Old Spanish

The Old Spanish Language or Old Castilian is an early form of the Spanish language, that it was spoken from 10th Century until 15th Century, before the consonantic readjustment occured and evolution into modern spanish.

Phonetics and phonology

The phonologic system of the Old Spanish shared similarities with the modern romance languages. Amongst the consonants, there were three pairs of sibilants, voicelesses and sonorants:

• Voiceless dental affricate: represented by the phoneme ç.
• Voiced dental affricate: represented by the phoneme z.
• Voiceless apicoalveolar fricative:represented by the s
• Voiced apicoalveolar fricative: represented by the phoneme z

• Voiceless postalveolar affricate: represented by the phoneme x (pronounced as the digraph sh).
• Voiced postalveolar affricate: represented by the phoneme j.

In Old Spanish the voiceless velar fricative [x], corresponding to the letter j or g (before e and i) didn't exist, nor the voiceless dental fricative, that are actually written as the letter z and c (before e and i)

The letter v was pronounced as a fricative consonant. It is not known if it was bilabial or labiodental. The letter f represented its phonetic value, but also represented an aspiration (as the English h), that later disappearead from as a pronunciation, represented by an etymological h.

Examples:
fasta (actually "hasta")
fablar (actually "hablar")
facer (actually "hacer")

Morphology and syntax

In Old Spanish the perfect tenses of the movement verbs, such as ir (to go), venir (to come), were formed using the auxiliary verb "ser" (to be). Example: Las mugieres son llegadas a Castiella.. (Actually: Las mujeres han llegado a Castilla).

The posession was expressed by the auxiliary verb "aver" (haber). Example: Pedro dos fijas ha. (Actually: Pedro tiene dos hijas).

In the present perfect tense, the past participle has to agree with the gender and number with the direct object. Example: María ha cantadas dos canciones. (Actually: María ha cantado dos canciones.)

The personal pronouns and substantives can be placed after the verb in any tense or mood (as in the verses from the spanish epic poem Cantar de Mio Cid).

Generally, an unstressed pronoun and a verb in the simple sentences, combined into one word. In a compound sentence, the pronoun was localized in the beginning of the clause. Example: la mánole va besar = la mano le va a besar. (Actually: Le va a besar la mano).

See also

• History of the Spanish language
• Cantar de Mio Cid