Old Spanish

Old Spanish (, , ; Template:Langx), 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

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link

Consonants

Template:Harvcoltxt

		Labial	Dental	(Denti-)Alveolar	(Pre-)Palatal		Velar
Nasal		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Stop/Affricate	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link
Fricative	voiceless			Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
	voiced	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Lateral				Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Trill				Template:IPA link
Flap				Template:IPA link

( and were apico-alveolar.)

and

These were still distinct phonemes in Old Spanish, judging by the consistency with which the graphemes Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket were distinguished.Template:Efn 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
• Template:Efn 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

1. deaffricated to .Template:Efn
2. devoiced and merged into .Template:Efn
3. was retracted to .
4. (depending on dialect) merged into or fronted to .

Orthography

File:Aljamiado Quran RESC 25.jpg

Al-Fatiha with Spanish translations in Aljamiado script above each line of Arabic Quranic text.

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 Aljamía.

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

Graeco-Latin diagraphs

Old Spanish featured the digraphs Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr which were simplified to Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr in Modern Spanish. Examples include:

• (modern )
• (modern )
• (modern )
• (modern )

⟨y⟩

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

Sibilants

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

consonant	spelling	context
Template:IPAslink	Template:Angle bracket	any
	Template:Angle bracket	before Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket
	Template:Angle bracket	final
		before a voiceless consonant
Template:IPAslink		before a voiced consonant
		initial
		intervocalic
Template:IPAslink	Template:Angle bracket	intervocalic
	Template:Angle bracket	initial
		before a voiceless consonant
Template:IPAslink		before a voiced consonant
		intervocalic
Template:IPAslink	Template:Angle bracket	any
	Template:Angle bracketTemplate:Efn	final
Template:IPAslink		before a vowel
	Template:Angle bracket	before Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket
Template:IPAslink	Template:Angle bracket	any

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.Template:Examples

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

Latin	Old Spanish	Modern Spanish	Modern Portuguese

Sample text

The following is a sample from (lines 330–365), with abbreviations resolved, punctuation (the original has none), and some modernized letters. 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

Old Spanish	Modern Spanish	English Translation
		O glorious Lord, Father who art in Heaven,
		Thou madest Heaven and Earth, and on the third day the sea,
		Thou madest the stars and the Moon, and the Sun for warmth,
		Thou incarnatedst Thyself of the Blessed Mother Mary,
		In Bethlehem Thou appearedst, for it was Thy will,
		Shepherds glorified Thee, they gave Thee praise,
		Three kings of Arabia came to worship Thee,
		Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar; offered Thee
		Gold, frankincense, and myrrh, for it was Thy will.
		Thou savedst Jonah when he fell into the sea,
		Thou savedst Daniel from the lions in the terrible jail,
		Thou savedst Saint Sebastian in Rome,
		Thou savedst Saint Susan from the false charge,
		On Earth Thou walkedst thirty-two years, Spiritual Lord,
		Performing miracles, thus we have of which to speak,
		Of the water Thou madest wine and of the stone bread,
		Thou revivedst Lazarus, because it was Thy will,
		Thou leftest Thyself to be arrested by the Jews, where they call Mount Calvary,
		They placed Thee on the Cross, in the place called Golgotha,
		Two thieves with Thee, these of split paths,
		One is in Paradise, but the other did not enter there,
		Being on the Cross Thou didst a very great virtue,
		Longinus was blind ever he saw Thee,
		He gave Thee a blow with the lance in the broadside, where he left the blood,
		Running down the arm, the hands Thou hadst spread,
		Raised it up, as it led to Thy face,
		Opened their eyes, saw all parts,
		And believed in Thee then, thus saved them from evil.
		Thou revivedst in the tomb and went to Hell,
		For it was Thy will,
		Thou hast broken the doors and brought out the holy fathers.
		Thou art King of Kings and of all the world Father,
		I worship Thee and I believe in all Thy will,
		And I pray to Saint Peter to help with my prayer,
		For my Cid the Champion, that God nurse from evil,
		When we part today, that we are joined in this life or the next.

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.

External links

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

• Diccionario de la prosa castellana del rey Alfonso X (part of Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language)