From Vulgar Latin to Castilian

Del latín vulgar al castellano

c. 218 BC–1250. Spanish is Latin that kept changing.

What happened

Spanish is Latin that kept changing. The Romans brought their language to the Iberian Peninsula in the Second Punic War (late 3rd century BC), and it was the everyday, spoken 'Vulgar' Latin of soldiers and settlers, not the Latin of books, that took root. After the empire fell this spoken Latin broke up into the Romance languages. The variety that became Spanish grew up in a small corner of the north, around Burgos, and it was unusually bold: Latin f- became an aspirated h and then fell silent (fazer became hacer), -ct- became -ch- (hecho, mucho, noche), and castiello became castillo. Rafael Lapesa notes that these features were slow to win in writing: notaries kept writing fazer and fumo into the late 15th century. Castilian then spread south with the Christian kingdoms, and in Toledo, taken in 1085, it became a language of prose.

Events along the way

• between 950 and 1100: The Glosas Emilianenses: the first written Romance?
• between 1140 and 1207: The Cantar de mio Cid
• 1252–1284: Alfonso the Wise and the Castilian language

Connected

• Iberians, Celts and Celtiberians (c. 5th century BC)
• Rome lands in Hispania (218–19 BC)
• Rome lands in Hispania (218–19 BC)
• Isidore of Seville writes down the ancient world (c. 600–636)
• The Glosas Emilianenses: the first written Romance? (between 950 and 1100)
• Alfonso the Wise and the Castilian language (1252–1284)
• Spain's other languages become co-official (6 December 1978)

Sources

1. De cómo el castellano llegó a ser el español (Rafael Lapesa, Boletín AEPE 19, 1978) — Centro Virtual Cervantes
2. Evolución del latín — Universitat de València (C. Ivorra)
3. Gradia: herramienta de modelización de la evolución fonética del latín (help page) — Universitat de Barcelona