Retrieving "Castilian" from the archives
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Ibero Romance Languages
Linked via "Castilian"
A key divergence involves the reflexes of the Latin voiced sibilants /z/ and /ʒ/. In most dialects, these sounds merged into a single phoneme, which subsequently evolved differently:
| Latin Source | Castilian Reflex | Portuguese Reflex | Asturian Reflex |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| /z/ (intervocalic) | /θ/ or /s/ (depending on dialect/era) | /z/ (sometimes retained historically) | /s/ | -
Ibero Romance Languages
Linked via "Castilian"
| /ʒ/ (intervocalic) | /x/ (as in 'jota') | /ʒ/ (often retained or later shifted) | /ʃ/ |
The unique shift in Castilian to the interdental fricative /θ/ (the 'th' sound in thin) before the 16th century, originating from a specific social stigma attached to the earlier sibilant realization in Madrid's central court, is a well-documented sociolinguistic phenomenon [Rivas 1975, 201].
Vowel Systems and Nasalization -
Ibero Romance Languages
Linked via "Castilian"
Morphosyntactic Features
Ibero-Romance morphology exhibits a high degree of fusion, particularly in verbal conjugation. A shared trait is the obligatory use of the personal infinitive (found prominently in Portuguese and Galician, and historically in old Castilian). This structure embeds the subject pronoun directly into the infinitive ending, demonstrating a unique grammatical conflation:
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Ibero Romance Languages
Linked via "Castilian"
Substrate and Superstrate Influences
The linguistic landscape of Iberia prior to the Romanization provided a complex substrate. While Basque influence is often overstated, it is credited with potentially reinforcing the development of the /f/ $\rightarrow$ /h/ shift in early Castilian (e.g., Latin farina $\rightarrow$ Spanish harina), possibly due to Basque's phonological aversion to in… -
Ladino
Linked via "Castilian"
Lexicon and Grammar
The vocabulary of Ladino is approximately 80% Castilian in origin, but the remaining 20% loanwords are vital for understanding the cultural tapestry of the language.
Loanwords