(c l a v i s), llorar (plorare); the tendency of the modern language
is, as in Catalan, to reduce ll to y; thus one readily hears yeno
(plenum). N mouillée (ñ) corresponds to the Lat. nn, mn, nj,
and sometimes to initial n : año (a n n u m), dano (damnum), ñudo
(n o d u m). Passing to the dentals, except as an initial, t in words
that are popularly current and belong to the old stock of the language,
can only be derived from Lat. tt, pt, and sometimes ct, as in meter
(m i t t e r e), catar (c a p t a r e), punto (p u n c t u m); but it is
to be observed that the habitual mode of representing ct in normal
Castilian is by ch (pron. tch), as in derecho (directum), pecho
(pectus), so that we may take those words in which t alone
represents ct as secondary forms of learned words; thus we have
bendito, otubre, santo as secondary forms of the learned words
bendicto, octubre, sancto, alongside of the old popular forms bendicho,
ochubre, sancho. D corresponds in Castilian to Latin t between
vowels, or t before r : amado (a m a t u s), padre (p a t r e m). At the
present day the d of the suffixes ado, ido is no longer pronounced
throughout the whole extent of the domain, and the same holds
good also of the final d : salú, poné, for salud, poned (from s a l u t e m,
p o n i t e). Sometimes d takes the interdental sound of z (English
th), or is changed into l; witness the two pronunciations of the
name of the capital—Madriz and Madril (adj. Madrileño). The
study of the spirants, c, z, s; g, j is made a very delicate one by the
circumstance that the interdental pronunciation of c, z on the one
hand, and the guttural pronunciation of g, j on the other, are of
comparatively recent date, and convey no notion of the value of
these letters before the 17th century. It is admitted, not without
reason, that the spirants c, z, which at present represent but one
interdental sound (a lisped s, or a sound between s and Eng. th in
thing), had down till about the middle of the 16th century the
voiceless sound ts and the voiced sound dz respectively, and that
in like manner the palatal spirants g, j, x, before assuming the
uniform pronunciation of the guttural spirant ( = Germ. ch in
Buck), had previously represented the voiced sound of ž (Fr. j)
and the voiceless sound of š (Fr. ch), which are still found in Portuguese
and in the Castilian dialects of the north-west. The substitution
of these interdental and guttural sounds for the surd and sonant
spirants respectively did certainly not take place simultaneously,
but the vacillations of the old orthography, and afterwards the
decision of the Spanish Academy, which suppressed x (=š x was
retained for cs) and allows only c and g before e and i, z and j before
a, o, u, make it impossible for us to follow, with the help of the written
texts, the course of the transformation. S now has the voiceless
sound even between vowels: casa (pronounced cassa); final s readily
falls away, especially before liquids: todo los for todos los, vamono
for vamos nos. The principal sources of j (g) are—Lat. j and g
before e and i (juego, j o c u m; gente, g e n t e m) ; Lat. initial
s (jabon, s a p o n e m) ; Lat. x (cojo, c o x u m) ; Ij, cl (consejo, consilium;
ojo, o c'l u m). The sources of z (c) are Lat. ce, cj, tj, s
(cielo, caelum; calza, c a l c e a ; razon, rationem; zampona,
symphonia). As regards the spirants f and v, it is to be observed
that at the beginning of a word f has in many instances been
replaced by the aspirated h (afterwards silent), while in others no
less current among the people the transformation has not taken
place; thus we have hijo (f i l i u m) alongside of fiesta (f e s t a). In
some cases the f has been preserved in order to avoid confusion that
might arise from identity of sound : the f in fiel (f i d e l i s) has been
kept for the sake of distinction from hiel (f e l). As for v, it has a
marked tendency to become confounded, especially as an initial
letter, with the sonant explosive b; Joseph Scaliger’s pun—bibere
est vivere—is applicable to the Castilians as well as to the Gascons.
H is now nothing more than a graphic sign, except in Andalusia,
where the aspirate sound represented by it comes very near j.
Words beginning in hue, where the h, not etymologically derived,
marks the inseparable aspiration of the initial diphthong ue, are
readily pronounced giie throughout almost the whole extent of the
domain: güele for huele (o l e t); güeso for hueso (o s). This güe
extends also to words beginning with bue : güeno for bueno (bonum).
Inflexion.—There is no trace of declension either in Castilian or in Portuguese. Some nominative forms—Dios (anciently Dios, and in the Castilian of the Jews Dio), Carlos, Marcos, sastre (s á r t o r)—have been adopted instead of forms derived from the accusative, but the vulgar Latin of the Peninsula in no instance presents two forms (subjective and objective case) of the same substantive. The article is derived from i l l e, as it is almost everywhere throughout the Romance regions : el, la, and a neuter lo ; los, las. The plural of the first and second personal pronoun has in the modern language taken a composite form—nosotros, vosotros—which has been imitated in Catalan. Quien, the interrogative pronoun which has taken the place of the old qui, seems to come from q u e m.
Conjugation.—The conjugation of Castilian (and Portuguese) derives a peculiar interest from thf archaic features which it retains. The vulgar Latin of Spain has kept the pluperfect indicative, still in current use as a secondary form of the conditional (cantdra, vendiera, partiera), and, what is more remarkable still, as not occurring anywhere else, the future perfect (cantdre, vendiere, pcrtiere, formerly cantdro, vendiero, partiero). The Latin future has been replaced, as every ft-here, by the perirphasis (cantare habeo), but it is worth noticing that in certain old text; of the 13th century, and in the popular songs of a comparatively ancient date which have been preserved in Asturias, the auxiliary can still precede the infinitive (habeo cantare), as with the Latin writers of the decadence : “Mucho de mayor precio a seer el tu manto Que non sera el nuestro” (Berceo, 5. Laur., str. 70), where a seer (h a b e t sederc) corresponds exactly to sera (s e d e r e habet). The vulgar Latin of the Peninsula, moreover, has preserved the 2nd pers. pi. of the imperative (cantad, vended, partid), which has disappeared from all the other Romance languages. Another special feature of Castilian-Portuguese is the complete absence of the form of conjugation known as inchoative (intercalation, in the present tense, of the syllable isc or esc between the radical and the inflexion), although in all the other tenses, except the present, Spanish shows a tendency to lay the accent upon the same syllable in all the six persons, which was the object aimed at by the inchoative form. Castilian displaces the accent on the 1st and 2nd pers. pi. of the imperfect (canldbamos, cantdbais), of the pluperfect indicative (cantdramos, cantdrais), and of the imperfect subjunctive (cantdsemos, cantdseis) ; possibly the impulse to this was given by the forms of future perfect cantdremos, cantdreis (cantarimus, cantaritis). The 2nd persons plural were formerly (except in the perfect) -odes, -edes, -ides; it was only in the course of the 16th century that they got reduced, by the falling away of d, to ais, eis and ts. The verb e s s e r e has been mixed, not as in the other Romance languages with stare, but with s e d e r e, as is proved by older forms seer, siedes, sieden, seyendo, obviously derived from s e d e r e, and which have in the texts sometimes the meaning of " to be seated," sometimes that of " to be," and sometimes both. In old Latin charters also s e d e r e is frequently met with in the sense of esse: e.g. " sedeat istum meum donativum quietum et securum " (anno 1134), where sedeat = sit. The 2nd pers. sing, of the present of ser is eres, which is best explained as borrowed from the imperfect (eras), this tense being often used in Old Spanish with the meaning of the present ; alongside of eres one finds (but only in old documents or in dialects) sos, formed like sois (2nd pers. pl.) upon somos. The accentuation in the inflexion of perfects in the conjugation called strong, like hubieron hizieron, which correspond to habuerunt, fecerunt (while in the other Romance languages the Latin type is erunt: Fr. eurent, firent) , may be regarded as truly etymological, or rather as a result of the assimilation of these perfects to the perfects known as weak (amdron), for there are dialectic forms having the accent on the radical, such as dixon, hlzon. The past participle of verbs in er was formerly udo (u t u s) in most cases ; at present ido serves for all verbs in er and ir, except some ten or twelve in which the participle has retained the Latin form accented on the radical : dicho, hecho, visto, &c. It ought to be added that the past participle in normal Castilian derives its theme not from the perfect, but from the infinitive: habido, sabido, from haber, saber, not from hubo, supo.
Castilian Dialects.—To discover the features by which these are distinguished from normal Castilian we must turn to old charters and to certain modern compositions in which the provincial forms of speech have been reproduced more or less faithfully.
Asturian.—The Asturian idiom, called by the natives bable, is differentiated from the Castilian by the following characters. le occurs, as in Old Castilian, in words formed with the suffix ellum (castiellu, portiellu), while modern Castilian has reduced ie to i. E, i, u, post-tonic for a, e, 0: penes (penas), grades (gracias), esti (este) , frenti (f rente) , llechi (leche) , nucchi (noche) , unu (uno) , primeru (primero). There is no guttural spirant, j, but, according to circumstances, y or x (s) ; thus Lat. cl, Ij gives y: veyu (*v e c l u s), espeyu (s p e c ’ l u m), conseyu (consilium); and after an * this y is hardly perceptible, to judge by the forms fiu (f i l i u m), escoidos (Cast, escogidos), Castia {Castillo) ; Lat. g before e and i, Lat. initial j, and Lat. ss, x, give x (s)—xiente (g e n t e m), xudiu (J u d a e u s), baxu (b a s s u s), coxu (c o x u s), floxu (f l u x u s). Lat. initial f has kept its ground, at least in part of the province : fiu,fueya (Cast. hijo, hoja). A very marked feature is the habitual “mouillure” of l and n as initial letters: lleche, lleer, lluna, llutu; non, nunca, nueve, nube. With respect to inflexion the following forms may be noted: personal pronouns: i (illi), yos (illos) ; possessive pronouns: mio, pi. mios; to, los; so, sos for both masc. and fem. ; verbs: 3rd pers. pi. imp. of the 2nd and 3rd conjugations in in for ten (Cast, ian) ; train, tenin, facin (from facer), fiin (from fer), and even some instances of the 2nd pers. sing, (abis; Cast, habias) ; instances of pres. subj. in ia for a (sirvia, metia, sepia). The verb ser gives yes (sometimes yeres) in the 2nd pers. sing., ye in the 3rd. F a c e r e appears under two forms—facer and fer—and to the abridged form correspond feist fiendo, fiin, &c. Ire often appears under the form dir (antes de diros = antes de iros), which it is not necessary to explain by de-ir". (see H. Schuchardt, Ztschr. f. rom. Philol., v. 312).
Navarrese-Aragonese.—In its treatment cf the post-tonic vowel J this dialect parts company with normal Castilian and comes nearetf Catalan, in so far as it drops the final e, especially after nt, rt (mont, plazient, muert, fuert, parents, gents); and, when the atonic e has dropped after a v, this v becomes a vowel—breu (brevem), grieu (*g r e v e m), nueu (n o v e m). Navarrese-Aragonese has the diphthongs ie, ue from tonic ĕ and ŏ, and adheres more strictly to them than normal Castilian does—cuende (cŏmitem), huey (h ŏ d i e), pueyo (pŏdium), yes (ĕst), yeran (ĕrant), while
