What Happened To Spanish's F?

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SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Spainsh’s Phonetic Change: en.wikipedia.o...
Why Does Spanish Lack H?: www.quora.com/...
The Un-Mouthing Of Sounds: dannybate.com/...
Why F Starting Words Change To H In Spanish?: / how_the_fstarting_word...
F - H In Spanish: allthingslingu...
Spanish Words Starting With F: spanishvip.com...
Spanish Words Without F: www.eupedia.co...
History of Spanish Consonants: www.staff.ncl....
Old Spanish: encyclopedia.p...
A Brief History of Spanish: www.newsdle.co...
Fricative Consonants: thesoundofengl...
Voiceless Glottal Fricative: speechandheari...
Fuego’s origins: en.wiktionary....

[@NameExplain]

Yes. I wrote this entire video just to do that joke at the end.

[@tableslam]

understandable

[@YT-AleX-1337]

So hucking hunny

[@mingfanzhang8927]

😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

[@mingfanzhang4600]

😊

[@EJJunkill]

Love love LOVE that ending! But seriously, human languages cn be really messy. Things don't always behave logically...you did a great job of explaining the theories surrounding this weirdness!

[@fabianr.8544]

Just in case, for people who don't know, in Spanish the "H" is never pronounced, no matter where is located in the word, it never does the English "h" sound. and also "LL" is not pronounced as a single L, the sound is completely different.

[@MrFreakHeavy]

For more info on this... The H is mute in such a way that its only proper use is the "ch" sound (like in chest). If we were to replace ch with its own letter, say č or something else, the h in Spanish would be truly practically useless. It's only purpose would be to exist for ethimological reasons, and the language would not change even a single bit, if we removed it entirely from the alphabet at that point.

[@tchr9206]

I’ve definitely heard an H pronounced in Puerto Rico and I’ve even heard Dominicans say it too

[@BryanLu0]

"LL" makes a "Y" sound

[@luissantoyo27]

@@tchr9206The sound of the English letter H exists in Spanish. Usually represented in Spanish by the letter J.

[@violet_broregarde]

@@luissantoyo27 that's closer to the german ch, but you'll hear h sounds as a replacement for s. "las reglas" becoming "lah reglas" for instance @tchr9206 what did they say?

[@laserwolf65]

"H" is a silent letter. Hearing it pronounced so much makes me sad inside.

[@Menstral]

He just needed to insert "spelled like"

[@Real_Person_Not_A_Bot]

Silent letters are for losers

[@ThomasAndRandomRobloxGames]

yeah i hate *_H_* earing it

[@rlmartinez26]

It's very painful hearing him pronounce the H

[@Furienna]

But I would have pronounced the H too, because there is no silent H in my language.

[@Austin_Schulz]

0:27 Romanian gets left out yet again lol

[@porphyry17]

Romanian only has 25-30 million speakers. we do not pass the 60 million speakers treshhold. also, this is not just about daco-romans(daco-romanians). what about the illyro-romans(istro-romanians, dalmatians, panno-romanians, romini nigri) and thraco-romans(aromanians and lumnicera-romanians/megleno-romanians)? the eastern romance languages are forgotten because the slavs and magyars took their lands and/or diminished their culture. so no one cares for us. only the daco-romans managed to have their state survive to this day. and even here we have others as minorities in neighbouring states. not to say Republic of Moldova which separated from us with Russian(and Ukrainian) pressure.

[@jorgelotr3752]

@@porphyry17 LAst dalmatian died by stepping on a mine he himself had planted, or so I heard.

[@opinanlosjovenesrd3477]

​@@porphyry17I care, I am a Spanish speaker...

[@cactus6_05]

Well, some other languages too. Like Catalan or Sardinian.

[@jorgelotr3752]

@@cactus6_05 I think he meant from the map. All markers were set in approximate areas where you could argue they "cover" several languages, but there was no marker east enough to cover Romanian.

[@bescriva1]

2:58 The Spanish LL is not supposed to be pronounced like an L

[@LuDa-lf1xd]

Isn't supposed to sound like a "ye" either. Just saying, the yeismo is so extended that people treat it as the "correct spanish" , because Madrid (at least in Spain) , meanwhile other dialects are frowned upon. 🇪🇸💃

[@degstoll]

​​@@LuDa-lf1xd The LL in some regions is equal to the Y sound and in some others it's not. For example in Argentina and Uruguay it is pronounced like a SH or J in English and here in Catalonia we sometimes pronounce it in a weird way extending the tongue out.

[@Langwigcfijul]

@@LuDa-lf1xdBy that same logic, isn't supposed to sound like , but that's how Spanish in certain placed evolved. It is supposed to sound like in dialects where it does.

[@guidoylosfreaks]

​@@LuDa-lf1xdthe speakers make the language and not the other way around. LL is a palatal in every dialect.

[@antoniopera6909]

When I started to learn Spanish by myself, I thought "Yo me llamo" was pronounced as "Io me liamo" It was the original pronunciation, but it has changed. It's like the letter J, that was supposed to be an I.

[@LaggingGames]

there is no H *sound in this spot in Spanish, it's actually completely deleted at this point, the letter is silent. good video tho.

[@flazzorb]

If I'm not mistaken, it just marks a glotal stop now.

[@vytah]

​@@flazzorbNo, there are no glottal stops there. Words starting with H trigger vowel elision the same as words that start with a vowel letter

[@trufflefur]

@@flazzorb glotal stops appear if convenient for the clarity, there's no need for letters to indicate it, for example "Ella ama a Ana" all of the spaces could be pronounced with glottal stops. And meanwhile I'd prefer hearing the word "dehesa" with a glottal stop in the H, other more classic words like "alcohol" sound kinda cacophonic... so I myself cannot agree if making it silent or a glottal stop...

[@floptaxie68]

Halar y hediondo, algunas personas pronuncian la H

[@guidoylosfreaks]

​@@trufflefur No, that would be an English speaker butchering Spanish. A Spanish Native would pronounce ellamana.

[@Austin_Schulz]

"¿Donde está la F?" "Se hue."

[@galileor.cuevas9739]

"¿Dónde está *la* F?"

[@dumpling3309]

Se jue

[@GazilionPT]

It's not just F at the start of words. Although not so common, the same phenomenon also occurs with F in the middle of words: "Savings" (EN) = "Aforro" (PT) = "Ahorro" (ES) "Drowned" (EN) = "Afogado" (PT) = "Ahogado" (ES)

[@David_Palacios]

"Enclosure/Pasture" (EN) = "Defesa/Devesa" (PT) = "Dehesa" (ES)

[@ballsxan]

Mostly, if not all, those words were derivated (root+prefix) words, even back in Latin. So the initial a is a prefix.

[@GazilionPT]

Another one: "Mold" (EN) = "Mofo" (PT) = "Moho" (ES)

[@corbinhelt2782]

Dude, what the fuck? Why are you pronouncing the H?

[@tomsmithok]

Because he doesn’t look up how to pronounce foreign words before using them, this is a consistent problem with his videos

[@jordandino417]

🇫🇷: F 🇮🇹: F 🇵🇹: F 🇪🇸: H 🇫🇷🇮🇹🇵🇹: 😐 🇷🇴: Hello? ☹️

[@enzo.toscana]

😂

[@OrtegaDani885]

Very inconsistent video. I am sorry but it is very difficult to explain spanish history when you do not even know how it is pronounced. No sound is in “H” nowadays. It was sounding /h/ but this “dropped” very quickly. So, the video is teaching wrong facts 😅

[@ballsxan]

This topic is even difficult for language historians.

[@hlaweardlaighonaghidau6543]

It wasn't in rural accents in andalusia and the caribbean, very "campuno" in my opinion but people do speak like that

[@OrtegaDani885]

@@hlaweardlaighonaghidau6543 yeah, i am aware of that, all my family is from the south, but the point is that explaining spanish has to start from standard 😊

[@Random2]

The C with a little thingy beneath (called a cedille/cedilhe/cedilha) means the C should be pronounced SS. So, hortiSSo, instead of hortiKo.

[@tomkerruish2982]

Also, the name itself, cedilla, means 'little z' in Spanish.

[@tideghost]

Actually, since it’s Old Spanish, it would be pronounced like /ts/, so the word would’ve sounded like Ortitso at the time.

[@chrisXlr8r]

NOOOOO !! THE H IS SILENT !!! It's better to think of the H as a sort of vestigial consonant like the "k" in "know"

[@TitoHabif]

No in the old days. Ut used to have an exhaled sound. Just like in Latin.

[@arthemas8176]

​@@TitoHabif but never in Spanish, not even in medieval or old Spanish the h had sound

[@TitoHabif]

@@arthemas8176 Back in the Iberic Castilian era, vulgar old Castilian used to exhale the H and F equally. Now that exhaled sound in on J since XVI Century during the syllabic shift by the RAE.

[@smittoria]

It's a simple sound change that had some specific conditions. The exception "fuego" for example is because the f is followed by a consonantal sound (/fwerte/), whcih blocked the loss

[@Langwigcfijul]

Yes. Compare _fuiste_ to _huiste_. _Fuiste_ is followed by [w], but the U in _huiste_ is /u/.

[@ro_odge]

I heard there are some regions (I forgot which) that turned fuerte to huerte

[@hlaweardlaighonaghidau6543]

@@ro_odge rural regions at the foot of the andes if I am not mistaken

[@kittyprydekissme]

Sometimes, they couldn't decide whether to change the spelling or not and both versions survived, such as Fernando and Hernando.

[@LuDa-lf1xd]

Same with the surname Hernández and Fernández.

[@jorgelotr3752]

That's most likely dependent on the fact that by the time the names got their definitive forms, Asturleonese was still relatively widely used, but in decline. "Fernando" would be the Asturleonese form, while "Hernando" would be the Castilian proper form. The issue there was instead if the name should be shortened to "Hernán/Fernán" or not (it won the "not", but the short form still survives). Also, other Romance languages in the region kept the F, so any person named in those languages would use the F form, until it became common enough to make the leap.

[@jorgelotr3752]

@@LuDa-lf1xd it's not exactly like that. Before hey became hereditary, any "Fernández" would be the child of a "Fernando" and any "Hernández" of an "Hernando", no crossnaming. (PS. the "-ez" at the end, pronounced "-eth/-ayth", is a cognate of English "-'s", which was originally "-es").

[@hlaweardlaighonaghidau6543]

They're different last names coming from regional variations of the same name, a lot of languages are spoken within spain so names can get funky

[@yassineanassine7905]

🤯

[@NBK1122]

British vs. American pronunciation of foreign words. He said, "Reh-NAY-sahns," while I learned to say "REH-na-SAHNS."

[@wesverine5399]

The Spanish just don’t give a F.

[@Dan-hispano.]

Herrero. Ferretería. Ferretero. Ferroso. Los derivados en su gran mayoría conservan la raíz latina que en este caso se escribe con "F" de Ferrum (Hierro).

[@chobies5383]

​​@@Dan-hispano.Fierro too. Is it the same root as ferrofluid?

[@Dan-hispano.]

@@chobies5383 La palabra "Fierro" es usada para designar un arma de fuego acá en Colombia 🇨🇴 u otros metales, como los rieles del ferrocarril.

[@ff_crafter]

Poor Romanian

[@aalmi002]

Some corrections here. You need to get your Spanish pronunciations correct. I get that you’re a monolingual English speaker, but you have to make more of an effort to pronounce Spanish words correctly. Big point here, h is always silent in Spanish. Maybe that wasn’t that case hundreds of years ago, but it’s silent in Spanish now. Also, it’s not weird at all that Spanish h is silent since every other Romance language’s h letter is also silent like in French, Italian and so on. You just pretend the h isn’t there like in honda as you featured plus others like hola. You still need that h silent letter to differentiate words like hola and ola that are pronounced exactly the same, but mean totally different things. Hit up that Duolingo Spanish already. The green owl will appreciate it. 😂

[@luisorozco4370]

It goes beyond being silent in Italian, they completely did away with it: umano, onore, Ugo, orribile, etc.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

Yeah, he should make more effort if he wants to speak about languages. At least it would be just a 1sec google search to find the original way and try to mimic it instead of reading out non-enlish words with english pronunciation rules.

[@uranusneptun5239]

Whenever KZbinrs pronounce things so extremely wrong I wonder why they don't just use Google?! They also do this a lot in with place and people's names. It takes a few seconds just for you to hear how something is supposed to be spoken so you could at least try to replicate. Making a video is so much work but this is too much?!

[@grantorino2325]

Spanish evolved very idiosyncratically among the Romance languages. For one thing, _more than half of the words_ in it begin with A, C, D, E, or P!

[@josecarrales2842]

Patrick....the "H' is silent. 😆 It's ok....I've heard many of your countrymen call it "HAY-CHE" and some dialects of English drop it all together in regular speech. Your cool! Additionally, my grandparents often called metal tools "fierros" 🔧 and railroads "ferrocarriles." As we live in South Texas, this may be left over from pre-Colonial Spanish fossilized in the dialect.

[@anthea6669]

Fierros and ferrocarriles are words in standard Spanish also 🤷

[@aminabel4289]

It's normal in a lot of countries fierro is like tools and old and rusty iron is not like iron but similar

[@josecarrales2842]

@@aminabel4289 Just pointing this out to Patrick.

[@unairamos74]

There are many other remaining clues from ferro in modern castilian, like Ferrocarril, Ferretería (hardware store), Férrico (ferric), Ferroso, etc.

[@LuDa-lf1xd]

Ferrocarril se mantiene, pero el "fierro" ha ido variando el los países, por lo que he visto en la RAE.

[@cadr003]

What so many people in the comments here completely miss is that many rural places STILL pronounce the aspirated h in words that had them as f, while it is silent for words that never had it.

[@BryanLu0]

It's not the "proper" form though. If you teach people Spanish, you teach them that "h"s are silent

[@Andoresu96]

Much of the pronunciation was a mess, specially when he pronounced hollín as "who-lin" it really took me out. I doubt he pronounced an aspired H to reference some rural Spanish dialect, sounds way more like a Brit failing miserably to pronounce words in a language he's trying to explain a thing about

[@unoreversecard1o1o1o]

Give examples of places that do that. Also why would he use a rural accent from a very specific place to represent the Castillian language as a whole like what

[@cadr003]

@@unoreversecard1o1o1o Andalucian, Canarian, Caribbean, old New Mexican, and Southern Mexican dialects like Guerrero

[@hlaweardlaighonaghidau6543]

@@BryanLu0 there's no such thing as a proper version of a language, the RAE sets a written standard but they fervently encourage people to celebrate regional accents

There is a video of the Spanish linguist and youtuber Linguriosa talking about this issue. The evolution of the pronunciation is not towards a "H" pronounced as in English, but to a completely voiceless sound. Like in French, the Spanish H is totally voiceless. By the way, my name follows this evolution: Hernán (pronounced erNAN) is the evolution of Fernán (pronounced today ferNAN). Fernán is the short version of Fernando (pronounced ferNANdo, as Hernán is the short version of Hernando. All those names are still used in Spanish, and they originated the surnames Hernández (meaning "Hernando's Son") and Fernández ("Fernando's Son") respectively.

[@MaoRatto]

French and Voiceless? My ass it is very voiced.

[@aminabel4289]

Hi am from the dominican republic and here still use like slang the "H" still sounds like a "J " some examples ; 1. Hambre sounds like jambre 2. Hallar sounds like jallar 3. Hablador sounds like jablador 4. Hierba sounds like jierba 5. Hediondo sounds like jediondo 6. Hundir sounds like jundir 7.harto sounds like jarto This is only the slang that i remember and not every body speaks like that .

[@LuDa-lf1xd]

🤔 eso me recuerda a fierro. En Bolivia, o al menos en mi pueblo, le decimos fierro al hierro. ¿No será por la evolución paralela que ha hecho el español en los países?

[@jorgelotr3752]

If it's just slang, that also happens outside of DR. I don't know if it cycles, but at least during the boomer teenage era, it was quite common to do that. Totally unrelated, but similar in result, were all the people who mistook and still mistake the so called "dictation pronunciation" (an artificial pronunciation so that students don't misspell word when the teacher dictates a text, currently out of favour) with "proper pronunciation".

[@tableslam]

@@LuDa-lf1xd from what I've learned, a lot of Spanish slang and pronunciation differences in different countries are because of the influence of languages people were already speaking in the region before the Spanish arrived. In school the way I learned how to pronounce "cómo te llamas" had the LL making a Y sound, but my great uncle who lived in Puerto Rico said that in Puerto Rico they pronounce the LL like ZH (like imagine the SH sound but with voice added), so it sounded more like "cómo te zhamas". I always assumed this was from Taíno influence on Puerto Rican Spanish pronunciation. very interesting stuff, super cool to learn about

[@aminabel4289]

​@@jorgelotr3752Very interesting, thanks. Some of these words are more used than others but you can hear them from the elderly to children, it is more normal in rural and poorly educated people.

[@aminabel4289]

​@@tableslamI very much doubt that it was an influence of the Taínos since when the Spanish settled many had already died due to diseases in a range of between 20 to 50 years there were almost no Taínos left on the island of La Española and I am not sure about Puerto Rico but Most likely the same thing happened to them and after that period of time they spent about 300 years under Spanish control so I doubt that they had that much influence on the way of speaking but I am sure that the Andalusians did have a lot of influence from Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic as well as the people of the Canary Islands

[@Mercure250]

The way I understand it: - [f] became [h] as a regular sound change in Spanish (or Castilian), except before "ue" (hence "fuego") and "r" (hence "frente") ("Debuccalisation" refers to this. It means that a sound stops being articulated in the mouth. As you said, [h] is basically just a breath, there is no articulation in the mouth, but that doesn't mean there is no longer a sound there. If a sound gets completely deleted, then we call it elision, or even just deletion.) - [h] gets deleted altogether (classic Romance language thing). - Spanish borrows from Latin and gains new F's. The H in modern Spanish spelling is mostly there to highlight the history of the word, and it's not actually pronounced in Modern Spanish. Also, [ɸ] is a fricative, not an affricate.

[@Namse21]

8:38 If youre going to use the full govt name of h 'voiceless glottal fricative' then use the full govt name of f too lol 'voiceless labiodental fricative'

[@elcanaldelucas6187]

Just so no one gets confused. The H in spanish is silent. Except for some very specific dialects where only the H's that were also H's in latin are silent, and the ones that used to be F's are still pronounced.

[@unairamos74]

Two points to consider that you seem to forget in this video: 1. there was never a language called "spanish", because Spain as such didn't exist until just a few centiries ago. The original language the modern "spanish" comes from is CASTILIAN (castellano), the languages created in the Kingdom of Castilla, more than a thousand years ago. Thus, the old version was simply OLD CASTILIAN (castellano antiguo). 2. In the iberian peninsula, apart from castilian, there are other living languages like catalan, aranese, gallego (portuguese) and astur that never did the shift from F to H, therefore today those words starting with H in castilian are spelled with a starting F.

[@jinengi]

Well Aranese (as a dialect of Gascon) does not pronounce the latin F-. They aspirate it and pronounce it as /h/, like hèr - to do (unlike Spanish, which dropped the initial consonant)

[@hanleylopezescano5977]

Modern Spanish H is silent, but there are some Spanish dialects than pronounce it as the English H (some Puerto Rican, Andalusian, Cuban, etc). By the way there´s a theory that old Spanish used to be pronounced the H.

[@mfvieira89]

H is silent in Spanish (and Portuguese actually)

[@misamee75]

And Italian

[@Furienna]

And in French too often enough.

[@degstoll]

Pretty sure it is like that in all 44 Romance languages

[@Langwigcfijul]

@@degstoll It's pronounced in Romanian unless it's following C or G which case it's there to mark that they're to be pronounced /k/ and /g/.

[@degstoll]

@@Langwigcfijul Alright, thanks! I guess that has to do with Romania being surrounded by Slavic languages

[@dcassus]

Portuguese took the Latin -cl- and -fl- into -ch-. Clave = chave. Flama = chama. Also H in Portuguese doesn't have a sound on it's own. It's a silent letter and it just stuck around many words from Latin. But the nh and lh clusters make the same sound as ñ and ll in Spanish or gn in Italian (sorry, I don't know the other one in Italian).

[@jakubpociecha8819]

The digraph in Italian representing the same sound as 'lh' and 'll' is 'gl'

[@jorgelotr3752]

Just a tip: in Spanish, the H is silent. Just another tip: while not exactly correct, it would be better to use a soft G sound or a consonant Y sound for the LL. Third tip: Ç marks a sibilant and it would be more closely pronounced as "ts"; while it looks like a C with a tail, it comes in fact from a lunar sigma. And just a curiosity: some words that lost the initial F retain it in some specific cases in some Spanish variants (e.g. the Spanish word for "iron" is "hierro", but in some places, like Argentina, when it's used to mean "weapon" it becomes "fierro").

[@Ray_Vun]

that's not how ç is pronounced. when a c has a cedille, it's pronounced the same way as a double s. so hortiço sounds like hortisso

[@MaoRatto]

That makes me ticked beyond belief.

[@MaoRatto]

It makes me annoyed as it's not AKAI, but ASSAI.

[@RaulFelixS]

Before you the F out of here, notice that in some very few cases, for emphasis, the initial H kept its aspiration, and it is now represented by J, as in "joder".

[@eduardoserrao7372]

Joder!

[@NBK1122]

A side note: "Tough" ends with an H, but it sounds like it ends with an F.

[@Khloya69]

‘Ough’ is a fucked up set of letters in English, in dough it’s pronounced O, in thought it’s pronounced ‘or’.

[@mirnuky]

great vid, as always! just a fun thing in modern Spanish the H has no sound at all, so Hondo would be /ondo/. Only when it comes after C it's pronounced /tʃ/.And when i was in kindergarten I've learnt the alphabet considering CH a separate "letter" (A, B, C, CH, D, E, G, H...), so I'm guessing I'm showing my age right now haahaha

[@lesterstone8595]

H is always silent in Spanish. My guess is that uneducated speakers of Old Spanish used to drop the F sound in the same way that some British people drop the letter T in certain words but pronounce the T in others. Many Brits say pho-oh instead of photo but pronounce the T in other instances. A written silent H would be easier to explain than making a rule that F is sometimes silent in certain words. You may want to look into Antonio de Nebrija. He is the person who wrote the rules that standardized Spanish spelling and pronunciation.

[@leoni7649]

I always thought that PH became F in romance languages, but spanish dropped the P and was left just with the H

[@dogvom]

_H_ in Spanish is silent. _Hijo_ is pronounced "EE-ho". _Hola_ is pronounce "OH-la". As to where the Spanish "F"s went, I think they were all bought up by English people who just couldn't be bovvered to pronounce "TH".

[@Jsmith2024]

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "F word."

[@greenrobot5]

This was interesting, but I want to know when or how did many words with "o" in romance languages become "ue" in spanish

[@Pangui008]

as far as I remember, in Latin there were a long O and a short O. One of those (I don't remember which one) remained as 'o' in Spanish, and the other one changes to 'ue', but only if it's in the stressed syllable. That helps to understand some related words that change between 'ue' and 'o'; like fuego (fire) / fogata (campfire), contar (to count) / cuento (I count); muerte (death) / morir (to die); nuevo (new) / novedad (novelty)

[@greenrobot5]

@@Pangui008 cool

[@CityOfGravella]

Spain had to stop using the F when the World Wildlife Fund sued them. No, wait. That was the WWE.

[@jinengi]

This Spanish consonant shift followed 3 steps (in most dialects): from /f/ to /h/ and from /h/ to finally not pronouncing the letter at all. That is why the H in Spanish is mute. Explaining this fact while giving examples and pronouncing the /h/ "aspirated" is, besides a very guiri/gringo thing to do, plain wrong. Like, if you were talking about something else, it wouldn't matter that much, but when the 11 min video is about this topic it just makes no sense. Kindly, do better ♥️

[@ElTazaconvideos]

Although Catalan is quite close to Spanish, it has also kept the F :) Hacer / Fer Higo / Figa Hierro / Ferro Haba / Faba Harina / Farina Halcón / Falcó

[@degstoll]

True, this is because it's far closer to Occitan and a bit more with French that have also kept it.

[@unoreversecard1o1o1o]

Aragonese is even closer to Castilian and it does the same: Hacer / Fer Higo / Figo Hierro / Fierro Haba / Faba Harina / Farina Halcón / Falcón

[@unoreversecard1o1o1o]

Aragonese is from the Occitano-Romance subgroup of languages like Catalan and Occitan but it shares a lot of similarities with Astur-Leonese and Castilian

[@besacciaesteban]

Sometimes we use both. For example "hierro" means iron and "fierro" means rebar (or any solid steel bar).

[@danrobrish3664]

Interestingly, that Ф symbol you used is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, and it does make an F sound in some languages.

[@enzo.toscana]

Incredible Vid! Love ya work! As an Italian-American, who speaks, studies, and loves English, Italian, and Spanish, as well as studies Latin, the Romance Languages, and P.I.E., I greatly enjoyed and 'ppreciate this video. 'mmagine that, people dropping off the beginning letters or sounds of a word. I thought it was just a Neapolitan-Italian thing as well as an American thing but I guess it is also a Spanish thing. 😂

[@trufflefur]

I was reading an old spanish book from the XVI century and most of the affected words are already written with H, but still you can see that where the F remained there were two cases: one where it was written single, and antoher where it was written double. Double letter writting for signifying a different sound is something they also did for letter S; they wrote double S if they wanted to make the REAL S sound but if found alone it would be a Z as in zoo. _For example:_ *FORMA* and *CONFORME* (they were probably pronounced as an F and H mixed), but *AFFECTO* and *DIFFICVLTAD* (they probably used that double F for writting down that strong F sound different from the soft previous one)

[@LucasM-SC]

Great video, just some observations. - In spanish, and other romance languages, * H is a silent letter *, it does not make a sound, that sound you pronounced is made by the letter J (think Juan). 2:59 - In spanish, LL is pronounced as "y", while the "l" sound is made by one L, so instead of /ho-lin/, it would be /o-yin/. 4:45 - The Ç in Hortiço, which isn't used anymore in spanish, was pronounced as "ts", so the word should be spoken as /or-tee-tsoh/ (with a trill r). (This is just me being nitpicky, no one is expected to know this)

[@galileor.cuevas9739]

I'm not a professional linguist, but I'm a Mexican Spanish speaker with English as a second language who has taught English to children, so I have invested a little time onto studying the linguistic bases of both, Spanish and English, and something that is worth observing is that different provinces across Spain, as well as different Spanish speaking locations througout the world pronounce Spanish differently. Bilabial "F" has only disapeared in certain contexts, while it has adopted a labiodental form in others. Such is the case of "cultismos", where we conserve an older form of a word in coexistence with its modern pair, such as "hierro" (iron) and "fierro" (metal rod). Words that are inherited from Latin that originally had a labiodental "F" sound conserve it in Modern Spanish, such as "fuego", that wouldn't possiby become something as "huego". Other sources for labiodental "F" loan words are derived from other sister Romance Laguages (like Italian regional languages or Catalan; i.e. "famélico", straving), Greek (i.e. "filosofía", philosophy) or a variety of Andalusian Arabic (i.e. "marfil"; ivory)..

[@PeloquinDavid]

One of the anomalies I noted when I learned my Castillian is that some notable words that are built with "hacer" (just like the same words in other Romance languages do with their f-versions of the same original word) DO retain the "f". For example, the Castillian word for the French "satisfaire" - and its equivalent in Portuguese, Catalan, Italian and Romanian, all of which stay pretty close to the Latin "satisfacere" - is "satisfacer", NOT "satishacer".

[@AllanLimosin]

The Gascon language also changed /f/ to /h/ and is aspirated depending on the speakers. The word for son is “hilh” and fire is “huèc/hòc” for example.

[@Momo_Kawashima]

H in the chat for our spanish bros

[@_volder]

F→H was a reversal of a sound shift which had happened long before, in very early Latin. Proto-Indo-European's aspirated plosive sounds [*bʰ-*gʰ-*dʰ] stayed the same in Sanskrit, devoiced to [pʰ-kʰ-tʰ] in Greek, deäspirated to [*b-*g-*d] in Proto-Germanic, deäspirated to [b-g-d] in the middle of words or at the end of them in Latin, and did something a bit more complicated at the beginning of words in Latin. They usually wound up as F, but some words have H in either earlier Latin or some of its relatives (other "Italic" languages) that were spoken in other parts of Italy before Rome expanded. Given the aspirating element (_ʰ) in the PIE original and the existence of at least some known H-forms early in written history in one Italic language or another, it looks like all those word-starting Fs must have had a stage as H in Proto-Italic before they started getting written as F.

[@wendychavez5348]

Another slight oddity, which may or may not be unique to Spanish, is that "H" is usually silent. "Hacer" would be pronounced "AH-sair", and "Higo" is "EE-gou." I don't know if that's related to the disappearing Fs or not, though it is an interesting factoid. I love that you remind me to think about these things!

[@renatotobar8012]

As nice trivia, there are some words in Spanish that used to start with an F and now start with an H, but words derived from the originals keep the F. Like the word for "Smoke" is "Humo". But the word for "Smoking" is "Fumar". Or a few words who evolved in their meaning. Like the word for "Iron" which is "Hierro". So it used to be "Fierro", but that word now tends to be used for "Scraps".

[@sdspivey]

The Spanish F's were stolen by the Brits to use instead of TH.

[@ketorolac4276]

- L and LL are way different sounds... LL is not a long L... - H is always silent (unless it comes after a C), not like a J as shown in the video... -----> Then why is it there if it's silent? Just to remind us that there was an F there, a long time ago... - Ç is by no means like a K, but more like a Z...

[@mabryperry1829]

Another language where f shifted to h is Gascon, spoken in Southwestern France, and bordering the Basque country. They still pronounce the h sound

[@DoraEmon-xf8br]

İn Gascon too, we substitute a lot of the F at the begining of the words by an H. Hence we have : Horn, herra, haria, etc, instead of Forn, ferra, fari(n) a.

[@toasty9670]

king i know you know that spanish h is not pronounced. also one cool thing is that the romance languages have another chain that’s even longer than this with some words, where word start with P in french and italian, F in portuguese, and H in spanish

[@wendychavez5348]

One theory is that a former ruler of Spain (or parts of what is now Spain) spoke with a lisp. When my sister was in Spain in the 1980s, she was in a region where the lisp was heavy and mandatory; when she spoke our last name, the locals couldn't even understand her because the soft "C" and "Z" are both spoken as "Th," so if she didn't say "Cháveth" everyone would be confused. "Tháved? Záben? Cómo?" The couldn't understand it in writing if she didn't include the accent, either, which is why I started using the accent whenever possible, and often pronounce it with a lisped z at the end.

[@modmaker7617]

Latin: Hispania ENG 🇬🇧 Spain ESP 🇪🇸 España POL (my language) 🇵🇱 Hiszpania "hee-shpáh-ña" H is so silent it disappeared in the name of the country.

[@grantorino2325]

@@modmaker7617 MY 10TH-GRADE HISTORY TEACHER: Boys and girls, for this week's assignment, you will write an essay on the Polish city of Bydgoszcz during World War II. BOY IN MY CLASS: What was the name of the city before the war jumbled the letters?

[@JJ.McCorley]

This video has just made me realise that H is the default letter. Interestingly, this explains why so many sounds that aren't really words heavily feature H, like Ha, Hmmmmm, Huh?, Hiyah, hmph.

[@valerietaylor9615]

The letter "h" was pronounced in Classical Latin, but is silent in the Romance languages, though Italian often omits it.

[@yuramejimenez7494]

In México some of those words kept the "F" like you may listen both fierro/hierro (but not used in the same way always), flama/llama but ferretería and never herretería, hediondo/jediondo (from latin Foetibundus but "f" changes to "j" which in Spanish sounds like a hard English "H") also "Moho" or "mojo" from "mofo" or "moffo" again "h" sounds like Spanish "j".

[@peabody1976]

Your example of "fuego" is muddied by another sound development that happened from Vulgar Latin to Old Spanish: the Classical Latin vowel system had five short vowels and five long vowels (based on etymology and position, but not written in everyday texts). Vulgar Latin in Iberia (and some other places), reduced this system from ten vowels to seven, all short but with two pairs that differed in vowel "height": e and o each had "open" (lax, lower) forms and "close" (tense, higher) forms -- French, Italian, and Portuguese all had the same system and mostly kept these, with varying outcomes. Now, the system of what became Spanish "broke" the open forms into diphthongs, with open /e/ becoming /ie/ and open /o/ becoming /ue/. The /f/ sound of Vulgar Latin was not immune to change where broken /e/ was, but was halted by broken /o/. The word "focus" (meaning fire) became *fogu (cf. Portuguese "fogo"), then *fuegu which gave us "fuego". (To compare, the word "ferrus" (iron) became *ferru (cf. Portuguese "ferro"), then *fierru... then *hierru which gave us "hierro". This breaking of vowels only happened in older Spanish under vowel stress, which is why the word "fuego" (from "focus", stress on the o) has /f/ but "hogar" (from "focalis", stress on the a) has /h/. Also, when you mention "Renaissance" Latin, it infused Spanish with f/h doublets of the same origin/related words (hito/milestone vs. fijo/fixed; hierro/iron vs. ferro[carril]/railroad; heder/to stink vs. fétido/stinking).

[@deadtake2664]

0:16 Bro actually just forgot Romanian like that 💀

[@off_key88]

I find it interesting that this video that's focused on the "F" is narrated by someone with a "British" accent. In this accent, the words spelled with "TH" end up sounding like F!!! Fanks for this video!! It was very interesting! It's possible a similar thing happened to Spanish based on accents throughout the history of the changes...

[@Benito-lr8mz]

The H in Spanish not pronunce and proud exist in my country the really unique lamguage ( one of the most marvellous languages in Spain ) of Basque apart of the beatiful Spanish/ Castillian.

[@pierangelosaponaro2658]

It is interesting in Spanish that the h sound is made with a j or g when the g has e or i after.

[@juanguentenguea.gonzalez737]

H is a silent letter in spanish. You must ignore that sound and not worry about that letter.

[@jascrandom9855]

H is silent in spanish. I think Fuego kept its F because it would be confused with Juego or Huevo, and you ABSOLUTELY do not want to make that confusion. Its also easier to hear in battle as a command "HABRAN FUEGO! /OPEN FIRE!".

[@guillermolledowolkowicz7085]

Same with catalan: fer, fona, figa, ferrer, fong, furt

[@lovestarlightgiver2402]

The same.thing happened with Japanese. は was pronounced "pa" then "fa" and then "ha". In 私は (watashi ha), the "ha" is pronounced like "wa". My guess is that, while "fa" was transitioning to "ha", there were times when "fa" softened into "va" or "wa". In "Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam", written in 1603 by the Portuguese, the symbols はひふへほ (ha hi fu he ho) were written as fa, fi, fu, fe, fo. It was written that Japan was called "nifon", but in the modern day it would be pronounced as "nihon" now (although some say "nippon").

[@pierreabbat6157]

I know a word where 'f' turned into 'h' in French but not Spanish. The word is "hors" in French, "fuera" in Spanish, both meaning "out", from Latin "forīs". Not to be confused with the subjunctive "fuera", which doesn't exist in French, but "fuese" is "fusse" or "fût" in French.

[@JorgeOmarEC]

Making aside the fact of pronouncing the H, like I read on the comments of this videos, I can add something more about this rare H in our language. Yes, Spanish dropped the F sound many centuries ago from many old latin words, and then that sound, according to conventions from many researchers, the sound /f/ split in two branches: non sound and /h/ sound or /ɦ/, and for the writing form of last one it was used indistinctly f or h, using more and ultimately the second one; we are in the old and middle Spanish. Around the 16th century, beginning the Spanish Empire, the F and H sounds of those antique latin words had disappeared, but H still there graphically, mainly in official documents and churches writings. And then, when the Spanish orthography was regulated, it was established the regular use of H on those latin words, as a way to make sense of the latin Heir, as a way to stylized the writing system of the language. After that, we have the today's Spanish. Personally, it's more than ornament, and gives identity to the language, like our Ñ, although their inconvenience. Adding more, many words with inicial H were that way only for topographic means, like: Hombre (Man), that comes from Homus (if I remember well), adds that H for style; and Huevo (Egg), that comes from Ovus, evolved to be pronounced like /ˈweβo/, written in old font like VEVO, when the letters U and V were the same, and to avoid mispronunciation like /beβo/, it was then HVEVO. I hope this comment was a help, the matter is more extensive than these words. Btw, good videos, it's fine to talk about this subjects, I like it.

[@Ilkeyrion]

Imagine making this video not knowing the letter H is silent in Spanish...sorry bro

[@sebastianquirogagonzalez]

There are a lot of imprecisions in this video, which I understand as most of the sources for this phenomenon are in Spanish, and as mentioned in the video, a lot of the sources used come from unreliable places (i.e. Reddit, Quora, etc.). This is going to be a long comment since I want to correct the most important points; but if you speak Spanish, I highly recommend watching this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sIGweK2whb91h7s It's about the history of the letter H in Spanish, so naturally the F to H change topic is included. If you only care about this specific kind of H, you can skip to 8:02 and watch until 12:43. If you don't speak Spanish, I'll try to explain it in the best way I can through a KZbin comment. Firstly, many people have already said it, but I'll repeat it, nonetheless. The letter H in Spanish is almost never pronounced; the only exceptions are for the digraph CH (which is pronounced as the CH in words like "chair"), and for loanwords like "hamster" (Although in some Spanish-speaking regions, H's are pronounced like in English, but that's not the norm). Also, double L's in Spanish are never pronounced like a single one, they're pronounced somewhat closely to the English Y in words like "you". Having that out of the way, let's get into what the video got wrong. In the video, it's said that we don't actually know how F's were pronounced in Old Spanish, and while that's technically true, the same could be said about virtually any language in existence. The only way in which you can be 100% sure of a pronunciation is by listening to a native speaker, something rather impossible when it comes to "old versions" of languages. However, that doesn't mean that we can't make educated guesses on the phonetics of these languages. You can probably see where I'm going with this, and yes, F's were pronounced like F's in Old Spanish. If you're not convinced, think of it this way: based on a lot of research, we know that the F in Latin had the same pronunciation as it has in modern English, and we also know that that pronunciation is the current Spanish F pronunciation; so saying that Spanish lost this pronunciation (or started pronouncing it differently) and then somehow regained it, while not impossible, it's extremely unlikely. So, simply put, Spanish never lost the F sound. But then, how did those F's turn into H's? Well, some F's changed their pronunciation. It may sound weird, especially if you put the emphasis on some, how could only some F's change their sounds? To answer that, look at English's Great Vowel Shift; more precisely, take a look at this pair of words: "bread" and "read" (the present tense); looking at the way those two words are spelled you might think they rhyme, which could not be more wrong. These words used to be pronounced similarly, but each one took a different path in its evolution; you can think of Spanish F's like this, some stayed in their pronunciation, while others "shifted". And to what did they shift? an H sound. That's by far the most accepted theory, and why is it? Because this phenomenon still happens to this day; the word for strong in Spanish is "fuerte", and from where I'm from (Colombia, more specifically, a region in Colombia called Santander) it's a relatively common thing for the F in that word to be pronounced as an English H. This happens with a lot of other words that contain an F (although not necessarily with all), and in lots of other different places. In short, some Spanish F's started being pronounced like H's, and, eventually, people started replacing the F's for H's in writing, as they realised that they weren't pronouncing an F (remember, Spanish never lost the F sound, people were aware that they weren't pronouncing an F), and finally, since the H sound is easily dropped (as the video mentions), it fell silent over time. Lastly, I'd like to mention some fun facts; Spanish is not the only language that lost some F's, almost all romance languages experienced it. For example, the word for outside in French "dehors" comes from "de foris", and funnily enough, Spanish retained that F, "ad foras" to "afuera". While this phenomenon is indeed more generalised in Spanish, Spanish isn't the language that has lost the most F's; that place belongs to Occitan, a language spoken through the frontiers of Spain, France and Italy; and its territory also happens to border with the Basque Country, and consequently the Basque language, one of the possible candidates as to why people started pronouncing their F's differently. However, if you watched the video I linked, you probably already know why this theory is not widely accepted. I hope I could provide some insight into what's the consensus on this phenomenon and that everything was clear. My intention with this comment was never to humiliate the creator, I just wanted to give everyone interested in the topic a more "research-backed" take on this.

[@kissbencebarnabas316]

I always imagined this type of vowel changing happens because shouting it far away from a mountain is not a very stable form of communication.

[@chrischagnon5955]

You really missed the low hanging fruit of “F in the comments for F”

[@Maqueronte524]

segun el filologo Paco Alvarez, dice en su canal que en el castellano medieval la efe española antes de desaparecer, no era labiodenta,l sino bilabial y que su sonido era como una aspiracion.

[@Cherries_n_Stitches]

As a Native Spanish speaker, I loved this video. This is not something I had noticed about my own language. Which proves how sometimes you are so immersed in something that you stop even questioning altogether. However, just a feedback. A Spanish H is mute no exceptions. You kept sounding it as a english H. And it threw your pronunciation what was overall a decent pronunciation.

[@auldfouter8661]

Patrick making a video about disappearing Fs while inserting them everywhere in his own speech sounds a teenie bit funny to my Scots ears.

[@HayTatsuko]

Patrick, oh gosh... I am a Spanish student and I am going to implore you to learn a bit more about this language before doing another video on it. Lots of commenters here have pointed out some pretty basic, serious flaws. J = (usually) English "H" H = NEVER PRONOUNCED, it's always silent LL = a soft "Y" sound in Standard Spanish; think of the ending sound of "sea" R = the "DD" of "ladder" RR = the sound of a motor revving up, loose tongue against back of upper gum ridge, exhale ñ = the "ny" sound of "canyon" a = Always as in English "Father" e = Always as in English "Day" i = Always as in English "Bee" o = Always long "o", as in English "mote" u = Similar to the vowel in English "root" I'll leave the rest for you to discover on your own, if you wish!

[@josephang9927]

In Puerto Rican Spanish slang the final S is sometimes pronounced like /h/

[@guidoylosfreaks]

I mean there are certainly some people in rural areas pretty much everywhere Spanish is spoken that do pronounce /h/. It's very frowned upon by most of all the stiff grammarians and academics that set the rules of the Spanish language, though. But still, for most of us, except for the ch digraph, the letter h is silent almost always.

[@st.anselmsfire3547]

"H" is silent in Spanish. That's why they flipped the f to an h.

[@miewwcubing2570]

Bro called ɸ an affricate

[@vnquoctru]

Hearing the H actually being pronounced is so cursed 💀

[@DamianYerrick]

honda: sling ácura: expensive sling

[@rlmartinez26]

Please look up pronunciations for future videos it was hard hearing you pronounce the H and mispronounce LL

[@comentariosentreparentesis]

Gascon (Aranese) tends to change f to h as well

[@Dacex990]

I might not be spanish but ive finished spanish filology so ill write here what theyve taught us about the evolution of words from latin to modern castilian So about the basques My profesor thaught us that this isnt a theory but a fact that the basques influenced the labguage into removing F so we have now scilent H But why? How? Well to put it simply Back then the only people that could write were clergy And Castilla had many basques in their clergy that were the ones to write, translate and use the language That is why castillian is the only language in spain that lost F for H where for example aragonese did not I recomend you cheching something called Glosas Emilianenses which are basically notes of basque clergy next to latin text on how to pronounce some stuff or what the said thing is etc. So as much as i know and i have been taught its not a theory but a result of basques being castillian clergy back then.

[@unoreversecard1o1o1o]

I speak Castilian, Aragonese and Basque (yes my family is all over the Pyrenees) and it’s interesting to read this. Basque in fact does not have f, I never made that connection

[@unoreversecard1o1o1o]

Except for loan words like bufanda (scarf) or festa (party) as the video said ofc

[@edenariana8358]

Spanish stopped giving a F

[@andreasghb8074]

Obviously clueless about Spanish pronunciation. All h’s are silent, unless preceded by a C

[@MsElectricLover]

well, you got it ALL wrong with the pronunciation of the H in Spanish, there is NO aspiration sound with H. For instance, words like "hola" are pronounced as "ola", the verb "hacer" is pronounced as "acer". That aspiration sound that English speakers make in words like "hot" or "hello" or the onomatopoeia "hahaha" is represented by the letter J in Spanish. So we wouldn't laugh as "hahaha" we would do it as "jajajaja".

[@jorgelotr3752]

I believe the Basque theory is not right for three reasons: -Aragonese has had a lot more contact with Basque during its developing, and it keeps the Fs. -A couple Romance languages quite far from the Iberian peninsula have developed the same lack of Fs. -There are non-Romance languages, like Japanese, where the same effect has been attested (Japanese is halfway there, as the F sound in most dialects, including the official one, have been lost except before U and replaced with an H sound, while some dialects lost it there too and a couple of weird ones still keep all the Fs). No contact with Basque whatsoever.

[@AllanLimosin]

Gascon had a lot more contact for obvious reasons with Basque and dropped /f/s.

[@jorgelotr3752]

@@AllanLimosin Yeah, I'm just noting that of two languages that were spoken in the exact same area as Basque, only one dropped the sound, and we are blaming it for a neighbouring language dropping it when it had a larger contact with other Romance languages that didn'tdrop theirs (to the point it had even been importing extra words from them).

[@ikemoon127]

Not to join the choir of people telling you your pronunciation was entirely incorrect throughout the whole video, but you seriously ought to take this video down and remake it with proper pronunciation. It just makes it clear you didn't do proper research and makes this video kind of embarrassing tbh. A remake would do the video concept justice because it's hard to concentrate on what you're actually trying to say when your laughably anglicized version of Spanish is so distracting. Just saying. Interesting information nonetheless.

[@Giga-cat-c6b]

Make a video on why Spanish has the "ie" and "ue" diphthongs in places where it would be just "E" and "O" in other romance languages. Examples: Terra -->Tierra Forte --> Fuerte Nostra --> Nuestra Sete --> Siete