History of Spanish Language

Kolodny

I'm going to attempt to put together a few bits and pieces here over a period of time about the history of the Spanish language (did a project a while ago as part of my course and found lots of interesting stuff). Hopefully it will be of some use to students and language fanatics. If anyone has anything to add, please do.

so, capítulo uno....

Where did the letter ñ come from?

Like nearly all languages, Spanish arrived at its current state over hundreds of years. It had its origins in Indo-European and then in Latin before it became a distinct language of its own. The eñe is the only letter of the Spanish alphabet that didn't come directly from Latin.

The ñ does not exist in Latin and is the only Spanish letter of Spanish origins. Beginning in about the 12th century, Spanish scribes (whose job it was to copy documents by hand) used the tilde placed over letters to indicate that a letter was doubled (so that, for example, nn became ñ and aa became ã). It’s not known why they used the tilde, except perhaps that it was quick to write, although it may be no coincidence that it is shaped vaguely like an N.

The tilde was used not only with the n but with other letters as well. The popularity of the tilde for other letters eventually waned, and by the 14th century, the ñ was the only place it was used. Its origins can be seen in a word such as año (year), as it comes from the Latin word annus with a double n.

As the phonetic nature of Spanish became solidified, the ñ came to be used for its sound, not just for words with an nn. A number of Spanish words, such as señal and campaña, that are English cognates use the ñ where English uses "gn," such as in "signal" and "campaign," respectively.

The Spanish ñ has been copied by two other languages that are spoken by minorities in Spain. It is used in Euskara, the Basque language, to represent approximately the same sound as it has in Spanish. It is also used sometimes in Galician, a language similar to Portuguese, although it is more common in Galician to use the combination nh (as does Portuguese) to represent the ñ sound.

Additionally, three centuries of Spanish colonial rule in the Phillipines led to the adoption of many Spanish words in the national language, Tagalog (also known as Pilipino or Filipino). The ñ is among the letters that have been added to the traditional 20 letters of the language. And while the ñ isn't part of the English alphabet, it frequently is used by careful writers when using adopted words such as jalapeño, piña colada or piñata and in the spelling of various personal and place names.

In Portuguese, the tilde is placed over vowels to indicate that the sound is nasalized. That use of the tilde has no apparent direct connection with the use of the tilde in Spanish.

Dun

Originally posted by Kolodny
The Spanish ñ has been copied by two other languages that are spoken by minorities in Spain. It is used in Euskara, the Basque language, to represent approximately the same sound as it has in Spanish. It is also used sometimes in Galician, a language similar to Portuguese, although it is more common in Galician to use the combination nh (as does Portuguese) to represent the ñ sound. [/B]

I found the ñ much, much more common than nh during my stay in Galicia. The nh is used much more by pro-independence reactionists. The language, although it is has it's roots with Portuguese and not Spanish, has a much more Spanish than Portuguese sound (although it has it's own peculiarities - x used to represent an (English) sh sound) and is in danger of assimilation into Spanish, the language of the cities, spoken much more in Galicia in the cities, especially Santiago and Vigo, than Galician. In fact, in four months spent in Vigo, I only heard Galician spoken a handful of times. I had to go out into the country to hear it spoken properly.

Since this is the Spanish board:

Descubrí que el ñ se muestra con mucha más frecuencia que el nh en el gallego. El nh se utiliza más o menos por los que quieren la independencia gallega. El idioma gallego, aunque tenga sus raices con la lengua portuguesa, tiene un gusto mucho más castellano que portugués (aunque tenga sus característicos propios como el uso del x para el sonido como el sh del ingés) y hay el problema que el gallego pueda ser asimilado en el castellano, idioma de las ciudades, sobre todo Santiago y Vigo. Tengo que decir que en los cuatro meses que pasaba yo en Vigo, solo hé oído hablado el gallego unas pocas veces. Tuve que ir al campo para oirlo.

De todas formas, gracias para eso poco de historía del idioma - es muy interesante.