Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/224

 SPAIN

192

SPAIN

cially that of St. Francis — are very widely spread in Spain. Certain idiosyncrasies noticeable in the diar- acter of the people in some sections may easily be traced to the influence exercised by these pious prac- tices. Nevertheless, impiety, incredulity, and indif- ferentism are making; ajipreciable progress, mainly owing to the effects of jiernicious journals, which are published and circulated with incredible freedom. It is difficult to determine to just what degree this prop- aganda has altered the traditional character of the Spanish people, and the Catholics of Spain seem not to agree in estimating the extent to which this damage has extended, some believing that it is deep and irre- mediable, others that it is superficial and could easily be arrested by repressive measures enacted against the agents of pubUc immorahty.

Burke, A History of Spain JTOra the Earliest Times to the Death of FerdiTiand the Catholic (London, 1895) ; Watts, The Christian Recovery of Spain, 711-1492 (New York, 1894); Ward, The Truth about Spain (London, 1911): Herbert, Impressions of Spain (New York, 1869); BoissEL, La question religieuse en Espagne in Etudes, III (Paris. 1907), 51-57; O'Reillt. Heroic Spain (New York, 1910) ; The Reaction in Spain in Dublin Rev., CXLII (London, 1907), 272-84; Shipman, Spain of To-Day in The Cath- olic World (Sept., 1910), 801-16; Bidwell, Spain and the Church in Dublin Rev., CXLVII (1910), 376-96; Belloc, The Inter- national in Dublin Rev.. CXLVI (1910); Resefia Geogrdfica y Estadislica de Espafla, por la Direccidn General del Instituto Geogrdfico y Estadlslico (Madrid. 1888); ViLANOVA T PlERA and DE LA Rada t Delgado, Gcologia y Protohistoria Ibericas (Mad- rid, 1890); Lafuente, Hist. Gen. de Esp. (Madrid, 1S61); Perez Bellcso, Anuario Ed. de Esp. (Madrid, 1904); Instituto Geografico y Estadistico, Censo de Poblacidn de Esp. (Madrid, 1907); Idem, Censo BscoiardeiJsp. (Madrid, 1904); Gebhardt, Hist. Gen. de Esp. (Barcelona, a. d.) ; Real Acad, de la Historia, Hist. Gen. de Esp. (Madrid, 1890); Mariana, Hist. Gen. de Esp. (Valencia, 1794); de la Fuente, Hist. Eel. de Esp. (Madrid, 1873); Men^ndez t Pelayo, Historia de los Heterodoxos Esimfi- oles (Madrid, 1881).

Ram6n Ruiz Amado.

Spanish Language and Literature. — Spanish, a Romance language, that is, one of the modern spoken forms of Latin, is the speech of the larger part of the Iberian or most westerly peninsula of Europe. It belongs to the more central part of the region: Portuguese is spoken in the western part, Basque in the Pyrenees district and adjacent terri- tory, and Catalan in the east. By colonial opera- tions Spanish has been carried to the Western Hemi- sphere, and over 40,000,000 of persons use it in South America (where Brazil and the Guianas are the most important tracts escaping its sway), in Central America, Mexico, Cuba, Porto Rico, and sporadi- cally in southern parts of the LTnited States, such as Texas, California, New Mexico, and places near by. As the official language it has long prevailed in the Phihppines, although it has been far from supplanting the native dialects, for the reason that the Catholic missionaries, to whom the civihzation of the islands is due, set themselves the task of learning the native Oriental dialects, rather than the easier one of teaching the inhabitants their own Spanish idiom. In the earliest period of Spanish geographical ejcploration the language was carried to the Canaries. The expulsion, from 1492 on, of the Spanish-speaking Arabs and Jews has led to the extension of Spanish dialects to various parts of Northern Africa, to Turkey, and to other places. On the whole, no fewer than 60,000,000 of persons use Spanish as their native language in widely separated parts of the universe. In the New World the Indian languages have reacted somewhat upon the Spanish vocabulary.

As a medium of literary expression Spanish as- serted itself first in the twelfth century: it had been six or seven centuries in the process of evolution out of Latin. Now, while we properly call it a modern spoken form of Latin, we must recognize the fact that it docs not represent the liighly-refined language of such cliissic Latin writers :is Vergil or Cicero. Quite on the contrary, it is the natural development of the common, ev(^ry-day Latin of the ma.sses in Italy and, in particular, of the speech used by the

Latin soldiers and colonists who, as a result of the Roman conquest, settled in a part of the Iberian Peninsula. This Latin, generally called Vulgar Latin (and sometimes termed, less accurately. Low Latin), is no less respectable in point of antiquity than the noble Latin of our classics. Latin authors like Plautus, who introduce popular characters to our notice, make them exhibit in their diction features that the modern Romance languages have perpet- uated. It was, of course, the severance of relations with Italy, incident upon the invasion of the barba- rian tribes and the fall of imperial Rome, that led to the iiidepcndent development of the various Romance tongues (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Provengal, etc.) out of Vulgar Latin. The more important ele- ments of differentiation between this latter and classic Latin were these: phonologically, it made principles of vowel quality and syllabic stress superior to the classic distinction of quantitation; morphologically, it tended greatly toward simplification, since it ig- nored many of the classic flexional variations; syn- tactically, its analytical methods prevailed over the complicated system of word-order which the elaborate classic inflexions made possible. These differences are all reflected amply in Spanish. There is little need of concerning oneself with the Iberian and Celtic languages current in Spain before the time of the Roman colonization. So entire was the romaniza- tion of the land that they vanished wholly, except for some few and very doubtful survivals in the lexi- con. The groundwork of the Spanish vocabulary is Vulgar Latin, with certain historical and literary additions from classic Latin, Germanic, Arabic, French, Italian, and, in a slighter degree, from the East and We.st Indian and other languages.

Vulgar Latin possessed these accented vowels: a ( = Lat. a and d) ; open e ( = Lat. e and ae) ; close e ( = Lat. e, i, and oe) ; close i ( = Lat. J) ; open o ( = Lat. d) ; close o ( = Lat. 5 and «) ; the diphthong au; and close u ( = Lat. iZ). In the transition into Spanish, the open vowels (whether in a free or a pro- tected position) became the cUphthongs ie and we respectively (as in piedra, "stone"; fuertc, "strong"). An adjoining palatal sound could, however, pre- vent the diphthongization. In general a and the close vowels maintained themselves in Spanish {padre, "father"; seda, "sillv" from Lat. seta; lid, "contest" from Lat. lis, lUerti.; hora, "hour"; iu, "thou"): the diphthong au became close o {aurum, Span, oro): but a neighbouring palatal could close the V. L. a to c (leche, "milk" from lac, lacte), the V. L. close e to 1 {cirio, "wa.x taper", Lat. cereum, whose e in hiatus before the u provided the modifying palatal force), and the V. L. close o to u. For the sub- stantive (noun and adjective) it should be said that a V. L. form corresponding to the Latin accusative case was the basis of the Spanish word.

The history of the V. L. unaccented vowels passing into Spanish varied according to the position of the vowel in the word: in the initial syllable it was more likely to be preserved; in the medial position or at the end (i. e. in the last syllable of the word) it often disappeared or underwent some modification. Dis- tinctions of quality were unimportant for the V. L. unaccented e and o in Spain, so that we are now con- cerned with but five vowels sounds, a, e, i, a, and u (all of which tended to be close in value) and with the V. L. diphthong au (which became close o in Spanish). At the end of a word these sounds were reduced in Spanish to three, a, e, o, in the really popular pro- nunciation: unaccented final i and u are found now only in Spanish words of a more or less learned type (as in crisis and tribu). Here a and o have pro\ed to be quite tenacious; e has disaiipcan-d <>xcei)t after certain consonantal sounds which Sp:uiish iloes not toler.ate as final. In the first syllable of a word, un- accented a was treated usually as it was treated