The causes that led to the formation of the Romance tongues had their origin, for the most part, in phonetics. Since the vocabulary of these languages is still essentially Latin. Spanish has radically simplified and developed the full sound of the vowels at the expense of the consonants. The Latin accented e becomes, in Spanish, ae, and the o becomes ue, while there is a strong tendency to weaken the initial consonant. Thus the Latin porta becomes puerta in Spanish, tempus becomes tiempo and bonus, bueno. Portuguese, on the contrary, is very careless in the articulation of both vowels and consonants; it avoids the diphthongs that Spanish likes, and as if going to the opposite extreme, the initial sounds are strongly pronounced. Portuguese, like French, has a strong nasal tendency, which is entirely absent from Spanish and Italian. It has also, a strong tendency to contract unac centuated vowels. The Latin anlum, for in stance, which became cielo in Spanish, has be come ceo in Portuguese.
French differs from Spanish in its suppres sion of the Latin final vowels, a excepted, or their transmission into e. This tendency is noticeable in Provengal and Catalan, but it is stronger in the north of France than anywhere else. This tendency to contraction has left the French tongue practically without accent, while the opposite tendency in Spanish has made the latter tongue one of the most, if not the most, sonorous of the Romanic group.
Germanic Influence.— The Germanic tribes probably helped toward the disintegration of the Latin tongue in Italy. But this disin tegration was long protracted and slowly evolved as should be the natural growth of a language. This prevented the various foreign influences becoming great at any particular time. The German mercenaries, who were larirt th used in the Latin armies, naturally brought into the country numerous German worlds relating to their life and occupation, which belonged to the camp. The names of grains, animals and persons in use among the Germans, but unfamiliar to the Romans, bore their native designations on their introduction into Italy. These words naturally assumed Latin forms, and they so identified themselves with Latin speech that it is difficult, at times, to recognize their foreign origin. The Goths, Lom bards and Franks influenced the northern and central parts of the Italian Peninsula much more than they did the south, where Greek and Carthaginian played a very considerable part in the local appearance assumed by southern Italian. This influence is still noticeable in the strong quantitative accent placed upon the accented vowel throughout the south and south west of Italy.
As the natives, after the Roman conquest of Gaul, continued to be the mechanics, artisans and laborers, they naturally contributed to the store of Latin words, designating such occupa tions by names given them in their own Gallic tongue. As Gaul remained largely agriculturat during the Roman occupation, and as, in the beginning, the Roman task masters and em ployers of labor found it easier to learn the native names for the implements of labor, grains and processes than to teach the natives the Latin designation therefor, many agricul tural terms of Gallic origin became current in the Latin.spoken in Gaul. The same thing hap pened to the native tongues in Spain and Portugal. In the south of Italy and the ad jacent islands, for practically the same reason, agricultural terms and especially names of farm and garden products have generally quite dif ferent names from those they bear in other parts of the peninsula. Yet notwithstanding these natural differences and those occasioned by accent and intonation which distinguish the speech of one locality from another and the great language groups to-day throughout all the territory that once constituted the western empire of Rome, the Romance tongues are surprisingly Latin in the composition of their vocabularies, the changes that differentiate them from one another and that mark the dialects of each language group being very largely phonet ical; for however great the changes may be that have taken place in the Latin vocabularies in their transmission into the Romance tongues, they have not materially interfered with the roots or the accents of the Latin words. This
fact has rendered the task of the Latin philol ogists much easier than it could have been had the accentuated vowel not persisted, subject to certain regular known modifications.
Inter-influence.— Naturally, being so closely related and having a common origin within his torical times, the Romance tongues have acted and reacted upon one another. Moreover they have been acted upon by the German language, since their rise go the dignity of national tongues. Of all the Latin tongues French has had the greatest, deepest and most far-reaching in fluence not only upon the Latin and German languages, but upon other languages of Europe; and the Norman French gave to English two fif the of its vocabulary. This French influence, begun in the time of Charlemagne, has extended to our own day, and is still being unconsciously exercised, though now in a somewhat more re stricted degree. As the diplomatic language of Europe, as the voice of the leaders of fashion, as the tongue of the profoundest and wittiest literary critics of Europe and the leaders of science and of Romance philology it has long continued to furnish thinking Europe with con cise names and expressions as they have sud denly found the need of them. In the age of chivalry, in the Renaissance, and the centuries that witnessed the growth of diplomacy, the French tongue continued performing its good offices for the other languages of Europe. Even Germany and the other countries in which the Germanic languages were spoken felt this French influence strongly in the court, art, literary and military circles.
While the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese languages influenced one another and other European tongues, their influence was sporadic and very much less than that of French. Span ish and Portuguese were, to some considerable extent, influenced by the aboriginal American tongues; and many of the words from this source were passed on to the other language of Europe. Many Spanish words came into Eng lish and some into French through the contact with Spain in the American colonies. Very many words derived from the indigenous American tongues are in use in the different Latin-American countries. The names of plants and animals, agricultural terms and the designa tions of places have contributed very largely to this Indian element in the Spanish tongue. However, the use of most of these foreign words is confined to localities in America and but a comparatively small number of these native designations have become domesticated in Spain. Yet, as they enter into the very lives of the Latin-American nations, they seem to have come to stay. They, therefore, help to make the Spanish tongue, as spoken in America, different from that of Spain. Thus the litera tures of the different Latin-American republics have each its own peculiar individuality, marked by local vocabulary and terms of expression.
Spanish was also influenced by Arabic dur ing the Moorish occupation of the country, and these Moorish words and idiomatic expressions have, many of them, been carried to America. In the same way, the Greek and Carthaginian words that found their way into Catalan, have found lodgment in the Spanish spoken in cer tain section of Latin America. See Prima TICS ; LANGUAGE, SCIENCE OF, and each of the Romance languages.