Evolution of Spanish from Latin: Tonic Vowels

[@joavim]

As a child, one of the first things about language differences I noticed is that ie and ue diphtongs in Spanish corresponded with /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ in my first language, Catalan, which apparently mantained the Late Latin seven-vowel tonic system (but in some dialects reduced unstressed vowels to THREE vowels).

[@tenminutespanish]

It's interesting that you would make this observation as a child.

[@joavim]

@@tenminutespanish I seem to recall I wasn't the only one to notice this, and I think it was because, to our native Catalan ears, it was always funny/interesting to hear how non-native Catalan speakers from other parts of Spain (or from the Castilian-dominated cities) would say /porta/ instead of /pɔrta/ (door) or /deu/ instead of /dɛu/ (ten). Growing up bilingual, and the languages being similar, the contrast was obvious.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@joavim Very interesting. I love these sorts of observations. I speak Portuguese and Italian, so I understand something about comparing and contrasting Romance languages, but I'm not a native speaker, so I've not made such observations naturally. I wish I knew what it felt like to be a native speaker.

[@cabarete2003]

Excellent series. This is really great stuff.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thanks!

[@azarishiba2559]

As a native Spanish speaker, this video was awesome! Especially with the verbs. I always think that verbal conjugation irregularities have most of the time a pattern, and that it's not random. Really, there are few irregularities that are so savage ("ser" and "ir" being the kings of them), but the many other irregularities of verbs ara actually more predictable. And I think this doesn't happen only with Spanish. That being said, it's interesting how Portuguese (a language I studied a bit) is more regular in its verbal conjugation precisely because they conserved some Latin vowels.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you for the kind words and interesting observations.

[@ReiKakariki]

Your explanation from classical Latin to Spanish is very beautiful. Old Latin had more unstressed and stressed vowels than Classical Latin Old Latin: ā(continues), ă (rising tonic),a (unstressed). In this system there were 15 phonetic vowels. This scheme applies to all vowels. Classical Latin preserves only the continuous and unstressed vowels ā and a, in this scheme 10 phonetic vowels. In popular and Romance Latin, only unstressed vowels are preserved, leaving 5 vowels. When Romance languages are born from Romance they have a-unstressed, â-tonic circumflex, á-crase, á-acute, depending on the language you have 20 phonetic vowels. The Romance languages in terms of vowelization/vocalization only preserved from Latin the unstressed a and unstressed vowels, the ascending stressed ă and the continuous ā was lost. That's why, for a person to master the backseat à and the acute á well, as well as the vowels similar to it, the person must understand that the 2 are derived from the ascending tonic ă which is both backseed and acute at the same time. Latin's vowel scheme with 15 phonetic vowels is much easier than ours with 20 phonetic vowels, that's all. Looking from a linguistic angle, Romance languages are more complicated/complex than Old Latin in the use of vowel diacritics in vowel sounds known as vowelization/vocalization. This is already a case of linguistic complication and not improvement as the layman thinks. Hugs dear, beautiful explanation.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you for this detailed contribution, and thank you for the kind words.

[@somebodyelse9130]

Do you have a source saying that Old Latin had tones which Classical Latin lost? I'm doubtful, but if it's true, it'd be pretty interesting.

[@ReiKakariki]

Loeb Classical Library, 4 volumes on Latin, not my only source but in English and a great and deep source, of course I used many sources to talk about the numbers I mentioned. Consult this source, you will like it, it is physical but to this day it is reliable and useful and corrects incorrect virtual information. See you later. Bye.

[@bobthabuilda1525]

Hate that I’m late for this one. Awesome content as always!!

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you!

[@tylere.8436]

What's rather interesting about the integru example is in Classical Latin accentuation, the accent would have been in the first syllable (íntegrum) since the gr was interpreted as a single sound, but eventually the g was reanalyzed as part of the preceding syllable, so the accent shifted, them you get the g vocalized.

[@neversarium]

Now Portuguese looks like a nasalized old Castilian to me

[@ruedigernassauer]

Plus Portuguese underwent these changes: LL became CH (lluvia => chuvia), OLO became O (populus => povo), N between two vowel vanished (amenacer => ameacer) and end vowel E became I, a schwa or mute and end vowel O became U or mute (depending on the regional accent). Later in its development the K sound before spoken S ot T would vanish (actual => atual, action => ação). Some Portuguese words became so transformed by this process that a derivation goes back to Latin (chuvia => pluvial, o povo => popular) as in French.

[@bilbohob7179]

@@ruedigernassauer Pluvial and popular are not so transformed... they are "cultismos" , I mean, they are words borrowed directly from latin in recent age..

[@ruedigernassauer]

@@bilbohob7179 That´s what I wanted to express. And these "cultismos" are derivations of the Latin stem.

[@MarceloRodrigues1]

Actually if you look at most exemples given in this video and you know portuguese you'll see that most of the mutations right before modern Spanish correspond or are quite identical to early modern Portuguese so I would argue that it is more like Portuguese is a nasalized version of old castillian, which is also incorrect since they developed at the same time, but still it kind of help illustrate it.

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

If I could only give a thousand likes!

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you!

[@QuandaleDingle-ji2tj]

​@@tenminutespanishive been watching your videos and enjoy them but one question is about lets say i prefer 1 dialect in 1 aspect but want to learn another (like kinda mix them) how would natives react/what would they think

[@tenminutespanish]

@@QuandaleDingle-ji2tj Thank you for your kind words. The answer to your question is this: If the two dialects you're trying to mix are different from each other, your mixture would sound strange to them. Consider what it would sound like if a foreigner (who already speaks your native language with a foreign accent) decides to blend elements from two regional dialects of your language. His blended speech might be understandable to you, but it would sound strange. This is part of the reason I recommend to second-language learners that they try to speak in as neutral an accent as possible.

[@QuandaleDingle-ji2tj]

@@tenminutespanish what accent would be considered neutral?

[@tenminutespanish]

@QuandaleDingle-ji2tj There is no native dialect that is truly neutral. But there is a system of dialectally unmarked pronunciation features. I have a video on that topic here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e4uZl4mBqNiZY7c

[@tjerkharkema7378]

Love it! Have been looking for stuff like this for a long time. Fortunately I ran into it. Love speaking other languages (amongst them Spanish), and understanding (the evolution of) languages at a meta level globally rather then locally. Now I can commence studying linguistics. Thanks for your contribution &-). TJ

[@sal6695]

Damn this video is actually REALLY good

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you!

[@portt2569]

Very great stuff. Thank you and keep going!!

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you!

[@user-nh7my6gg5b]

In Castilian Spanish, 'ch' is pronounced like 'tsj' which makes the "ct -> it -> ch" make a bit more sense. The i palatalizes the t and then later that became ch

[@User-g2c7t]

Btw, a way to simplify the later latin vowel shift in your head would be: 1. The high-mid vowels that you find in Germanic languages but not in any romance language that I know disappear 2. Short i and u > e and o 3. Short e and o > to "open" e and o* *only when stressed If you look at the ipa vowel chart, each vowel simply lowers once

[@--julian_]

as a native spanish speaker i love this video. i have always wondered how latin changed to spanish

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you!

[@patwelsh5561]

Very interesting. Thank you for this detailed overview. One suggestion to help explain this would be to give some pronunciation examples for those of us who don’t know IPA.

[@OneAdam12Adam]

You are amazing. Thank you!

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you for your kind words

[@frankm.d1479]

another Banger!!🔥🔥

[@tenminutespanish]

Glad you liked it. Thank you.

[@driksarkar6675]

10:18 Is there evidence for the /l/ becoming /u/? How do we know it didn’t go directly to [i], which happened a lot in Italian (though in different positions e.g. Latin clārus to Italian chiaro)? 15:24 I think piden has one n. That said, I’ve always wondered where the e->i verbs came from, and I didn’t know that metaphony had happened at all in Spanish, so thank you!

[@tenminutespanish]

1) Yes, there's evidence. One line I can think of just off the top of my head is cognate words in other Romance languages, such as molto in Italian and muito in Portuguese. These demonstrate different stages in the process. 2) You're right about piden. That was a typo.

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

Also consider French where L turned into U, and then, perhaps producing a dipthong, then turned into an O sound. Falta/faute, al/au, caldo/chaud--in some cases Spanish went to the same extent otros/autres, oro--from Latin aurum.

[@josepheridu3322]

8:45 It seems Laite for Milk is close to the Portuguese word for milk.

[@boink800]

In French, it's just "lait" (pronounced "lay")

[@MrRhombus]

A KZbin with a series on how Latin became Spanish, don’t mind if I do 2:11 I always thought they the only differing quality was length, not “ATR”. I was actually surprised when I went to Wikipedia page for Latin about a week ago and saw the vowels written as seen shortly after the above timestamp. The source of this may have been how the seven vowels came from the five vowels were displayed in a video, iirc it was NativLang’s video on how Latin became French. Tbh I am a bit hesitant to accept it, because of Corsican. 2:49 Not to mention that English hasn’t had a short-long vowel distinction for about 500 years

[@2718281828459045236]

Well, that was surprisingly interesting :-)

[@tenminutespanish]

Thanks! Glad you liked it! I think the consonants are even more interesting. My next video will discuss some of the consonant changes from Latin to Spanish.

[@coreeclinton]

Did Vulgar Latin have the same allophones of voiced stops as Spanish? I thought that pattern (especially the /b/ and /v/ merger) was unique to Spanish, but I'd love to know how much of it was thought to be in Vulgar Latin! Very cool series by the way! I love that this channel is linguistically rigorous, while still being approachable enough that I can share it with friends.

[@tenminutespanish]

I'll do two or three videos on consonants, voiced stops will be in there. Short answer: Spanish voiced stops (and their approximant allophones) are different from their Vulgar Latin predecessors. And the complete loss of [v] by merger with /b/ is unique to Spanish, but confusion of [b] and [v] is found in other regional varieties of Vulgar Latin.

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

@@tenminutespanish Indeed, I believe some Italian dialects have b-v merger/conversion, and reportedly so did North African Romance (before its extinction in the second millenium). Oh, and btw, I believe Galician, Asturo-Leonese and to a certain Catalan/Valencian also have some sort of b-v merger, but just not clear if this is because of some earlier Romance source or because of influence of Castilian, or both.

[@jandeolive6007]

@@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc This also occurs in many flavours of Northern PT-Portuguese.🙂

[@joavim]

@@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc Catalan in Catalonia has betacism (b-v merger), but Valencian and the Balearic varieties don't, or at least didn't until recent influence by Spanish.

[@bilbohob7179]

@@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc Earlier romance source. Northern portuguese also merge b-v, as the old galcian-portguese language. The labiodental v in portuguese is a new addition...

[@Deep-Sarcasm]

Oh my god. Do you know how long it took to find something explaining the process of stem changing verbs existing! Thank you. You made it make sense.

[@tenminutespanish]

I'm so glad you got something from this video.

[@englishwithbatayneh5908]

Thank you so much ! that was great.

[@vanessals3080]

With the examples given (nocte> noite> noche, etc), it seems Portuguese and Galician kept a more archaic version of the words, closer to Latin... interesting

[@doultime3088]

That's amazing, greetings from argentina🇦🇷🇦🇷

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you!

[@mikicerise6250]

Sublime.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you so much!

[@Xarmutinha]

As a portuguese speaker this makes so much sense

[@tenminutespanish]

It's fun to compare with Portuguese.

[@Uulfinn]

Latin writers used the apex to mark long vowels on stone and on paper.

[@MarceloRodrigues1]

Quite interesting to see how Portuguese actually is still in the phase right before the developments that led to modern Spanish.

[@novikane14]

Hey love your videos. I was wondering if you could analyze my pronunciation. I started learning Spanish when i was 25 and have been learning for 3 and a half years now. I love practicing pronunciation its like one of the funnest things to do. People regularly say i sound like a second generation immigrant. But not native native native like grew up in Mexico native 😢 😭 I was wondering if you could help me figure out where i fall short. And where to go from here. Anytime i ask natives they say my accent is good don't worry about it so they are often not very helpful when really getting into the finer details of an accent.

[@tenminutespanish]

If you send me an audio recording of you reading out loud for 5 minutes, I'll listen to it and give you some pointers. I'm sorry, but I don't have the time to make you a video and post it for you. Here's my email. Please send your recording there: [e-mail]

[@bilbohob7179]

Probably you fail because you listen to 2n generation speakers and not to original ones... Change your listenings...

[@novikane14]

@@tenminutespanish Holy Crap! I didn't realize you replied to my comment. I must've missed the notification. I'll submit it later today when I get a chance. If you can still give me some pointers even though this is 10 months later lul. It would be greatly appreciated.

[@taylorsouthall739]

This should be called 'Evolution of Spanish from Latin: Portuguese'.

[@tenminutespanish]

Haha! True.

[@TheRealGhebs]

Interesting that most words, where spanish evolved further, didn't evolve in Portuguese.

[@tenminutespanish]

Yes, lots of the intermediate stages look like Italian and Portuguese words. Although Portuguese evolved further in other ways.

[@Xardas131]

There was a huge mistake in the video. Romans DID use Macromms while writing. Always.

[@Langwigcfijul]

They used apeces.

[@tenminutespanish]

The use of macrons (ˉ) and breves (˘) over vowels in Latin is a modern convention. These symbols are used in contemporary texts to indicate vowel length, which is important for understanding Latin pronunciation and meter in poetry. The Romans themselves did not use these diacritical marks. Instead, they relied on context and knowledge of the language to understand vowel length. The addition of these symbols is primarily a tool for students and scholars of Latin to aid in accurate pronunciation and interpretation of classical texts.

[@Xardas131]

@@tenminutespanish I tried to answer you but the answer was deleted. I also related my source. I don't know why the comment is deleted but when you look for the channel "polymathy" and apex or Macromms in Latin you will find it.

[@leocomerford]

@@Xardas131 The Polymathy video you’re thinking of doesn’t quite say that. What it says is that the Romans sometimes, but not at all consistently, used the apex to mark long vowels. Sometimes they instead used the “long I” character ( _I longa_ , ꟾ) for a long I.

[@neversarium]

How did Spanish lose Latin cases?

[@plilyargla5345]

Look at your timeline. Are you sure late proto-Romance lasted only 11 years?

[@tenminutespanish]

The timeline is entirely made up, not intended to represent real periods in Spanish linguistic history. "Late proto-romance" should sound like nonsense label. Please observe that the slide depicting the timeline accompanies a discussion of why such timelines are not realistic, accurate or useful.

[@lucaskanyodutra4177]

Português parece na verdade a fase anterior do castelhano...

[@tenminutespanish]

Obrigado pelo seu comentário. Concordo que o português muitas vezes se assemelha a uma fase anterior do castelhano, especialmente quando observamos as mudanças vocálicas do latim para o castelhano medieval. Esta fase intermediária realmente faz com que muitas palavras em português pareçam mais próximas de suas raízes latinas em comparação com suas contrapartes castelhanas.

[@bilbohob7179]

@@tenminutespanish Certo é se pronunciasen como están escritas... mais o portugués actual pronuncia doutro xeito en case que toda-las variantes...

[@tenminutespanish]

@@bilbohob7179 Obrigado pelo seu comentário. Eu sei um pouco de português, mas ainda estou aprendendo sobre a pronúncia e as variações regionais. A evolução da língua e suas variações são realmente fascinantes. Agradeço por compartilhar seu conhecimento sobre isso!

[@CuDoesThings]

This man got me interested in Spanish by just having the nicest English voice I’ve ever heard 😭 אַ שיינעם דאַנק, חבֿר!

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you. You're so kind.