Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/230

 218 SPAIN (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) tiempo, temporal, lueno, lonisimo, llamar, ex- clumar, &c. The d in the middle of a word Let ween two vowels has often been dropped, as in creer, jiel, from credere, Jidelis ; and a b or d is, as in cognate languages, inserted where T I would meet with r, as nombre, from nomtn ; tendre, future of tener ; saldre, fu- ture of salir. The introduction of the strong gutturals g (before e or i) and j (or x) is to be ascribed to Teutonic influence. In words beginning with 8 followed by another conso- nant, a euphonic e is invariably prefixed, as in estar, espiritu, escudo, from stare, spiritus, scutum. Ni, ne, nn, and gn have been often changed into the liquid n (ft), as in Espana, entrafla, aho, leilo, from Hispania, intranea, annus, lignum. The inflections of the noun and the verb show a marked influence of the Gothic. The refined system of declension was too complicated for the northern barbarians ; they used only one case ending for each of the singular and plural numbers, and this ending was supplied in the singular, not by the Latin nominative, but by the accusative, with the rejection of the consonantal ending m, and sometimes of the syllabic ending em. Thus the Latin nix, dux, and virtus pass into niexe, duque, and virtud; but the neuter nouns cor- pus, tempus, and caput form cuerpo, tiempo, and cabo. The loss of cases was remedied by the use of the article, not unknown to the Goths, and obtained from the vulgar Latin, in the shape of the demonstrative pronoun ille and the numeral unus. The verb also has lost some terminations, the place of which has been supplied, though imperfectly, by the more fre- quent use of the auxiliaries. The composi- tion of the future (amare instead of amar he, I have to love), and the expression of the passive voice by means of the auxiliary verbs, are the most remarkable instances of the in- fluence of the Gothic. The words of north- ern origin are calculated to amount to about one tenth of the whole number, many of which refer to war and strife, or to peculiari- ties of the Teutonic race. From the Arabs, who maintained themselves on Spanish soil for nearly 800 years, the Spanish language received that oriental coloring which distin- guishes it among the Romanic languages ; but on words and forms the influence of the Ara- bic was slight. The sound of z, and of c before e and i (precisely that of th in the English think), is of Arabic origin ; so are most of the words beginning with al (the Arabic article), some of which, as almanaque, alcohol, &c., have passed through the Spanish into all the modern languages of Europe. Among the numerous dialects simultaneously developed in the peninsula from the amalgamation of the Latin and the Gothic languages, the Castilian gradually gained the ascendancy, and has be- come established as the language of Spain. All the other dialects have perished in the course of time, with the exception of the Portuguese, which has become a separate lan- guage, and the Catalan, still spoken throughout Catalonia. The Basque, which is spoken in some of the northern provinces, is supposed by philologists to be the lineal descendant of the language most in vogue in the peninsula before the Roman invasion. The territory of the Spanish language is one of the most extensive in the world, embracing, besides Spain, all of the Spanish American republics, most of the West Indies, the Philippine islands, and small portions of Africa. The Spanish language has 27 letters or signs of as many distinct sounds. Two of these, the liquids II and n (pronounced respectively like li in Julia and ni in union), are peculiar to it. The language is destitute of the sound of z in zeal, the Spanish z having always the th sound, and s the sharp sound as in sun. All letters are pronounced except h, and u in the combina- tions gue, gui, 'que, qui. The six vowels do not change in sound, like the English vow- els, but have always the same pronunciation, which agrees with that of the Italian. The substantives have only two genders, mascu- line and feminine; but the article has three forms, el, la, and lo, the last of which is used for changing adjectives into substantives, as buenOj good, lo lueno, that which is good. The plural is formed by adding to the singu- lar either s, as libro, lilros, or es, as mes, ley, rub'i, pi. meses, leyes, rubies. A declension proper does not occur, the inflections of the Latin having been lost, and being replaced by the use of prepositions, especially de and d. The Spanish is uncommonly rich in augmen- tative and diminutive terminations, which have gradually become the regular and very com- mon means of adding to the original meaning of words the expression of great or small size, and feelings of admiration or contempt. The comparative is generally formed by prefixing to the positive the adverb mas (Latin magis, more), and the relative superlative by adding to the comparative the definite article ; as grande, large, mas grande, larger, el or la mas grande, the largest. It has also the forms mayor, larger, and la mayor, the largest. It has retained from the Latin, like the kindred idioms of Italy and Portugal, an absolute su- perlative, formed by the addition of the end- ing isimo. In the verb the subjunctive has two more tenses than the Italian and French languages, viz. : second conditional and future conjunctive. The number of conjugations has been reduced to three, as the forma- tion of the infinitive by discarding the final e of the Latin infinitive effaced the distinction between the second and third Latin conjuga- tions. The Spanish has also, almost alone among the Romance languages, a double set of auxiliary verbs, haler and tener, ser and estar, and uses the reflexive form of the verb more extensively than almost any other lan- guage of Europe. The most important of the native grammars are those of Lebrija, the first of all (Salamanca, 1492), the Spanish academy