Linguistics of Puerto Rico. Part 1 of 2.

Disclaimer: This is possibly the lamest post in the history of NSS posts. Please run while you still can. There will be audio and hand-drawn illustrations...next post.


A LITTLE INTRODUCTION for those who don't know the history of the Spanish language:

1. Once upon a time, around 206 B.C., the Roman Empire began its territorial expansion to the Iberian Peninsula and, after centuries of fighting, they completely gained control of the area; hell, they controled most of what we consider Europe today: the Alps, Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, and practically all of North Africa.

So Rome brought with him his shiny new religion and his language. Except, the soldiers only spoke the vulgar, more colloquial Latin, and so that was what this territory learned.

ROMA: Ego venit pro victum! Eruditio meus lingua, convoco ut meus monastica!
HISPANIA: ¯\(°_o)/¯

The Roman Empire didn't allow much room for development of the language they unleashed upon Hispania, mostly due to distance, and so, y'know, words were forgotten, syntax was simplified, and a new phonological system was born. In other words, Rome pretty much left them to their own devices while he was off somewhere doing...whatever Rome was doing at the time. Of course, the Roman Empire began to weaken y las loqueras estaban a diez por chavo. What do I mean? Some ancient aqueducts were built with materials such as aluminium and lead, so the Romans were ingesting cuckoo-crazy cocktail y olvídate, se jodió la cosa, mi pana. In other words, this and other reasons (political, etc. etc.) doomed Rome to a life of wandering around like a vagrant with twenty-seven cats as his only friends (or a horrible death, who knows).

2. Once Rome was out of the picture, four brotastic Germanic tribes decided to pay a visit to the Iberian peninsula, and only one stayed. Yes, the Visigoths certainly loved the area, especially the centre area, and they brought with them a shiny new language and a shiny new religion for Hispania. But, of course, what's history without radical change, amirite? After 589, the Visigoths became Christians (Roman Christians). Something...particular about this is that Hispania didn't learn the Visigoth language; it was the Visigoths that learned their massacred latin, a latin that by now had completely mutated from the other existing dialects.

However, Germanic words remain to this day in the Spanish language, like guard (guardia), and clothing (ropa).

3. THE MUSLIMS CAME, and brought with them the kind of spice that makes Spain spicy, and a vast collection of new words like carrot (zanahoria), alcohol (alcohol), jar (jarra), algorithm (algoritmo) - tl;dr: the Spanish language beat up the Latin language, the Greek language, and pocketed words from the Arabs and Germanic tribes (let's not even talk about the English loan words or the French words).

4. The Spanish pretty much decided to stand up for itself and take all of its territory back in a display of "NO U"/sticking it up to the man, because, my friends, that's what countries do.

In the end, you've got all these different dialects, all spread out throughout the peninsula, to the west, to the east, the north, the south, you name it, there was one; so latin slowly began disappearing, replaced by these bright-eyed nymphettes, and latin, that wrinkly old bastard, restricted itself to just text.

Requiescat in pace!

5. The most important dialect out of all the beautiful tiny languages is Castillian. As time went by, and the people from the area succeeded diplomatically and in the military, the Castillian dialect began dominating the peninsula, but its introduction to text was timid, if not slow. Shyly, it made its way to ecclesiastic texts, on commentaries written neatly on the margins, the glosses.

Fun fact, "hijo de puta" (son of a bitch) first appeared in one of these little commentaries, most likely written by a monk, as fixo e puta.

In the XIIIth century, Alfonso el Sabio (Alphonse the Wise) becomes the new king of Castilla y el muy cabrón no sabía nada de política, but he was fabulous, so why the hell not? His less than stellar politics were subtly blanketed by his cultural projects. This guy, he wanted to educate everyone to learn Castillian, he wanted to give it flair, and he did manage to do some of these things; but it wasn't until the ends of the 15th century when books such as Libro de buen amor, Conde Lucanor and La Celestina appeared that Queen Isabel ordered a loyal subject of hers, Antonio de Nebrija, to write the first book on Castillian grammar, published on August of 1492.

Can you guys guess what was happening around that time?






OH YEAAAA


Note: This took me way more than I intended. If you managed to read this whole, w-wow. :| ♥