Re: A problem solved: Arabisms in Spanish

Raymond A. Brown scripsit:

> >Did Spanish still have original Latin /h/?
>
> Most certainly not!
> NONE of the Romancelangs retained Latin /h/ - indeed, all the evidence we
> have from "scoolmaster's notes", graffiti etc. show conclusively that Latin
> /h/ was probably having a hard time even before the end of the BC period
> and almost certainly disappered from popular speech before the end of the
> 1st cent. AD.
True enough.  However, Spanish grew a secondary /h/ as a result of a
phoneme split: Latin /f/ became sometimes /f/, sometimes /h/, probably
through an intermediate stage of an unvoiced bilabial fricative.
In Old Spanish, "f" sometimes represents /f/, sometimes /h/.
Eventually, a spelling reform took hold, and this /h/ became written "h",
which persists even though the phoneme has disappeared.

For example, Latin "fabulare" > OSp "fablar" [haBlar] > "hablar"
still [haBlar] > "hablar" [aBlar].

> >If it had lost it already, a possible Arabic /h/ could have been
> >heard as /x/.
Indeed, "difficult" Arabic sounds often came in as "f" /h/.

--
John Cowan                                      cowan@ccil.org
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.