EVOLUTION & INFLUENCE OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE IN US LANGUAGE

EVOLUTION AND INFLUENCE OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE IN US ENGLISH First Section: The Evolution of the Spanish Language The evolution of the Spanish Language from the Fall of the Roman Empire From the linguistic point of view the Spanish Language was created from the Latin after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. In the middle of the Iberian Peninsula (called “Hispania” in Latin) there is a region named “Castilla”, or land of the Castles, where the Roman Legions had their main “castra” (or castle in Latin). From there in the Middle Ages the Reconquista (or “reconquest” from the Arabs) spread the Castellano language to all of Spain. In the Renaissance years of Cervantes, Calderon de la Barca and Lope de Vega the Castellano became the official language of the Kingdom of Spain. That is why the Castellano language is synonymous of Spanish language (Duran, 1981). The full romanization of the Iberian peninsula in the fifth century was clearly seen in the widespread use of the Latin in all the “Hispania” society, not only in the upper class as in Roman Britain. This is the main reason why in the middle ages a neo-Latin language developed in Spain, while in Britain the use of the Latin disappeared (even if many words remained in the new Anglo-Saxon language of the British isles). Indeed, some lexicology researchers (Patterson and Urrutibeheity) pinpoint that 81 % of the Spanish language originated directly from the Latin, with another 11 % indirectly through other neo-Latin languages (French, Italian and Portuguese). Arabic contributed more than 4000 terms to Spanish. Some of them have passed to our English (like “alcohol”, “algebra”, “lemon”) trough a process called “loanwording” (or to borrow words from a dominant language to another). There is even a small amount of German words (nearly one thousand) in the Spanish language, as a consequence of the few centuries of Visigoth rule of Spain. Finally, some dozen words in Spanish are originated from the old Greek and the Celtic. The Linguist experts agree that Spanish is fully a neo-Latin language in phonology, morphology and syntax (Fernandez Flores, 1965). As a final point, in the lexical analysis of Spanish, the 8 % of terms not originated from the Latin are borrowed from other languages in different periods of time in the last two thousand years. Spanish Lexicon The historical periods that saw the most rapid enlargement in the Spanish lexicon correspond to times in which Spain was experiencing important cultural development. According to Patterson and Urrutibeheity, the lexicon of the Spanish language is made of words 24 % “inherited” from the Vulgar Latin, 35 % “created” by different kinds of affixation, compounding and agglutination, and finally 45 % “borrowed” (or “loanworded”) from other languages. They even emphasize that borrowings were especially numerous during the fifteenth century (35 %), and the thirteenth (21 %), sixteenth (12 %) and seventeenth centuries(11 %). Thus, the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which correspond to the Renaissance and the transitional period immediately preceding it, contributed the majority (58%) of the loanwords. This explains the strong influence of the Italian Renaissance language in Spanish artistic and literary words (Achard & Kemmer, 2004). Indeed, a smaller percentage (21 %) were borrowed in the thirteenth century during the time of Alfonso el Sabio, a period of intense literary and intellectual activity in the Spain of the “Reconquista” against the Arabs. It was also during these same eras that the Spanish lexicon was increased by the largest number of “created” words: in the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries an astonishing 48% of the total. The remarkable similarity of the figures for both borrowing and creating of Spanish words is an example of cultural expansion resulting in lexical growth (Patterson & Urrutibeheity, 1975). During the Renaissance years there were the first interactions between the Spanish and the English languages, but were confined practically to a few literary and artistic words, often related to the Italian language (like “piano”). The strengths of the Spanish lexicon lie in its expressive power, richness of color and easy of understanding. Like English, and unlike French, Spanish possesses a great wealth of synonyms which provide means for subtlety and variety of expression. Often in the Spanish vocabulary coexist two terms with the same referent, one from Latin and another borrowed from another language (even neo-Latin), offering different shades of meaning and greater or lesser degrees of formality. This characteristic is similar in the English vocabulary, where practically every word can be expressed with two terms, one from German and another from Latin (e.g.: heaven and paradise, big and great, wealth and affluence, travel and voyage, etc.). Other lexicon nuances are derived from the flexibility in altering Spanish words through affixation, functional shift and compounding, processes which often serve to express attitudinal factors (Duran, 1981). In Spanish, as in German, words formed by composition are usually transparent in their meaning since the semantic values of their constituent parts are well known, thus facilitating the understanding of complex neologisms. English, in contrast, is more opaque in its non-Germanic words because they have been borrowed as wholes and the meanings of their components have become obscure.(Crystal, 1990). As a result of composition and inflection, Spanish words tend to be longer than their English equivalent and thus, as any translator knows, a page in English is likely to be four-fifths of a page in its Spanish version (Shores, 1972). Thus, an English person when writing a sentence or paragraph is very brief and precise, but a Spanish person will use plenty of redundancy and long phrases. For example, in an English article we can read “…...this is an easy - going behavior…..”, but in the language of Cervantes a Spanish writer will never translate the term “easy-going” in “…facil - andante….” (he will instead use a long group of words, like “……muy facil y con bastante movimiento…..”). Finally, some linguists indicate that this Spanish redundancy creates problems when dealing with mathematical, scientific and technical phrases, while the synthesis capacity of the English is considered by them as one of the main reasons of the worldwide growth of the Shakespeare language in the current “high-tech” century (Duran, 1981). The evolution of the Spanish Language after the Discovery of America After Columbus in 1492 discovered America for the Kings of Spain, the Spanish language was brought to the new discovered continent. Spain colonized most of the land between the actual British Columbia in Canada and the tip of South America in Chile and Argentina. The “Conquistadores” defeated big local empires (Inca, Maya, Aztec) and imposed their Spanish language to the indigenous Indian population (Washburn, 1975). The same was done by the British in North America, even if in smaller scale initially, because the French and the Portuguese in the century after the Columbus Discovery were more organized and powerful in their colonial expansion. Only at the end of the eighteenth century the English started to dominate North America (Fernandez Flores, 1965). Indeed, since the end of the fifteenth century, some languages from Western Europe were present in the New World. The English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese languages started to expand –together with the Spanish – inside America from the coastal areas. With the first European colonists came the new linguistic development of their languages. A mother country in all likelihood had several dialects, but speakers of these dialects in the new country erased differences which hinder easy understanding, in a process called “linguistic levelling” (Finegan, 1980). The result was often similar to the “standard” dialect of the time in the homeland, or in the most important areas from where came the initial colonization. But there were differences in the process, mainly in the Spanish empire. New World Spanish: Castilian or Andalusian? In the case of Spain, historians agree that in the sixteenth century the dialect from Castilla was the dominant in Spanish America, but after the seventeenth century the dominance passed to the Andalusian dialect of southern Spain (Menendez, 2003). This has created the celebrated “Great Polemic” among Hispanic linguists as to the origins of the Latin American Spanish: is it a Castilian or an Andalusian dialect? The resolution of this question has been vastly complicated by the fact that either conclusion can be objectively supported by data available to modern linguists. Scholars who believe that the Spanish of the New World has developed from the Andalusian emphasize the phonological resemblance between many varieties of the Latin American speech and that of southern Spain (like the “seseo” or special pronunciation of the “s”). They even cite the historical evidence that the poor south of Spain (Andalusia and Murcia) gave 49 % of the male emigration to colonial Latin America, and 68 % of the female. Indeed the relatively rich regions of north and central Spain sent only most of the upper class members of the burocracy to rule the American colonies. These convincing arguments are rebutted on equally good grounds by linguists who believe that the Latin American varieties of Spanish are of multiple rather than singular origin: They note that by the time of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, the Castilian had become officially recognized as the prestige dialect of Spain. They pinpoint that it was impossible for a form of speech like the Andalusian, viewed as regional rather than national, to have become dominant in all the Spanish colonies (Fernandez Flores, 1965) While the “anti-Andalucistas” admit that many varieties of Latin American Spanish are similar to the Andalusian dialect in pronunciation, they empathize that the phonology of the Mexican and Andean highlands shows great similarity to that of the Castilian. Accordingly, for this group of linguists there are two major categories of Latin American dialects: 1) those resembling Castilian and centered in the highlands of Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. 2) those similar to the Andalusian, and spoken by the populations living in the remaining coastal areas of the Spanish colonies (from the Caribbean to Argentina and Chile). This distribution of the New World Spanish into “highland” and “lowland” varieties is attributed by these linguists mainly to the following historical reasons: 1) when the Spaniards first undertook the conquest of America, they were attracted to lands such as Mexico and Peru that had riches and civilized (hence exploitable) populations to offer. 2) while in Europe, as a result of the Mediterranean trade, the great civilizations were coastal, in America the most advanced cultures (Aztec, Maya, Inca) had developed on the cool plateaus of the interior. Here it was that the sixteenth century “Conquistadores” (mainly from Castilla and surrounding areas) established the Spanish rule, and with it, their “lengua nacional”, the Castilian. 3) Hence the Castilian, as the official dialect of the government, was the language of the two great centers of the Hispanic colonial power, Mexico and Peru. 4) Toward the end of the sixteenth century, this situation was to change as domination over the American colonies began to pass into the hands of the Andalusians, when the Spanish Kings granted to the “Casa de Contratacion” in Seville (Andalusia) the privilege of administering the trade with the New World. 5) Under these circumstances, the Caribbean, daily visited by galleons from southern ports, soon became an Andalusian “lake”. South American coastal and lowland areas, hithero nelected by explorers and colonists, underwent vigorous development by the “Casa de Contratacion” throughout the seventeenth century. 6) In these areas, economically and culturally dominated by the Andalusians, the Andalusian dialect was implanted and prospered (Jones, 1979). Historians believe that nearly one million Spaniards moved to the Spanish American Colonies between the Columbus Discovery and the nineteenth century, mainly as farmers (developing the typical “Hacienda/Rancho” Latin American economy) and approximately 65 % of them were from Andalusia and the surrounding poor southern regions of Spain (Extremadura and Murcia). That is the main reason of the huge spread of the Andalusian dialect in the Spanish New World, which changed - in the distant areas of Argentina - even some basic Spanish grammar rules (e.g., the Spanish “tu” (you) is said “vos”, like in Latin). To tell the truth, in contemporary Florida it is possible to perceive the difficulty of Latin American immigrants in understanding well each other, when an immigrant from Mexico (with Castilian dialect) talks to an immigrant from Cuba or Puerto Rico (with Andalusian dialect). Transplanted Language Traits Since the end of the fifteenth century, several European languages have been “transplanted” to overseas colonies in America, where they either supplanted the languages of the native population or have continued to coexist with them until the present. These transplanted languages shared a number of traits similar in their evolution, like the cited leveling process. English spoken in colonial North America, for example, was similar to that of London, and the English colonists from the Yorkshire quickly stopped to use their own northern dialect in the New World (Finegan, 1980). The same happened in the Spanish colonies. In fact, Spanish speakers of the sixteenth century Latin America were not an homogeneus group but represented many social classes and many geographical areas in a mixture similar to that of Spain. Thus the prestige dialect continued to exercise the same pressure abroad as at home, while differences due to influence of local dialects such as Leonese or Aragonese tended to be quickly eliminated. In the seventeenth century, when the Andalusians became dominant in the New World, leveling continued, but on the basis of southern Spanish (the Andalusian dialect) rather than Castillian, producing a second manner of speaking. Another trait shared by transplanted languages is their proclivity to retain traditional forms abandoned in their land of origin (Finegan, 1980). In American English, for example, pronunciations such as “heist” (hoist) and “pizen” (poison), once acceptable in English, are widespread in rustic usage. Similar to these are “chaw” (chew), “critter” (creature), and “tetched” (touched). Morphological maintenance can be seen in “holp” (help) and “hit” (it). Similarly, Latin American Spanish exhibits some archaic features (Duran, 1981). Phonologically, it has been seen to resemble sixteenth and seventeenth century usage more closely than it does that of contemporary Spain. Morphologically, the single most important archaism, used instead of “tu” (you) mainly in Argentina, is “vos”, the intermediate level of formality in the Renaissance. In Argentina and Uruguay, alongside “vos” are its accompanying verb forms such as “tenes, decis, sos” and the imperatives “anda’, pone’, veni’”, used instead of “tienes, dices, eres” and “ve, pon, ven”. Another trait is the common use in popular speech all around Latin America of an “s” added to the second person singular of the preterite: “vistes” (viste), “dijistes” (dijiste), “hicistes” (hiciste). Lexically, the New World Spanish has an abundance of terms and meanings from earlier centuries, no longer used in contemporary Spain with their original senses. Some are “lindo” (bonito), “liviano” (lijero) and “fierro” (hierro). A peculiar trait of transplanted languages is their adaptation to the new environments. Colonists find themselves confronted with the need to talk about new fauna and flora, new artifacts, and new social and economic situations (Finegan, 1980). Perhaps the most usual solution to this problem is the adoption of the concept together with its name in its culture of origin. For example, English settlers in North America were thus enabled to speak of strange animals such as “raccoons”, weapons such as “tomahawks” and shoes such as “moccasins” (Hendrickson, 1986). Likewise, Latin American Spanish has borrowed from many indigenous languages words for plants and animals such as “maiz”, “patata” and “opossum”, and even words like “cacique” (Indian chief). A final trait that Spanish shares with other colonial languages is the inevitable change due to isolation from the original source (Washburn, 1975). An analogy can be drawn from the break-up of the Latin into a number of Romance dialects after the unifying force of the Roman Empire had disappeared. Every language is subject to drift, and when a group of speakers is cut off from a linguistic mainland, this tendency is increased. For example, a Briton can immediately identify a speaker of English from the United States by his accent, and so can do a Spaniard with a Mexican (Reed, 1977). Lexicon also develops in new directions according to local cultural demands. So, a Briton had little need to refer to raccoons and to a Spaniard the size of a horse is irrelevant, but to an Argentine gaucho depending upon his horse for his livelihood and social prestige, the characteristics of his mount are extremely important. That is why in Argentine Spanish more than 500 terms have developed to describe the horse in the minutest detail. Furthering the differentiation in lexicon was the slow pace of communication between Europe and its colonies before the twentieth century. The time to travel across the Atlantic between Europe and North America was nearly two months in the sixteenth century, one month during Napoleon times, ten days at the beginning of the twentieth century and only a few hours in our jet era. There is some evidence that modern technology may not only arrest but perhaps even reverse this type of linguistic diversification, based on time and distance. The Spanish of Southwestern United States From the Columbus times to the nineteenth century the Spanish was the official language of most of the actual South and West of the United States. The Empire of Spain in North America stretched from British Columbia in Canada to the Mississippi river and Florida. In 1763 Spain received the Louisiana Territory from France, but after a few years Spain gave Florida to the USA. As a consequence Florida, where the Spaniards built in 1565 the first town of North America, St. Augustine, was totally assimilated in the English speaking mainstream and the Andalusian dialect spoken there was completely lost during the nineteenth century (Jones, 1979). On the other side of the Mississipi the Castilian dialect of the “highlands” of Mexico has survived –for historical reasons- and is spoken continuously to our days in the Mexico bordering areas of the Soutwestern USA (Ferguson & Shirley, 1982). The Spanish speaking population north of the Rio Grande is made mostly of mestizo descendants from the Spanish colonial times. That is the main reason of the huge amount of Amerindian words in their Castilian dialect (Washburn, 1975). It has been calculated that only thirty thousand Spaniards emigrated from Spain to settle in California, and the areas north of the Rio Grande, during the centuries of the Spanish Empire. They were able to create a political entity that survived only under the leadership of Spain and later of Mexico, but that was unable to remain independent from the pressure of the growing English speaking United States (Fernandez Flores, 1965). Spanish has been spoken in the region which is now the southwestern United States since the sixteenth century. The first Spaniards here were Cabeza de Vaca and his men in 1536, who explored the area to find the famous “El Dorado”. There were no permanent settlers, however, until 1598 when Juan de Onate conquered the territory of actual Texas and claimed it for Spain. Santa Fe (New Mexico) was founded twelve years later and in 1630 had a population of 250 Spaniards, 50 mestizos and 700 indians. Texas was organized as a Spanish political entity only in 1718 and California in 1767. In 1845 Texas was admitted to the United States, provoking Mexico and leading to the Mexican American war. This conflict ended with the annexation to the USA in 1948 of the entire Southwest north of the Rio Grande. American settlers, welcome for the most part, flocked by the thousands to the newly won lands, that quickly were Americanized in culture and language. Improved economic opportunities in the Southwest drew immigrants from Mexico in the following years, and with the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) more immigrants arrived, refugees from the ranks of armies defeated in recent battles (Stavans, 2003). Most of these Mexican immigrants were poor and uneducated mestizo farmers from ranches and small towns of northern Mexico. A smaller group, however, consisted of highly educated professionals such as physicians, lawyers and journalists who escaped from political persecution (Fernandez Flores, 1965). Many of the larger and less privileged group, hoping for better economic opportunities, assimilated the English culture and language, losing their Spanish by the third generation. But most of the second group, more educated, maintained at home their Spanish culture and language to our days, speaking English only at work (Menendez, 2003). The quality of the Spanish used by Mexican Americans has varied considerably during the twentieth century. Many immigrants were naturally Spanish-dominant, but the speech of their following generations has become increasingly anglicized before WWII. This trend was reinforced by laws in several states forbidding the use of anything but English in the American Public Schools, but after 1950 the subordinate status of Spanish in the Southwest started to change (Finegan, 1980). In the 1950s the “Chicano” movement started to demand equal status for Spanish speaking minorities in the USA. The young Mexican people of this organization were aware of their social and political situation and of their potential for power. With this perception of their identity came a rebirth of pride in the Spanish language, more interest in Standard Spanish and its use as a medium for writing, both literary and political, in support of the Mexican people in the Southwest (Varo, 1971). As a result, the quality of Mexican American Spanish is today considerably higher than it was at its low ebb in the 1940s. The kind of Spanish spoken in the Southwest is in general homogeneous and like rustic Spanish elsewhere in Latin America. As all the Castilian speaking areas of “highland” Spanish, it is characterized by “seseo” (use of the “s”) and “yeismo” (use of “y” instead of the Spanish “ll”). Also general is the use of methatesis (or change of letters in a word): for example “probe” for “pobre” (poor) or “suidad” for “ciudad” (city). Particular to New Mexico is the methatesis “pader” for pared (wall). Finally, there is even a small difference in pronunciation in the Spanish of Colorado (fully “loanworded” with English words) from the one in the bordering Mexico areas.