Castilian, the standard form of Spanish, at tained to the dignity of a literary medium by the 12th century, about or soon after the middle of which there appeared the noble epic poem, 'El Cantar de Mio Cid,' and the little liturgical play, 'El Misterio (or Auto) de los Reyes Magos.' But in legal, ecclesiastical and other documents we can trace its evolution, during some five or six centuries prior to that time, from the popular Latin of the more or less illiterate soldiery and colonists brought to the peninsula as a result of the Roman conquest. By the time of Augustus the conquest had be come an achieved fact, and during the four centuries of peace that followed his reign the Romanization of the land, so thoroughgoing fur its institutions and customs, was a practi cally complete process for its speech also. It is dubious that, apart from a very scant number of debatable elements of the lexicon, any ves tiges of the idioms of the original Celtic and Iberian tribes remain in the Castilian language. Vulgar (popular) Latin is the all-important source of its lexicon, phonology, morphology and syntax. In the course of time its vocabulary has been enriched by accretions from Arabic—brought in by Moorish conquest from 711 on— from other European languages, especially French and Italian, and from the Indian and other native languages of the colonial settlements.
Phonology.— With the invasion of the and the fall of Rome, in the early 5th century, political contact with Italy was severed, and the Vulgar Latin of Hispania began to undergo the changes in sound that produced ultimately Castilian in the high plateau of the centre of the peninsula.
In the following statement of facts we are concerned only with popular developments: words of peculiarly learned use did not neces sarily go through the popular phonological processes.
In the vowel system it is notable that, under the accent, Latin a (long and short), e, i, 6, A, were represented in the Vulgar Latin enuncia tion by close variations of the same sounds, i.e, qualitative distinctions, as between open and close utterance, became important for them as for all vowels. Latin i became Vulgar Latin close e also, and Latin a became close o. With their close pronunciations these vowels re mained in Castilian unless affected by some adjoining sound (notable a palatal) : Latin matrem (the oblique case and not the nomina tive is the basis of the Spanish word), °mother"; patrem, °father" ; plenum, "full"; blbit, “drinks" •, fllium, °son"; form6sum, ubeau tiful' ; /Qum, "mud"; Cast., madre, padre, lleno, bebc, hijo, hermoso, lodo.
Accented Latin 0 and 6 diphthongized to ie and ue, in both open and closed syllables: Latin, venit, °comes"; ferrum, °iron"; movet, °moves"; fortem, °strong"; Cast., viene, hierro, muevc, fuerte. This is one of the dis tinctive features of Castilian as compared with the other leading Romance •languages, French, Italian and Portuguese; for in these latter the diphthongization occurred not at all (as in Portuguese) or only in open syllables (as in French and Spanish); cf. Cast., fuertc, °strong," with Ptg. forte, French fort, Italian forte, and Spanish viento, ((wind" from Latin ventum with Ptg., vento, French vent, Italian
vento. A following or preceding palatal might prevent the diphthongization of the 0 and a or work further changes in a diphthong already produced from them. The Latin diphthong ce was treated like Latin e, caqum, ((heaven," Cast., cielo, au like Latin a, aurum, "gold," Cast., oro; the few cases of Latin oe present some difficulty. Latin foedum, "ugly," Cast., feo, Latin foenum, uhay," Cast., hieno.
In the initial position in the word the vowels and diphthongs of Latin leveled away distinctions of quantity and quality and be came simple a, e, i, o, u, which, in some cases underwent modification through adjacent vo calic or consonantal influences. In the final unaccented position the vowels simplified still further to Castilian a, e, o, in truly popular treatment. In the unaccented penult of words stressed on the antepenult the vowel e (Latin I) usually disappeared; in the final unaccented syllable it could also disappear after con sonant sounds which the genius of the lan guage permits to end a word.
The consonants of Latin have proved more persistent in the initial position in the word than elsewhere; but a characteristic of Cas tilian is the change of f before a vowel (but not before the Castilian diphthong ue) to Old f Spanish aspirate h (still written in the older stages of the language). In modern Castilian the written h is silent, except for a possible slight aspiration before ue: cf. Latin/lium, Old Spanish No, modern hijo, with fuerte. Initial consonant plus 1 has yielded palatal 11: Latin clamare, °to call," /lemma, °flame," plorare, "to weep," Castilian llamar, llama, llorar. Initial r has become a well-trilled sound, and this same sound is rendered by rr between vowels. Another characteristic of Cas tilian is the conversion of both Latin b and Latin v (u in hiatus) to a single hi-labial spirant sound written either b or v: the sound of English v does not exist in Castilian. Latin c before e or i assibilated in Old Spanish to c or 2, which now, whether written c or 2, mean the interdental sound of English th in °thin." In the intervocalic position a Latin single voiceless consonant is voiced: e.g., t be came d, p became b, c became g (before any vowel but e or i); but intervocalic s is always voiceless in modern Spanish. Consonantal combinations between vowels were subject to a variety of changes not easily epitomized, but simplification was the usual process. The doubling of the same consonant is not a feature of modern Spanish; it is found only in the cases of cc and nn and both of the c's and the n's must be tittered, as in faccion, "fac tion" and innoble, °ignoble"; rr denotes a rein forced r sound, while // denotes a palatized sound and is not a doubled I in value; ri (n with a tilde) means a palatalized n (approxi mately the ny of "canyon" from Castilian cation). Of the consonants actually final in Latin the commonest were s and t; of these t was lost, Latin amat, "loves," Castilian ama, while s has remained and is very useful as a flexional sign (it marks the plural of sub stantives and the second person of verbs, Latin pl. partes, "parts," Castilian partes; Latin amas, "thou lovest," Castilian auras).