and mixed with the peninsula's inhabitants, the Iberians. The result was a new people called the Celtiberians, and they spoke a form of the Celtic language. Most of the remaining Celtic words have to do with material things, hunting and war. For example: caballo (horse), carro (cart), camino (road), flecha (arrow), lanza (lance), cerveza (beer), camisa (shirt).

Most of the words of Greek origin found in modern day Spanish do not come from the pre- Roman period of Greek colonization along the Spanish Mediterranean coast; rather, they were introduced into the language later by the Romans. Most of these words refer to education, science, art, culture and religion, like matemática (mathematics), telegrafía (telegraphy), botánica (botany), física (physics), gramática (grammar), poema (poem), drama (drama), Obispo (bishop), bautizar (baptize), angel (angel).

The Phoenicians founded the city of in 1000 B.C. on the African coast. By 500 B.C., it had evolved into a Mediterranean power. During the six century B.C.E., the Carthaginians responded to a Tartessian (Iberian tribe) attack on the Phoenician city of Gadir. They invaded the Iberian peninsula and subjugated the Tartessians. The Carthaginians established cities such as Carthago Nova in Iberia, and it was the Carthaginians who ultimately caused the Romans to invade the Peninsula. It resulted from the Punic wars between Carthage and , which started in 264 B.C.E. when the Carthaginians engaged in war with Rome over control of Sicily. This is known as the first Punic war. In 218 B.C., the Carthaginians provoked the second Punic war, trying to recover territories that they had lost to the Romans during the first war. As part of this war, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca invaded Italy, via Spain, crossing the Alps with his elephants and Spanish mercenaries. His brother Amilcar Barca remained in Spain (Barcelona derives it name from its Barca founder). As a counter-strategy, to oblige Hannibal to quit Italy, the Roman general Scipio Africanus decided to invade Iberia, attacking first New Carthage which he rapidly conquered. Under his brilliant leadership the Roman Empire took over control of the peninsula, and Scipio went on to decisively defeat Hannibal in 202 B.C.E. at Zama in . This assured Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean and consequently in Iberia – to which region the Romans brought their language and imposed it. Latin became the dominant language of the peninsula, and from Latin, via Vulgar Latin, modern Spanish evolved – but not without some twists and turns.

During the fourth century of the Common Era (CE), Hispania was invaded by the Visigoths a Germanic tribe originally from eastern Europe, but which had earlier entered Rome, where they had lived under Roman rule. Around the year 415 A.D. they entered and Hispania and expelled the other eastern European barbarian tribes (such as the Vandals) that had settled in the area; initially the Visigoths were Roman foederati (i.e., a treaty tribe) but they soon broke with the Roman Empire and after being expelled from Gaul by the Francs, they established their dominion throughout the Iberian Peninsula, with their capital at Toledo. By the time they entered Hispania, the Visigoths had become Romanized and had abandoned their language in favour of Latin. Thus, the Visigoths were a Latin-speaking Germanic

5 tribe. It was the Visigoth king Reccared 1st who converted the Hispanic monarchy to Roman Catholicism from around 589 C.E., cementing the position of Latin due to the church’s inextricable links to Latin.

Arabic-speaking Moors conquered the most of the Iberian Peninsula from around 718 CE. During their occupation, many of the country's residents learned and eventually spoke it exclusively, but Vulgar Latin survived in certain northern kingdoms (such as Asturias) still occupied by Christians and among the Mozarabes (the Christians - Visigoths – remaining in al-Andalus under Moorish governance, but were allowed under Islamic law to retain their religion, due to also being “children of the book”). The church used exclusively Latin as language, and was also the font and protector of the written word in the education of the small elites and in church liturgy and correspondence. The first written documents in what is regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the ninth century.

Over the next several centuries, the Christian kingdoms of the north began a crusade called the Reconquista to take back the country and drive the Moors out. As they moved south, retaking the country as they went, they re-established themselves politically, religiously, and linguistically. Vulgar Latin once again became the dominant language of Iberia, especially the Castilian , which thus became a key factor in the history of Spanish. As the people in the southern regions began adopting Castilian, they however borrowed several words from Arabic. Today, modern Spanish has approximately 4,000 words with Arabic roots. Most of these words are related to war, agriculture, science and the home, like tambor (drum), alférez (ensign), acicates (spur), acequia (canal, drain), aljibe (cistern, reservoir), alcachofa (artichoke), alfalfa (alfalfa), algodón (cotton), alcoba (bedroom), azotea (flat roof), algoritmo (algorithm), alquimia (alchemy), alcohol (alcohol). The influence of Arabic on Spanish was only on the lexicon; Spanish did not incorporate any Arabic phonemes into its phonological system.

By the middle of the 13th century, Christians had reclaimed most of the Iberian Peninsula, with only one small Moorish realm remaining in the area of Granada, after the region of Murcia was re-conquered by the king of Castile and León, King Alfonso X, (who was called the learned king). With large parts of Spain now under his rule, Alfonso X began moving the country toward adopting a standardized language based on the Castilian dialect. He and his court of scholars adopted the city of Toledo, the old Visigoth capital and cultural centre in the central highlands, as the base of their activities. There, scholars wrote original works in Castilian and translated histories, chronicles, and scientific, legal, and literary works from other languages (principally Latin, Greek, and Arabic). Indeed, this historic effort of translation was a major vehicle for the dissemination of knowledge throughout ancient Western Europe. Alfonso X decreed that Castilian be used for all official documents and other administrative work. In 1469, another important event in Spanish history took place. Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile married, and united the two main kingdoms of the Peninsula under one monarchy. They also decreed Castilian to be the official language of the realm. This set in motion the creation of the Kingdom of Spain, and the beginning of the modern era in the region.

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Thus it was that some local versions of Vulgar Latin had evolved into modern Spanish, with its development initially centred on the north of the Iberian Peninsula, in an area defined by Álava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja, within the Kingdom of Castile. As explained, several features of these dialects are thought to have been brought later to the dialect spoken in the central city of Toledo. This distinctive dialect progressively spread south with the advance of the Reconquista. The written standard for this new language began to be developed in the cities of Toledo (13th to 16th centuries) and Madrid (from the 1570s). The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages, such as the Latin VĪTA > becoming the Spanish vida). Spanish is marked by the palatalization of the Latin double consonants NN and LL (thus Latin ANNUM > Spanish año, and Latin ANELLUM > Spanish anillo). The consonant written ⟨U⟩ or ⟨⟩ in Latin and pronounced [] in Classical Latin had probably "fortified" to a bilabial fricative /β/ in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish it merged with the consonant written ⟨b⟩. In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩.

Peculiar to Spanish was the mutation of Latin initial F- into h- whenever it was followed by a that did not diphthongize. The h-, still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language. This is the reason why there exists such spelling variants as Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish of "Ferdinand"), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish of "smith"), fierro and hierro (both Spanish of "iron"), and fondo and hondo (both Spanish of "deep", but fondo means "bottom" while hondo means "deep"); hacer (Spanish of "to make") is the root word of satisfacer (Spanish of "to satisfy"), and hecho ("made") is the root word of satisfecho (Spanish of "satisfied").

Latin Spanish Ladino Aragonese Asturian Galician Portuguese Catalan Occitan French Italian Romanian English

fijo (orij FILIUM hijo fillo fíu fillo filho fill filh/hilh fils figlio fiu 'son' o)

FACERE hacer fazer fer facer facer fazer fer far/faire/har orhèr faire fare face 'to do'

fèbre/frèbe/

FEBREM fiebre fiebre fiebre fiebre febre febre febre fièvre febbre febră 'fever' hrèbe herèbe)

FOCUM fuego fuego fuego fueu fogo fogo foc fuòc/fòc/huèc feu fuoco foc 'fire'

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Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages:

Latin Spanish Ladino Aragonese Asturian Galician Portuguese Catalan Occitan French Italian Romanian English

CLĀVEM llave clave clau llave chave chave clau clau clé chiave cheie 'key'

FLAMMA llama flama flama llama chama chama flama flama flamme fiamma flamă 'flame'

PLĒNUM lleno pleno plen llenu cheo cheio ple plen plein pieno plin 'plenty,full'

OCTŌ ocho ocho güeito ocho/oito oito oito vuit/huit uèch/uòch/uèit huit otto opt 'eight'

mucho muncho muito munchu moito muito 'much, MULTUM molt molt (arch.) moult (arch.) molto mult muy muy mui mui moi mui (arch.) a lot

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent a dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants, known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes, which resulted in the distinctive velar [x] pronunciation of the letter ⟨j⟩ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental [θ] ("th-sound") for the letter ⟨⟩ (and for ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩). The Gramática de la lengua castellana, written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, was the first grammar handbook written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I, she asked him what was the use of such a work. He answered that language is the instrument of empire – as he also wrote in his introduction to the grammar, dated August 18, 1492 "... language was always the companion of empire." Very importantly, Nebrija’s first dictum in his handbook was that should write (i.e., spell) as they speak, and speak as they write. Thanks in no small measure to this early stance, Spanish is today fortunate to have easy-to-learn spelling that closely follows the pronunciation of words. There are, understandably, variations—phonological, grammatical, and lexical—in the spoken Spanish of the various regions of Spain, as well as variations throughout the Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas. In Spain, northern dialects are popularly thought of as closer to the standard, although positive attitudes toward southern dialects have increased significantly in the last 50 years. Even so, the speech of Madrid, which has typically southern features such as yeísmo and s-aspiration, is the standard variety for use on radio and television, and is the variety that has most influenced the written standard for Spanish. There is, however, no notion that any variation from, for example, the Americas is “wrong”. Consequently, the DELE exams test comprehension of all kinds of Spanish accents. []

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