Old Spanish
| Old Spanish | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Spain |
| Era | 10th–15th centuries; continues as a liturgical language but with a modernized pronunciation. |
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Indo-European
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| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
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Linguist list
|
osp |
| Glottolog | olds1249 |
Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian (Spanish: castellano antiguo, romance castellano) or Medieval Spanish (Spanish: español medieval), is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the 10th century until roughly the beginning of the 15th century, before a consonantal readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern Spanish. The poem Cantar de Mio Cid (The Poem of the Cid), published around 1200, remains the best known and most extensive work of literature in Old Spanish.
The phonological system of Old Spanish was quite similar to that of other mediaeval Romance languages. Among the consonants, there were seven sibilants, including three sets of voiceless/voiced pairs:
This set of sounds is identical to that found in medieval Portuguese, and almost the same as the system present in the modern Mirandese language.
The Modern Spanish system evolved from the Old Spanish one through the following changes:
Changes 2–4 all occurred in a short period of time, around 1550–1600.
The Old Spanish spelling of the sibilants was identical to modern Portuguese spelling, which still reflects the medieval language; Spanish was respelled in 1815 to reflect the pronunciation.
Examples:
The Old Spanish origins of jeque and jerife reflect their Arabic origins, xeque from Arabic sheikh and xerife from Arabic sharif.
The letters ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩ still had distinct pronunciations; ⟨b⟩ still represented a stop consonant [b] in all positions, while ⟨v⟩ was likely pronounced as a voiced bilabial fricative [β] (although word-initially it may have been pronounced [b]). The use of ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩ in Old Spanish largely corresponded to their use in Modern Portuguese, which still distinguishes the two sounds (with the exception of Galician and some northern Portuguese dialects); the use of two phonemes also occurs in standard Valencian spoken in eastern Catalonia and some areas in southern Catalonia, Balearic dialect, as well as in Alguerese (except standard Catalan in eastern Catalonia). When Spanish spelling was changed in 1815, words with ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩ were respelled etymologically in order to match Latin spelling whenever possible.
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