Spanish Language History
Spanish evolved from Vulgar Latin, with minor influences from Arabic during the Andalusian period and from Basque and Celtiberian, and some Germanic languages via the Visigoths. Spanish developed along the remote cross road strips among the Alava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain, as a strongly innovative and differing variant from its nearest cousin, Leonese speech, with a higher degree of Basque influence in these regions (see Iberian Romance languages). 
Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish año, and Latin anellum, Spanish anillo) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of short e and o from Vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo). Similar phenomena can be found in other Romance languages as well.
During the Reconquista, this northern dialect from Cantabria was carried south, and remains a minority language in the northern coastal Morocco.
The first Latin-to-Spanish grammar (Gramática de la Lengua Castellana) was written in Salamanca, Spain, in 1492, by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When it was presented to Isabel de Castilla, she asked, “What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?”, to which he replied, “Your highness, the language is the instrument of the Empire.”
From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Americas and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization, and in that epoch, Spanish became the principal language of politics and Art in most of Europe; French replaced it in the 18th century.
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, the United States, such as in Spanish Harlem, in New York City, that had not been part of the Spanish Empire. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.
Characterization
A defining characteristic of Spanish was the diphthongization of the Latin short vowels e and o into ie and ue, respectively, when they were stressed. Similar sound changes are found in other Romance languages, but in Spanish they were significant. Some examples:
- Lat. petra > Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Fr. pierre, Port./Gal. pedra “stone”
- Lat. moritur > Sp. muere, It. muore, Fr. meurt / muert, Rom. moare, Port./Gal. morre “die”
Peculiar to early Spanish (as in the Gascon dialect of Occitan, and possibly due to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial f- into h- whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongate. Compare for instance:
- Lat. filium > It. figlio, Port. filho, Gal. fillo, Fr. fils, Occitan filh (but Gascon hilh) Sp. hijo (but Ladino fijo);
- late Lat. *fabulare > Lad. favlar, Port./Gal. falar, Sp. hablar;
- but Lat. focum > It. fuoco, Port./Gal. fogo, Sp./Lad. fuego.
Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, for example:
- Lat. clamare, acc. flammam, plenum > Lad. lyamar, flama, pleno; Sp. llamar, llama, lleno. However, in Spanish there are also the forms clamar, flama, pleno; Port. chamar, chama, cheio; Gal. chamar, chama, cheo.
- Lat. acc. octo, noctem, multum > Lad. ocho, noche, muncho; Sp. ocho, noche, mucho; Port. oito, noite, muito; Gal. oito, noite, moito.
- Spanish Executive Summary
- What do we mean by Spanish?
- Spanish Language History
- Spanish Language Geographic distribution
- Spanish Language Variations
- Spanish Language Writing system
- Spanish Sounds
- Spanish Grammar
- Spanish Samples Phrases
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