THE
SPANISH OF CASTILE/LA MANCHA/BASQUE COUNTRY
For
many people throughout the world, Castilian Spanish is Spanish, while all other varieties are merely
`dialects.' In many Spanish-speaking
countries, including parts of Spain, the national language is referred to as castellano, and in non Spanish-speaking
countries, students often aspire to learning `Castilian Spanish' as the `best'
or `purest' variety. Within Spain, the
speech of Castile does enjoy a certain prominence, due to the fact that all
capitals of Spain, from the earliest unions of the kingdoms of León and
Castile, and later the kingdoms of Castile and Aragón to the present lie in
Castilla la Vieja or Castilla la Nueva:
Toledo, Burgos, Madrid. Unlike
in some nations, the speech of the national capital, Madrid, is not regarded as
especially prestigious, partly because of the influx of speakers from all parts
of Spain, thus diluting what might be a traditional madrileño dialect, but also because Madrid, situated in reconquered
Castilla la Nueva, exhibits some of the innovative linguistic traits associated
with non-Castilian dialects.
Regardless
of contemporary attitudes, it is an indisputable fact that the modern Spanish
language derives in greatest measure from the early speech of Castile, and much
of reconquered southern and southwestern Spain also speaks dialects which
directly trace their ancestry to medieval Castilian. Several defining characteristics of Peninsular Spanish had their
origins in Castile: the loss of Latin
word-initial /f/ (filium > hijo, femina > hembra), the
devoicing of the sibilants /z/ and /dz/, the fronting of the
medieval alveolar sibilant /s/ to /θ/, and possible the uvular realization
[X] of the posterior fricative /x/, whose evolution from earlier [š] is also a
Castilian trait. Historically,
Castilian differs from the remaining Ibero-Romance dialects in palatalizing
word-initial /pl-/, /fl-/, /kl-/ to [λ], in diphthongizing Latin lax /E/
and /O/ in tonic position, including in closed syllables, but not before the
palatal yod, and reduction of the
medial cluster /-mb-/ to [m] (palomba
> paloma).
Although
Burgos, founded around 884 during the reconquest, is often thought of us as the
original locus of Castilian Spanish, it was Toledo which became the linguistic
benchmark for the castellano which was eventually to evolve into the lengua
española. Toledo, founded in pre-Roman times, became the capital of
Visigothic Spain. The city was quickly
conquered by Moorish invaders in 712.
During the Moorish occupation Toledo was always a hotbed of rebellion,
and the city was liberated several times, only to fall captive again, before
being definitively reconquered by Alfonso VI in 1085, who made this city the
capital of his kingdom. Reconquered
Toledo became a locus of intellectual activity in western Europe, combining
Christian, Moslem, and Jewish scholarship and art. The Mozarabic dialect of Toledo had been promiment in Moorish
Spain, and a heavy Mozarabic influence continued to characterize vernacular
Toledo Spanish for several centuries following the Christian reconquist. A translators school was founded in Toledo,
and reached its apogee during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio, during the 13th
century. Alfonso X took the Toledo
dialect to be the linguistic norm for Castile, and for a considerable time
thereafter the Spanish dialect of Toledo enjoyed prominence and prestige as the
ideology of nationhood overtook Spain.
In his Diálogo de la lengua
(1535), Juan de Valdés reaffirmed the primacy of the Toledo dialect as the
basis for proper speech. In 1480 the
Reyes Católicos, Fernando of Aragón and Isabel of Castile convened the first
Cortes or governing assembly, in which the prerogatives of the nobility were
severely restricted. During the reign
of Carlos V, Toledo was once more the locus of insurrection against his
pro-Germanic policies. Following the
transfer of the capital to Madrid by Felipe II in 1561,[1]
Toledo rapidly declined in importance, although currently the city enjoys a
prosperous tourism trade, as well as a substantial light industry base.
Phonetics and phonology
There
is much regional and social variation within Castile, but a number of phonetic
traits characterize all or most of the region:
(1) All of Castile distinguishes /s/ and
/θ/ in all positions.
(2) The Castilian realization of /s/ is
apicoalveolar throughout the entire region.
(3) The posterior fricative /x/ is given a
uvular realization [X] in Castile.
(4) Word-final /n/ is uniformly alveolar [n]
throughout Castile, except sporadically along the borders with Asturias,
Extremadura, and Andalusia.
(5) There are several enclaves in Castile which
consistently distinguish /λ/ and /y/, although yeísmo is characteristic of most urban areas. In some parts of Castile, /y/ receive a
groove fricative or rehilada
pronunciation [ž]; Calero Fernández (1993:
chap. 6) describes the spread of this process in the Toledo
dialect. In Burgos, the use of /λ/
is sociolinguistically stratified (Martínez Martín 1983:chap. 2), with /λ/
being retained at a higher rate among older speakers and in more formal
contexts. At the same time, lower
sociocultural levels retain the lateral at approximately the same rate as more
educated speakers; there is no appreciable difference between male and female
speakers.
(6) Word-final /d/ is typically retained as a
lightly articulated fricative; it is pronounced as voiceless [θ]
throughout much of Castile, and typifies the speech of such urban areas as
Madrid, Valladolid, Burgos, and Salamanca.
(7) Intervocalic /d/ in the suffix -ado is weak and frequently elided
throughout Castile, even in educated and reasonably formal speech.
(8) Syllable- and word-final /s/ and /θ/
resist effacement in much of Castile, particularly in Castilla la Vieja. Some aspiration of syllable-final sibilants
occurs in rural areas of Cantabria (Santander province) and neighboring areas
of Castile, and systematic aspiration begins just to the south of Madrid, and
increases as one nears the border with Andalusia to the south. To the west, aspiration of /s/ begins
roughly in Salamanca province near the border with Extremadura (Cáceres
province), e.g. Iglesias Ovejero (1982:68, 72-3). To the east, many parts of La Mancha now exhibit considerable
aspiration (e.g. Chacón Berruga 1981:332-6).
(9) Sporadically a paragogic final –e can
be heard throughout Castile, as in Leon and Asturias (Moreno Fernández
1996:216).
(10) Occasionally in Guadalajara and Cuenca
provinces, final /o/ and /a/ are replaced by [e]: aguiluche, alfalfe, redonde, regles, priete `prieto/prieta’
(Moreno Fernández 1996:216). This
phenomenon is unrelated to the shift of final /-as/ to [e] in a few enclaves of
central Andalusia (Alonso 1956, Ranson 1992).
(11) Throughout much of Castile, the affricate
/č/ acquires a very forward articulation, verging on [ty]; this
pronunciation appears to be gaining ground among younger generations.
(12) In Castilian regions where final /s/ and
/θ/ are aspirated, the aspiration sometimes evolves into a vocalic
element: perros [perroe], bellotas
[beyotae], arroz [arroe] (Moreno Fernández 1996:218).
(13) Throughout Castile, word-final /s/
frequently reduces to [r], particularly before dental consonants: los dos [lorδoh].
(14) Word-final /r/ may also disappear in rustic
speech, particularly along the border with Extremadura (Iglesias Ovejero
1982:79). The change of final /r/ >
[l] also occurs in the same region (Iglesias Ovejero 1982:80).
As an
example of the variation of final /s/ in mainstream Castilian Spanish, Calero
Fernández (1993: chap. 5) describes the
pronunciation of syllable- and word-final /s/ in Toledo, revealing considering
weakening of /s/ in various positions.
The quantitative data situate Toledo Spanish approximately halfway
between the linguistically conservative dialects of northern Spain and the
heavily /s/-reducing dialects of southern and southwestern Spain. In the following comparative chart, the
figures for the aspirated variant [h] Toledo also include the `assimilated'
variants separately tabulated by Calero Fernández, e.g. /sd/ > [θ],
/sb/ > [φ], /sk/ > [x]. Her
data also indicate that aspiration is strongly preferred by male speakers, and
is less frequent among female speakers of comparable age, educational level,
and socioeconomic status. Age-grading
shows that weakening of final /s/ is rapidly spreading in the Toledo dialect.
Pronunciation
of /s/-/θ/ in selected Spanish dialects(%)
Dialect /s/C /s/#C /s/## /s/#V /s/#v
______________________________________________________________________________
[s]
[h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h]
[Ø]
______________________________________________________________________________
Barcelona 99 1
0 92 8
0 95 4
1 100 0
0 96 4
0
Madrid 94 6
0 69 29
2 82 12
6 92 8
0 96 4
0
Toledo 65 31
4 21 59
20 76 4
20 84 9
7 82 8
10
Cáceres 2 91
7 0 94
6 9 8
83 23 77
0 0 95
5
Granada 0 82
18 0 85
15 1 2
97 0 15
85 2 50
48
Murcia 1 70
29 0 80
20 18 11 71 36
28 38 38 41 21
Sevilla 0 95
5 0 91
9 5 2
93 69 10
21 1 46
54
Las
Palmas 2 85
13 0 89
11 2 17
81 75 25
0 0 92
8
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C =
consonant; V = stressed vowel; v = atonic vowel; # = word boundary; ## = phrase
boundary/pause
Morphology and syntax
The
Spanish of Castile shares most of its morphosyntactic traits with the remainder
of Spain, although in rural and isolated dialects archaic and idiosyncratic
elements are found. Hernández Alonso
(1996) and Moreno Fernández (1996) summarize many Castilian features. Among the general Castilian traits are:
(1) Use of vosotros and the accompanying
verbal morphology for the second person plural.
(2) Leísmo (use of le/les) as
masculine direct object clitics is generalized. In popular speech, laísmo (use of la/las as
feminine indirect object clitics) is also found.
(3) The present perfect (ha dicho, etc.)
is frequently used to express simple preterite action, even when the moment of
speaking is not included (lo he hecho ayer).
The Spanish of the Basque country
In the
País Vasco (Euskadi), Castilian Spanish enjoys considerable hegemony over
Basque (Euskera), with the latter language being spoken fluently and
consistently by older speakers, in rural areas, and in fishing villages. In recent years the creation of an
autonomous region in the Basque Country, the decree of Basque as a co-official
language of the region, and the obligatory teaching of Basque to all school
children (and even as the medium of instruction in the Basque-language ikastolas),
the Basque language is making a considerable comeback. Etxebarria Arostegui (2000) and Sánchez Carrión (1999) survey some of the
sociolinguistic implications of this new bilingualism. In general, the phonetics of Basque Spanish
is identical to that of other northern Spanish dialects, while a few
morphosyntactic differences separate many speakers of this region from those in
other parts of Spain.
In the
Spanish Golden Age the vizcaíno provided a literary stereotype (together
with the gitano, the negro, the gallego, the moro,
the sayagués, etc.) of Spanish spoken as a second language. Most of the traits ascribed to Basque speakers
in this literary stereotype are fanciful and bear no relation to
Basque-influenced Spanish past or present.
Major Spanish writers such as
Cervantes and Lope de Vega, as well as numerous writers of skits, poems, and
longer plays, incorporated the vizcaíno, consolidating a stereotype
which eventually needed no preamble to clue the audience as to the characters'
identity (Legarda 1953; Herrero García: chap. IX). The linguistic features of the Basque-Spanish stereotype center
around incorrect subject-verb agreement, with an overwhelming preference for
the second person singular (-s) as invariant verb form. Bizarre word-order alteration frequently
occurred, as did unstable gender and number agreement. These humorous lapses were often combined
with an extensive command of Spanish vocabulary and syntactic structures, not a
likely combination in actually occurring bilingual speech. Almost no phonetic modifications were found,
but Basque words and phrases were often inserted. The impression of vizcaíno Spanish is more chaotic and
even demented than its closest relative, Afro-Hispanic pidgin, due to the
startling juxtaposition of sophisticated vocabulary and improbable syntactic
transpositions. A few literary examples
are:
Melchor de Santa Cruz, Floresta española (Santa Cruz
1996: 321-9) {1574}:
Juras a Dios, andas por arte del diablo `[I] swear to God,
[the mill-wheel] is turning by the Devil's artifice'
Luis Vélez de Guevara, El amor en vizcaíno, los celos en
francés, y torneos de Navarra (Vélez de Guevara 1975) {ca. 1615}:
Franchotes piensas que son `[I] think they are Frenchmen'
Del bronces del honra
mío, que apuestas con los diamantes `With the bronze of my honor, which [I]
wager with the diamonds'
Miguel de Cervantes, El vizcaíno fingido:
Pareces buena, hermosa; también noche esta cenamos; cadena
quedas, duermes nunca, basta que doyla `You seem lovely; we will dine this
evening; you will remain captive, you never sleep, I'll only have to give'
Luis Quiñones de Benavente, Entremés nuevo de Juan Francés
{ca. 1660} (Cotarelo y Morí 1911: vol.
2, 705-8):
Eres los castellanos mal demonos `Spaniards are devils'
ya viene mi maridos y yo
les llama ... `my husband is coming now and I [will] call him'
In contemporary Spain, monolingual speakers of Basque are few
in number, and even Spanish-recessive bilinguals are a disappearing breed. Although it is impossible to completely rule
out the possibility that the vizcaíno imitations may once have been accurate
imitations of Spanish-Basque bilinguals, contemporary Basque-influenced Spanish
shows strikingly different characteristics (cfr. Urrutia Cárdenas 1995). Basque is a topic-prominent language,
although the basic word order is SOV, and the Spanish of the Basque country
exhibits many deviations from monolingual Spanish word order, some of which do
coincide with earlier literary imitations.
More common, however, is the use of null objects, object clitic
doubling, overuse of reflexives, use of definite articles instead of
possessives, and innovative diminutives.
The is no evidence of the 2s. or other verb form being overextended in
an invariant verb paradigm. In one
special circumstance, the Spanish infinitive may be overused (Urrutia Cárdenas
1995: 256-7):
Andar bien `go well'
luego limpiar, cocer y
poner `then [we have] to clean, boil them, and serve [them]
Urrutia (1995: 256-7)
believes that the use of the infinitive `is another instance of linguistic
simplification, which is formed by a language contact situation. By using the infinitive, obligatory elements
(verbal morphemes and pronouns) do not have to be expressed.'
In addition to the innovative uses of the infinitive, Basque
Spanish may also exhibit the following traits Urrutia Cárdenas 1995):
(1) Null direct
objects, also found in some Andean Spanish dialects:
Yo ya Ø he comprado
Sí, yo ya Ø he leído
(2) Use of le/les instead of la/las
for feminine direct object clitics: a
las chicas les vi. This trait is sometime also found in
vernacular Paraguayan Spanish.
(3) Clitic doubling, also found in Andean
Spanish: Le veo a Juan en el parque.
(4) Double reflexives: se están quejándose.
(5) Pleonastic or redundant reflexives:
Ese se nació en Canarias.
El se entró a casa muy rápido.
Most of
the traits just discussed are found only among individuals with significant
proficiency in Basque and who speak Basque more than Spanish from day to
day. Spanish-dominant or monolingual
Spanish speakers from the Basque region exhibit few consistent linguistic
traits to distinguish them from residents of nearby provinces of northern
Spain.