A Brief History of the Spanish Language

by David A. Pharies

Spanish is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world and a language of ever-increasing importance in the United States. In what will likely become the introduction to the history of the Spanish language, David Pharies clearly and concisely charts the evolution of Spanish from its Indo-European roots to its present form. An internationally recognized expert on the history and development of this language, Pharies brings to his subject a precise sense of what students of Spanish linguistics need to know.

After introductory chapters on what it means to study the history of a language, the concept of linguistic change, and the nature of language families, Pharies traces the development of Spanish from its Latin roots, all with the minimum amount of technical language possible.  In the core sections of the book, readers are treated to an engaging and remarkably succinct presentation of the genealogy and development of the language, including accounts of the structures and peculiarities of Latin, the historical and cultural events that deeply influenced the shaping of the language, the nature of Medieval Spanish, the language myths that have become attached to Spanish, and the development of the language beyond the Iberian Peninsula, especially in the Americas. Focusing on the most important facets of the language’s evolution, this compact work makes the history of Spanish accessible to anyone with a knowledge of Spanish and a readiness to grasp basic linguistic concepts.

Available in both English and Spanish editions, A Brief History of the Spanish Language  provides a truly outstanding introduction to the exciting story of one of the world’s great languages.
 

Genres: Language, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Spanish Literature, History, Spain, 21st Century

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a love-hate relationship with this book. The book is sensibly put together and does indeed deliver on its promise to give a pretty complete picture of the evolution of Spanish from Latin.

Particularly interesting to me was to see how Spanish drifted from the heavily synthetic Latin toward becoming a more analytical language (i.e. in its construction of future and past tenses with "he hablado" and "hablar he") and has since become more analytic again (in modern Spanish, "he hablado" and "hablaré" can not be separated as separate words, and the enclitic pronouns have morphed from pronouns into a form of object agreement build into the verb).

However, I found that I had to provide much of the enthusiasm and interest reading the book. Although the author was not without interest in his subject matter, this was written as a text book and, though it's not formatted like one exactly, it has enough textbook in it to make it occasionally dull.

It's hard to say why exactly this should be, but I think it's in the sense that some material is inserted for "coverage" sake rather than for interest's sake. That's not to say that some of the material is uninteresting -- I think essentially everything in this book is of interest -- but that it is presented as "complete" rather than as intriguing (even though, as an introductory text, it is of course far from a complete account, as the author explains in the introduction).

So, in the end, I had a similar relationship to this book as I had to my intro linguistic anthropology course at Brown -- namely, I loved the subject matter, but was concerned that the author/professor didn't love the material as much as they should have. Which is to say, I wish the author at brought a bit more zeal to the book. That said, it is the curse of surveys of all kinds to feel shallow and inadequate. Nonetheless, I know a great deal more about the history of Spanish now, and I will certainly keep this book handy as a reference for years to come.

[Jon Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Language is like a puzzle and I love it when there is an explanation that makes sense of it all. A Brief History of the Spanish Language is like that in explaining everything I ever wanted to know about Spanish, especially the odd things that the textbooks don’t talk about.

The book traces Spanish from Latin to Medieval Castilian to Modern Spanish, and shows a clear continuity all the way. There is a chapter on Latin complete enough to make me dredge up the year of High School Latin I had (femina, feminae, feminae, etc.). Then there is a thorough discussion of the changes in phonology (sounds), morphology (word structure) and syntax (sentence structure) that made up the incremental evolution from Latin to Spanish.

One of my favorite parts is discovering the origins of words. Anyone with a smattering of Spanish will be interested to know that “Usted” (the formal “you”) evolved from “Vuestra Merced” (“Your Mercy”), after a collapsing of the formal and familiar to the Latin “vos”.

Another fun fact: The adverbial ending “-mente” (“-ly” in English) derived from the word “mente” (which means “mind”). For example, one might say that somebody did something “seriosa mente”, with “serious mind”, or seriously. Voila.

Yet another fun fact: Some tenses were constructed using auxiliary verbs such as “he amado” (“I have loved”). Similarly, “he amar” (“I have to love”). On this last one, the word order got switched around to “amar he” or “amaré” (“I will love”). In other words, “I will love” is a rephrasing of “I have to love.” I love these puzzles.

Maybe these funny puzzles will turn some people off, but I get a kick out of them. I was also entranced by discussions of the various types of Spanish, such as Andalusian or the varieties which exist in Spanish America. There are sample passages from the various linguistic regions, with discussion of the precise differences. I always knew that my Mexican Spanish was different from Puerto Rican Spanish or Argentine Spanish, but this book explains exactly how and why.

So this is an arcane book which I find very entertaining. Makes me want to be a linguist.

[a · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a serviceable history of Spanish. I got it after I read Baugh's wonderful History of the English Language. It didn't quite measure up to the hopes I had after reading the Baugh, which is written in a more narrative style. Pharies' history really gets in the weeds of the mechanics of linguistic shifts, which many people will likely find useful. I will have to look elsewhere for a narrative history of Spanish that focuses on the cultural and political forces that produce shifts. There's probably less to say about a Romance language like Spanish which didn't undergo the seismic shifts that English did.

[Ed Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can’t really fault it: it does what it says on the tin. Essentially a text book for linguistics students - it could have quite easily been made a bit more accessibly with an expansion of the glossary for some of the linguistics terms. Otherwise I found it quite engaging, and full of fascinating tidbits from the history of Spanish. Not everyone will be interested in specific grammatical shifts and changes from Latin to Spanish but for me this was great !

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty accurate linguistic description of the development of the bundle of dialects we call Spanish. A bit dry in parts, but also very useful descriptions of the major dialect regions in Spain and the Americas, in addition to historic dialects which developed from Hispano-Romance, like Ladino and Mozarabic. Some of the information about Indo-European was inaccurate, like the Anatolian hypothesis.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t read every word—the charts don’t transfer well to ebook, and much of the book is more grammatical than I like and less etymological (which I want!). But it’s still worthwhile—seeing how Latin transmuted into Spanish and other languages and seeing why some words in Catalán seemed so odd prior to reading this book is cool.

[Juan Manuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Manual para uso de estudiantes universitarios de filología española.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good general introduction. Talks in some detail about the phonological, morphological and syntactic developments that take place along the way from the change of vulgar Latin to medieval Castilian and then to modern Spanish. There's also a bit about the development of Spanish vocabulary (somewhat cursory) and a quick overview of the differences between a) standard Castilian in Spain and Andalusian (perhaps a bit too detailed in context) and b) Spanish Spanish and that of the Canary Islands and various regions of the new world (which perhaps should have been a bit more detailed). I would guess that the average reader would perhaps prefer a bit less emphasis on hardcore linguistics and bit more discussion of the social history of the language (but the mix was fine by me, since I enjoy historical linguistics). I suspect that some people might take the title to mean that the book would have a discussion of Spanish literature, and there's none of that. One aspect that struck me as not been entirely successful is the attempt to tie in linguistic change to historical circumstances. The historical "facts" often took a deceptively brief form and the supposed causality seemed dubious to me. Also, the book at times uses rather old-fashioned characterizations like talking about how stages of a language can be "vigorous" or "decadent" as if one were talking about people (the author thinks that the ancestors of the Castilians were barbarians during the earlier period of the Arab occupation of the peninsula, which seems uncalled for given the evidence, and he clearly dislikes Spanish Baroque poetry and characterizes the 17th-century language in Spain on that basis as if everybody was reading effete, highly artificial poets!). Still, there's a lot of information packed in those 237 pages. Finally, each chapter ends with a series of review questions; I suspect even undergraduates using the book for a course would be hard pressed to answer a lot of them!

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very interesting but make no mistake: this is a textbook. It looks like it might be a kind of "popular history" of the Spanish language, but it is actually quite technical in places. I enjoyed the sections that told the history of various time and places in the hispanophone world, but as my knowledge of IPA is not terribly thorough, I found myself initially lost in places and then eventually just skimming those sections that are probably only of great detailed interest to scholars of Spanish linguistics. So while this is not the most exciting book in the world, considering the fact that is it textbook, it is surprising readable, even for the non-scholar.

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides an approachable, straightforward history of the Spanish language and its many influences for those of us with limited linguistics knowledge. The combination of historical and geographical information makes this a much more interesting read than expected.

[Rachelle Reyes · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a great book and offers amazing detail but it's not meant for anyone that doesn't have prior knowledge of linguistics. It's almost too detailed to be considered a "brief" history. I love what I was able to learn from it though.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thorough and interesting but very dense in linguistic terminology and pronunciation tables. Beware.

[Justin Renquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent book!!! good for those interested in linguistics/sociolinguistics - anglophones and francophones (who read English).

[Jianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, would like once I read more about Spanish linguistics and language development.

[Dan Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview of the Spanish language, its history, dialects and grammar.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todo lo esencial de la historia lingüística del español. Olvídate de Lapesa.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great history to the Spanish language and a good introduction to many aspects to linguistic studies. Highly recommended.