Old Spanish
Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Medieval Spanish, refers to the varieties of Ibero-Romance spoken predominantly in Castile and environs during the Middle Ages. The earliest, longest, and most famous literary composition in Old Spanish is the Cantar de mio Cid.
Phonology
Vowels
Monophthongs
Diphthongs
Consonants
and
These were still distinct phonemes in Old Spanish, judging by the consistency with which the graphemes and were distinguished. Nevertheless, the two could be confused in consonant clusters or in word-initial position, perhaps after or a pause. and appear to have merged in word-initial position by about 1400 and in all other environments by the mid–late 16th century at the latest.At an archaic stage, the realizations of would have been approximately as follows:- before or
- before or
- or before
In later Old Spanish, surviving and / were modified to in urban speech, likely due to the influx of numerous French and Occitan speakers beginning in the twelfth century. Various words with were then borrowed into Spanish, leading to minimal pairs like “form” and “shoemaker's last”. The result was a new phoneme, distinct from.Possibly realized as after pauses or certain consonants.
Development of sibilants to modern Spanish
- deaffricated to.
- devoiced and merged into.
- was retracted to.
- merged into or fronted to.
Orthography
Scripts
Old Spanish was generally written in some variation of the Latin script. It was also sometimes written in Arabic script in a practice called Aljamía.These sounds were spelt and respectively. was often abbreviated to, which went on to become the normal spelling of in Modern Spanish.Graeco-Latin diagraphs
Old Spanish featured the digraphs,,, and which were simplified to,,, in Modern Spanish. Examples include:- christiano
- triumpho
- myrrha
- theatro
⟨y⟩
Sibilants
| consonant | spelling | context |
| any | ||
| before or | ||
| final | ||
| before a voiceless consonant | ||
| before a voiced consonant | ||
| initial | ||
| intervocalic | ||
| intervocalic | ||
| initial | ||
| before a voiceless consonant | ||
| before a voiced consonant | ||
| intervocalic | ||
| any | ||
| final | ||
| before a vowel | ||
| before or | ||
| any |
Morphology
In Old Spanish, perfect constructions of movement verbs, such as ir and venir, were formed using the auxiliary verb ser, as in Italian and French: Las mugieres son llegadas a Castiella was used instead of Las mujeres han llegado a Castilla.Possession was expressed with the verb aver, rather than tener: Pedro ha dos fijas was used instead of Pedro tiene dos hijas.
In the perfect tenses, the past participle often agreed with the gender and number of the direct object: María ha cantadas dos canciones was used instead of Modern Spanish María ha cantado dos canciones. However, that was inconsistent even in the earliest texts.
The prospective aspect was formed with the verb ir along with the verb in infinitive, with the difference that Modern Spanish includes the preposition a:
Personal pronouns and substantives were placed after the verb in any tense or mood unless a stressed word was before the verb.
The future and the conditional tenses were not yet fully grammaticalised as inflections; rather, they were still periphrastic formations of the verb aver in the present or imperfect indicative followed by the infinitive of a main verb. Pronouns, therefore, by the general placement rules, could be inserted between the main verb and the auxiliary in these periphrastic tenses, as still occurs with Portuguese :
When there was a stressed word before the verb, the pronouns would go before the verb: non gelo empeñar he por lo que fuere guisado.
Generally, an unstressed pronoun and a verb in simple sentences combined into one word. In a compound sentence, the pronoun was found in the beginning of the clause: la manol va besar = la mano le va a besar.
The future subjunctive was in common use but it is generally now found only in legal or solemn discourse and in the spoken language in some dialects, particularly in areas of Venezuela, to replace the imperfect subjunctive. It was used similarly to its Modern Portuguese counterpart, in place of the modern present subjunctive in a subordinate clause after si, cuando etc., when an event in the future is referenced: