How many times have you witnessed flowers growing in your garden? From the moment you plant the seed until the instance you see the first blossom, you could track every step of the process. Unlike flowers, languages emerge as a result of very complex and long processes involving sociopolitical, economical, geographical, and cultural factors.
Geography, for instance, played an important role in the emergence of the Spanish language. Because of its convenient and strategic location, the Iberian Peninsula has been the home of many different groups of people throughout the course of history. All of these different groups have contributed in one way or another to the formation of the Spanish language. The Phoenicians (XI-V c. BC), the Celts (IX c. BC), the Greeks (VII-III c. BC), the Iberians (VI c. BC), the Carthaginian (III c. BC) were some of the early inhabitants of this territory. They left their trace in words such as perro, cerveza, toro, and conejo.
Indisputably, Romans were the most influential civilization to occupy the peninsula. Hispania, as they used to call the peninsula, was an important landmark for the Empire, since it was the birthplace of the emperor Octaviano-Augusto. Upon their arrival in the III century BC, the Romans brought the Latin language with them. They stayed until the V century AD. The prevalence of Latin over the other dialects spoken throughout the territories controlled by the Roman Empire gave shape to new spoken dialects called “romances.” Later, these “romances” would become national languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and Italian. Just as an example of how the Latin language left a mark on the romances is the Latin word manus (hand), transformed into mano (Spanish and Italian), mão (Portuguese), main (French), and mânã (Romanian).
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Shortly before the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Christian religion appeared and expanded throughout the Roman territories. During this time period, two important groups, the Visigoths and the Moors invaded the Peninsula. When the Moors arrived in 711 AD, they forced the majority of Visigoths to withdraw from the central and southern part of the peninsula, into the northern regions. From that moment, the peninsula was divided in two very different parts (north vs. central and south), in terms of culture, language, politics, and economics. While Arabic was spoken in the southern part of the peninsula, a variety of dialects—including early Castilian—emerged in the northern regions of the peninsula.
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The few Visigoths who remained in the middle and southern parts kept their culture, language, and religion: Catholicism. Catholics grew in number in the following years, giving rise to La Reconquista in 718 AD. The next eight centuries could be considered as long and prolonged years of peace with short periods of wars in between, in which the northern kingdoms slowly but steadily converted more territories to Christianity. Among the Catholics who lived within the Arab territory, the contact with the Arab culture made profound changes in their language, called mozárabe, but not in their beliefs nor traditions. The rest of the peninsula was also tremendously influenced by the Arab culture. Words such as aceite, albahaca, aceituna, aduana, alacrán, almohada, álgebra, algoritmo, café, espinaca, paraíso, and zanahoria are some examples of the more than four thousand words of Arabic roots as a proof of Arabic influence on the Spanish language.
The arts as well as the sciences benefited from this contact. The rest of Europe was immersed in one of the largest ages of obscurantism. Knowledge was the privilege of the Catholic elite, who divided the world in two: the Catholics and the pagans. Catholics were prohibited to learn from pagan authors like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Conversely, Arabs were eager to read and translate to Arabic the erudite Greeks.
Simultaneously, the northern part of the peninsula was divided into many kingdoms, of which Castilla was the most prestigious and powerful. Castilla headed La Reconquista[1]. Later alliances (through marriages) with the Kingdoms of Navarra and Aragón extended Castilian territories. The early Castilian dialect received the influence of the Arabs, who developed and spread it to rest of the peninsula, except for the territories of the Kingdom of Portugal. The first oral testimony of Castilian Spanish is El Cantar del Mio Cid (X c. AD), an epic poem that narrates how loyal hero Ruy Diaz de Vivar conquered territories from Arabs. In 1492, all territories that once belonged to Arabs were recovered for Christianity. From the reunification of the peninsula, Spain emerged as a nation united by government and language.
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Foto: Eduard Díaz i Puig CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 |
1492 was an important year for the new nation: Arabs were expelled from Spain, Spaniards started the conquest of American territories, and Antonio Nebrija published the first Spanish Grammar. In the preface of his book, Nebrija offers his work to the Kings as a weapon for gaining new souls for Christianity. The Spanish language and evangelization were intimately related in those days. The following century is called the Golden Age, because of the proliferation of Spanish authors: Cervantes, Góngora, Lope de Vega, Quevedo.
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Foto: Biblioteca de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias del Trabajo Universidad de Sevilla CC BY 2.0 |
Spaniards ruled American Colonies for more than three centuries. During that time, Spanish spread in America and received the influence of Native American languages: Taina, Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, among several others. Words such as huracán, hamaca, canoa, tabaco, chocolate, aguacate, tomate, alpaca, jaguar, and gaucho were introduced first to the Spanish language and then translated into other languages around the world. With time, the variety of Spanish spoken in the colonies differed in some aspects from the one spoken in the peninsula without impeding mutual understanding.
The Spanish language has more than one thousand years of history. Many people, languages and cultures have contributed to its enrichment. Today it is spoken by approximately 400 million speakers, which makes it the third most widely spoken language in the world.
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References:
- Cantarino, Vicente (1988). Civilización y cultura de España. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
- Online Etymology Dictionary
- Riegelhaupt, F., Carrasco, R.L., & Brandt, E. (2003). Spanish: A Language of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. In J. Reyhner, O. Trujillo, R. L. Carrasco, & L. Lockard (eds.) (2003). Nurturing Native Languages, pp. 129-140. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University.
- Spanish.About.com
Candela Citations
- Lesson 1 Esbozos culturales. Authored by: Open Learning Initiative. Provided by: Carnegie Mellon. Located at: https://oli.cmu.edu/jcourse/lms/students/syllabus.do?section=037856eb80020ca6007833f93f06cd13. Project: Spanish1. License: CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
- La Reconquista refers to the reconquest for Christianity of the territories held by the Arabs. It started in 719 AD and ended seven centuries later with the total expulsion of the Arabs from the Peninsula in 1492. ↵
