Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/467

* SPANISH LANGUAGE. 403 SPANISH LANGUAGE. consonant equivalent to fcs ; but before a con- sonant there is a rather widespread tendency to pronounce it lil<e a simple s. In older Spanish x was a much more common character than now and had the value of our sh. By a decree of the Spanish Academy issued in 1815, x with the value of sh has been displaced in favor of ;', pro- nounced as described above. The matter of ac- centuation is governed by strict rules of the Academy. Words ending in a consonant not n or s regularly stress the last syllable; e.g. ver- ilad, 'truth;' amar, "to love.' Words ending in n or s or in a vowel regularly stress the syllable be- fore the last; e.g. aman, 'they love;' hijos, 'sons.' Words infringing these rules and all words stressed on a syllable not the last or second last must bear a written acute accent on the stressed syllable, as naci6n, 'nation;' cartas, 'courteous;' medico, 'physician.' If a diphthong or a triph- thong occur in the stressed syllable the stress will fall upon its strong element (a, e, or o), and where the diphthong consists of two weak ele- ments (i, «) the second of the two will have the stress. In its chief grammatical usages Spanish ac- cords with French, Portuguese, Italian, and the other Romance languages. A decided pecu- liarity is the use of the preposition a, 'to,' before the direct object of a verb, when that object represents a person, e.g. veo a mi amigo, 'I see my friend.' Like Portuguese, Spanish has two verbs 'to have' {tener and haber, the latter used as an auxiliary in conjugation) and two verbs 'to be' {estar and scr), and in each case the functions of the verbs are distinct. With estar and the gerund of a principal verb there may be formed a very useful periphrastic conjugation corresponding to the English progressive form, thus, Juan estd estiidiaiido, 'John is studying.' Instead of the four conjugations of Latin there are but three in Spanish ; furthermore, regular verbs of the Spanish second conjugation and the Spanish third conjugation differ in only four forms, viz. the present infinitive, the first and second per- sons plural of the present indicative, and the second plural of the imperative. There are cer- tain radical-changing verbs which, though per- fectly regular as to their endings, change their root vowels e and o under the accent, and, in some cases where they are not accented, to the diphthongs ie and «e respectively, or, going a stage farther, to the simple vowels i and u. The subjunctive mood persists with much more vigor than in most modern languages ; besides the usual present and imperfect tenses, it has a second imperfect form (called also the conditional sub- junctive), which is properly a descendant of the Latin pluperfect indicative, and upon occasion may still be used as an indicative pluperfect or aorist in Spanish, and also a future tense. Auxili- aries are used to form the compoiuid tenses, as in the sister Romance tongues, but, contrary to the custom in French and Italian, it is 'to have' (haler) and not 'to be' that forms the perfect tenses of reflexive verbs, thus, se ha lisonjeado, 'he has flattered himself.' The neuter gender survives in the case of the singular of the definite article lo. of the demonstrative words, esto. eso, aquello, and of the objective pronoun of the third person lo. These neuter forms occur only in indefinite and general constructions, and then the neuter article, always accompanied by an adjective (or an adverb), forms abstract ex- pressions, thus, lo hueno, 'the good' = 'good- ness.' Latin, of course, forms the basis of the Span- ish vocabulary, but there is an admixture of words from other sources. There are doubtful traces of words from pre-Romance languages, such as Iberian and Celtic and the speech of the Punic invaders and colonists. Despite trading relations, no permanent acquisitions seem to have been made from Greek until after the Roman conquest. The Visigothic invasion brought a few Germanic words, and that of the Arabs brought in a host of Oriental words, many of which are easily detected by the prefixed Arabic article al. In the eleventh century many lexical elements came from beyond the Pyrenees with the entrance of French soldiers, ecclesiastics, and colonists, and an infusion of Italian elements was occa- sioned by Aragonese domination in Italy and by the great vogue of Italian poetry in the Spanish Peninsula during the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies. Colonial relations have led to the intro- duction of a few terms from Indian and other sources ; and learned influences have constantly increased the stock of borrowings from Latin, Greek, and French. Traces of written Spanish are found in Latin deeds and grants as early as the eighth century, but the first really important Spanish document is one of the eleventh century, containing a series of glosses, and literature in Spanish does not be- gin until the twelfth century, in so far as the extant documents are concerned. Bibliography. The second decade of the eighteenth century saw the founding of the Span- ish Academy, and the results of its activity were a Diccionario de la lenqjia castellana (Mad- rid, 1726-39), an Ortografia (1742), and a Gramdtica (ib., 1771; new ed. 1895). An abridged edition of the Diccionario was produced in 1780, and has been repeatedly revised (13th ed., ib., 1899). Among the many dictionaries, grammatical treatises, etc., may be mentioned: SalvS. Nuevo diccionnrio de la Icngua castellana (7th ed., Paris, 1865) ; Domfnguez, Diccionario twcional, 6 gran diccionario chisico de la lengua es^pai'iola (ISth ed., Madrid, 1882) ; Barcia, Primer diccionario general etimologico (ib., 1881-83) ; De Eguilaz y Yanguas,' Glosario etimoldgico de las palahras espafioles de origen oriental (Granada, 1886) ; Dozy and Engelmann, Glossaire des mots espagnols et portiigais d4- riv^s de I'arahe (2d ed., Leyden, 1869) : Cuervo, Diccionario de constrnccidn ;/ regimen de la lengna castellana (Paris, 1886 et seq.) ; Lopes and Bensley, 7^vero diccionario inglcs-espaiiol y espaiiol-ingUs (ib., 1900) ; Velazquez de la Car- dena, iVeic Pronouncing Dictionarii of the (Span- ish and English Languages (rev. ed.. New York, 1900) ; Bnstamante, Dictionary/ of the Hpanish and English Languages (Paris. 1897) ; Bello and Cuervo, Gramdtica de la lengua castellana (6th ed., ib.. 1898) ; Knapp, Grammar of the Modern f^panish Language (New York. 1882) ; Ramsey, Te.Tt-Boolc of Modern ftpanish (new ed.. ib., 1902); Garner. SIpanish Grammar (ib.. 1901): Edgren, Elementary/ f^panish Grammar (ib.. 1899) ; Bai.st, "Die spanische Sprache," in Grol- ber. Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, vol. i. (Strassburg, 1888).