History of Spanish - Influences

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)