Influences
Many Castilians who took part in the reconquista and later repopulation campaigns were of Basque lineage, and this is evidenced by many place names throughout Spain. Influence of Basque phonology is credited by some researchers with softening the Spanish labiodentals: turning labiodental to, and ultimately deleting labiodental . Others negate or downplay Basque phonological influence, claiming that these changes occurred in the affected dialects wholly independent of each other as a result of internal change (i.e. linguistic factors, not outside influence). It is also possible that the two forces, internal and external, worked in concert and reinforced each other.
Germanic languages by most accounts affected the phonological development very little, many Spanish words of Germanic origin are very common in all varieties of everyday Spanish. The words for the cardinal directions (norte, este, sur, oeste), for example, are all taken from Germanic words (compare north, east, south and west in Modern English), after the contact with Atlantic sailors. In Old Spanish este and oeste did not exist; oriente (or levante) and occidente (or poniente) were used instead, and are still widely used.
In 711 Spain was invaded by Moors, who brought the Arabic language to the Peninsula. From then until the fall of the Emirate of Granada (1492), Spanish borrowed words from Arabic. Spanish was once written in the Arabic script in certain areas. (See Aljamiado)
Read more about this topic: History Of Spanish
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on in everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.”
—Hope Edelman (20th century)
“Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)