SPANISH LANGUAGE. A Romance lan guage, evolved out of Latin in the Iberian Pen insula and carried by Spanish colonists to the Canaries, the Antilles, the Philippines, Mexico, portions of the United States, Central America, the greater part of South America, and a few places on the coast of Africa, and by the Jews into Turkey and other regions in which they settled after their expulsion from Spain. In the Iberian Peninsula the boundaries of the Span ish-speaking domain do not coincide exactly with those of the political division called Spain, since within the latter are contained Galicia, whose in habitants speak a Portuguese dialect, a Basque speaking district in the north, and a Catalan speaking region in the east. The inhabitants of the Balearic Islands speak a Catalan dialect. Probably not far from 50,000,000 persons at present use Spanish as their native tongue, the majority being in the New World. Five prin cipal dialects are distinguishable in the language as spoken in the mother country: Asturian, Leonese, Aragonese, Andalusian, and Castilian. Castilian has become the standard literary speech.
Castilian has the five simple vowels, a. c, i, o, a variety of diphthongs, and a few triphthongs produced by the union of a strong vowel (e, o, a) with two weak vowels (i, a). Examples of the diphthongs and triphthongs are in in vinda, `widow vi in en ido, 'noise ;' ai in /toile, `dance;' cu in di'ada, 'debt io in Dios, 'God;' iai in est udiais, 'you study.' The diphthongs ie and ue arc especially common as representatives of a Latin short e or o: compare Latin bene and f0rum with Spanish bleu and fucro. Qualitative distinctions in vowels (open and close a and o) exist, but are not so marked as in certain other Romance languages (e.g. Italian and French). In assonance (rhyme of vowels without that of the consonants) these qualitative distinctions are not regarded ; open and close e may therefore rhyme together, as may also open and close o, and, furthermore, final unaccented i and a may rhyme respectively with c and o similarly situ ated. Although liaison. strictly speaking, is not a feature of Spanish pronunciation, yet in rapid speech the vowel ending one word may he merged into the same vowel of the immediately following word, provided this latter be syntactically allied to it (e.g. vii am-richt amiga may become vii gueridamiga, with a possible compensatory lengthening of the a). The consonant sounds arc p; a bilabial spirant written both b and v (the more frequent sound of these letters) ; a labial stop written both b and v (the value of these characters where they follow an at of the same word o• an it at the end of the preceding word, as in tambien and en villa; the sound is that of the usual English b, the sound of the English a not existing in Spanish) ; f; as (written at in hiatus) ; j d (both t and d are articulated farther forward in the mouth than the corresponding English sounds, and d has a decided tendency to become everywhere the interdental spirant) ; a voiceless spirant that is interdental or nearly so (written c before e or i, and z before a consonant, at the end of a word, or before any vowel, though rarely now before c or i; e.g., cclo, 'zeal ;' ciclo, 'heaven ;' zapato, 'shoe;' raiz, `root:' the value is about that of tit in the English breath) ; a voiced spirant, inter dental or nearly so (written d, which has this sound especially between vowels, as in lado, 'side;' or when preceded by a vowel and followed by r, as in padre, 'father,' or at the end of a word, as in abad, abbot ; the value is about that of tit in the English breathe); I; a palatalized 1 (written 11 and pronounced nearly like the /I of filial) ; it ; a palatalized rt (written 0, and pronounced like the vi of pinion) ; a simple tongue-trilled r (never• slurred) ; a renforeed form of the same sound (written rr between vowels and r at the beginning of a word, o• after s, 1, o• a within a word, e.g. perm., 'dog;' sea,
ta, 'Israelite:' houra, 'honor') ; a voiceless s (with the value of the English ss) ; p (written both i in hiatus and y) ; k (written a before a, o, and u, or before a consonant and in the final posi tion, and qu before e and i—carro, 'car;' frac, 'frock coat veto, 'act;' garr•vr, 'to like;' quint, `who') ; g (the so-ealled hard sound of English g in game, get ; written g before a, o, at, and gu he for e, i—gato, 'eat ;' guerre, 'war') ; a velar or guttural spirant (with approximately the value of ch. in Scotch loch, and German naeh ; written j in all positions and g frequently before c, i—jamas, 'never;' gente, 'people;' some ob servers find also a voiced form of this spirant, but it is usually voiceless) ; a velar it (with the value of English ag in sing w•ritt.en a before a guttural o• palatal, as in Banco). It is the gen eral rule that the Spanish written characters represent actual sounds; but at is frequently used before e or i as a sign that a preceding palatal consonant has the 'hard' or stop value, as in guc or fuerra; j is silent in the singular noun reloj ; and in a few words like /Wed a final if may not be pronounced. The simple It is gen erall• not pronounced, though before the diph thong we it may have a slight aspiration. In the conjunction p (= 'and') the sound is that of the vowel i. An aversion to the doubling of con sonants is a distinguishing feature of Spanish spelling; c and a alone may be doubled, as in action, 'action,' and innoble, 'ignoble,' and these combinations must be pronounced as double sounds wherever they occur; 11 and rr arc properly not doubled consonants, and they figure as individual signs in the al phabet. Among the combinations of con sonants may be mentioned ch, like clt in the English word church; e.g. Chico, 'little.' Ac cording to the Academy the written x is a double consonant equivalent to Ps: but before a con sonant there is a rather widespread tendency to pronounce it like a simple s. In older Spanish was a much more common character than now and had the value of our sh. By a decree of the Spanish Academy issued in 1815, with the value of sh has been displaced in favor of j, pro nounced as described above. The matter of ac centuation is governed by strict rules of the Academy. Words ending in a consonant not n or s regularly stress the last syllable; e.g. yer dad, 'truth;' ((mar, 'to love.' Words ending in n or s or in a vowel regularly stress the syllable be fore the last; e.g. aman, 'they love;' hijos, 'sons.' Words infringing these rules and all words stressed on a syllable not the last or second last must bear a written acute accent on the stressed syllable, as nacion, 'nation;' cartes, `courteous;' medico, 'physician.' If a diphthong or a triph thong occur in the stressed syllable the stress will fall upon its strong element (a, e, or o). and where the diphthong consists of two weak de ments (i, u) the second of the two will have the stress.