Re: Future of Spanish

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
> Another possibility: /tj/ --> /tS/, so that "tiene" becomes "chene", so
> that instead of the vowel changing (e --> ie), the consonant changes (t
> --> ch).
Something like that is happening in Chile, if I'm
hearing correctly (I'll pay more attention). The cluster
/tj/ is becoming affricate and/or aspirated; aspiration
is alien to Spanish, so I guess affrication it will be!
(Many Spanish speakers make /th/ > /tS/ in English words.
Some are convinced that the number 2 in English is "chu" :)
Moreover, the affrication in Chile is taking place before
all front vowels, so /te, ti, tj/ might soon be /tSe, tSi, tS/.

> Perhaps /kj/ and /gj/ could be
> palatized (if those clusters even exist).
They exist. The k and g (and <j> = /x/) have palatal allophones
before /e, i, j/, but they are perfectly distinct from the
alveolo-palatal sound.

>  Maybe /tw/ could be
> labialized, becoming /p/?  Same with /dw/.  That may be a little less
> probable, tho.
Not very probable indeed. The /t/ and /d/ are simply coarticulated.
In /tw/ the /w/ is voiceless, but that's it. I'd say it's more
probable that the /w/ disappears, maybe leaving a rounding in
the previous consonant.

> Perhaps before the /tj/ to /tS/, the modern /tS/ could
> be de-affricated to /S/.  I think that this happens in some dialects,
> I've heard of "chile" being pronounced /Sile/.
Yes.

[snip]
> Perhaps n~ might be lost, either
> moving forward to /n/, or back to /N/, or perhaps becoming /nj/
> (probably unlikely).  Maybe it would lose its nasality to become /j/ (I
> think I've read of dialects that do that)
The one change I have observed here is that <n~i> is
becoming /ni/. /(nj)i/ is very difficult to pronounce!
The sound itself is very rare in Spanish, and n~i is
extremely rare (the only example I can think of is
<compan~i'a> "company").

>
> Gramatical changes:
> Perhaps the -er and -ir verbs could completely fuse.  It seems to me
> that they are already very similar, differing only in a small number of
> forms.  Perhaps even the infinitives could become one form.  The ir a
> construction could replace the future tense, thus boy a ablar instead of
> hablare'.
It has! The future is practically obsolete in all dialects that
I know. We say "voy a hablar", "estoy por hablar" (I'm about to speak),
etc. The only instance of the future tense still used is somewhat
difficult to explain; it looks like a bit subjunctive, a bit like
dubitative speech. Examples:

"Hablare' con e'l": "I'll speak to him" (I guess I will).
"Ire' a verlo" : "I'll go see him" (Well, I'll go if I have to).

This future carries a very distinctive sentence tone.

> Loss of the subjunctive?  If there were influence from English,
> that might be likely.
Oh, no, our poor subjunctive! :-(
What might happen is that one of the alternative forms of
the subjunctive disappears (I mean, you may say "pasara" or
"pasase", "viera" or "viese", "matara" or "matase" and the
pairs mean exactly the same! That can't be good for the economy)

> Loss of este, ese, or aquel.  De + pronoun
> replacing "su", thus "la casa de ute^" instead of "su casa", perhaps it
> would be "la casa dute^", something like this has happened in Brazillian
> Portuguese, where the same problem of ambiguity with "su" occured.
Just the other way round. When you hear "su casa" it usually
means "your house" ("su" = "de usted"). If you refer to a 3rd
person's house, you say "la casa de e'l" (or "de ella"). This
also eliminates the ambiguity between "su" = "his, her" and
"su" = "their". Anyway, "de usted" /djuh'te/ is common.

>
> Orthographical changes:
> Elimination of b/v distinction
> Elimination of ll/y distinction (most LatAm dialects fuse those, yes?)
> Elimination of h (except maybe where it's needed to distinguish between
> homophones, like ha/a)
I hope those take place. And also the uniformation of g/j
(that <g> = /g/, not /g, x/), the elimination of z, the change
c > s when c = /s/, and some kind of rule as to when to write
<cc> (or <cs>) and when <x> for /ks/. The c/s problem is
particularly upsetting when a word ends in /'sjon/.


--Pablo Flores

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