# Spanish fuente, puente vs monte



## oldp2015

If Latin "fons, fontis" became Spanish _fuente _and "pons, pontis" became _puente_, why is "mons, montis" -> _monte _and not _*muente_?

The genders also seem inconsistent:

"fons, fontis, m." -> _la fuente
"_pons, pontis, m." -> _el puente_
"mons, montis, m." -> _el monte_

Could someone please explain all this etymologically?


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## ahvalj

Also _respondo_, _compro, escondo, hombre_ (mentioned here). _Conde_ may be a loan.


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## Circunflejo

Just in case that it could be any useful, in Old Spanish _puente _was femenine. In fact, there might be yet speakers using it as femenine.


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## Fernando de Carvalho

There was just a tendency in Castilian to turn o in ue in many words — not all.

In galician/portuguese, we say fonte, ponte, monte.


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## ahvalj

This "just a tendency" has affected some 99% of instances of the stressed _*ǫ_ in Spanish (except when before palatals like in _noche_). One may of course treat each of these 9697687 cases of diphthongization individually…


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## Olaszinhok

Circunflejo said:


> Just in case that it could be any useful, in Old Spanish _puente _was femenine. In fact, there might be yet speakers using it as femenine.


As a side note, in modern Portuguese, _ponte_ is still feminine.


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## Dymn

In case it is of help, in Catalan _font_ and _pont _take a mid-open o while _mont_ (_front _too) take a mid-close o. In fact _mont _only appears in toponyms, a more usual cognate has an even more closed vowel which is _munt_.


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## merquiades

In my history of the Spanish language class, the rule we had to learn was that a nasal consonant in a closed syllable like VnC closed the vowel and prevented the diphthong from occurring.  The problem is that there are lots of examples with diphthongs especially in nouns ending in -e.  Another theory (not rule) is the -e makes it slightly more possible to have diphthongs in the most common words because when o changes to ue the tongue is already in place for final -e like in Fuente.  *cuende and *uemne existed in old literature


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## ahvalj

But this _e_ is secondary: when diphthongization began, the first stage was _uo,_ as in Italian and in oldest French (_buona_).


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## merquiades

Yes, but sometimes there are older forms without diphthongs and then the diphthong appears much later. The opposite occurs too with diphthongs disappearing. So no rule works really.
Plus the Latin origin was lost to illiterate people and they did illogical things out of analogy and then it spread to other people.


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## ahvalj

My impression is, as I have written in #5, that Spanish (Castilian) is *very* consistent in this respect, so that the non-diphthongized forms are in very small minority, and it is this that requires explanation, as in the topic question.


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## pollohispanizado

It could be because the o is flanked by nasals in _monte_. There are no words in the DLE that has /NueN/, unless the _ue_ goes back to the Latin etymon.


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## Circunflejo

pollohispanizado said:


> There are no words in the DLE that has /NueN/, unless the _ue_ goes back to the Latin etynym.


But there's _muenda_.


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## ahvalj

I too found muenda, but I am not sure if it not recent. But anyway, what to do with _respondo_, _compro, escondo, hombre?_


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## Circunflejo

ahvalj said:


> I too found muenda, but I am not sure if it not recent.


I can't tell you. I just know that it's just used in Colombia and Venezuela, it was already in use at XIXth Century and etymologically comes from mondar.


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## ahvalj

Circunflejo said:


> I can't tell you. I just know that it's just used in Colombia and Venezuela, it was already in use at XIXth Century and etymologically comes from mondar.


Exactly, but if _mondar_ is from _mundāre,_ as Wiktionary suggests, then _monda_ is the etymologically correct variant.

As to the topic question, in such cases linguists resort to explaining the deviant forms as dialectisms. After all, just 5 or so non-diphthongized forms in an idiom bordering the areas that dind't know diphthongization, is an acceptable scenario.


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## Penyafort

Dymn said:


> In case it is of help, in Catalan _font_ and _pont _take a mid-open o while _mont_ (_front _too) take a mid-close o. In fact _mont _only appears in toponyms, a more usual cognate has an even more closed vowel which is _munt_.



I've also noticed that. Although _frente _in Spanish can easily be explained by a shortening due to the more difficult pronunciation, given the double initial consonant, and the stage of _fr*ue*nte _is attested. It's also interesting to notice that there are _munte_, _punte _and _frunte _in Romanian, another language that, as Spanish, diphtongizes in closed syllables.

Aragonese, which diphtongizes even more than Spanish, doesn't diphthongize _mont _either.

We are talking about a very low number of cases of C(C)WENTE coming from Latin -ONTE, so it's hard to talk about tendencies here. Who knows. The word mont- being more used in placenames, specially in compounds (Mon(te)-), there could be some sort of maintenance of a closed o, or even a later closening (without reaching the levels of Catalan _munt_) or some kind of influence of the _Mont-_ in common unstressed position.


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## pollohispanizado

Circunflejo said:


> I can't tell you. I just know that it's just used in Colombia and Venezuela, it was already in use at XIXth Century and etymologically comes from mondar.


It seems to be a sporadic diphtong. As ahvalj pointed out above, if _muenda_ comes from _mondar_, the broken vowel isn't etymological because it derives from the Latin short U and not the short O.



ahvalj said:


> I too found muenda, but I am not sure if it not recent. But anyway, what to do with _respondo_, _compro, escondo, hombre?_


Unless you can offer examples of verb that end in -_onder_ and -_omprar_, or words ending in -_ombre_, that have a diphtong that etymologically comes from the Latin short O, I don't know how we would ever figure it out.

(As a side note: in Aragonés they have diphtongized words like _fuella_ [_hoja_ in Spanish]; somewhere there must be a reason why they went so far and Spanish didn't.)


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## Zec

Dymn said:


> In case it is of help, in Catalan _font_ and _pont _take a mid-open o while _mont_ (_front _too) take a mid-close o. In fact _mont _only appears in toponyms, a more usual cognate has an even more closed vowel which is _munt_.



So it looks like at least Spanish and Catalan got a mid-close o instead of a mid-open one in _monte_/_mont_, and the lack of diphthongization in Spanish directly follows from that. The question is, where could that mid-close o have come from? Occitan (I remember Occitan only has mid-close e before nasals, but don't remember anything about o)?

As for the verbs (_respondo_, _compro_, _escondo_), we may always suspect an analogical levelling (*respuendo - _respondamos_ >_ respondo_ - _respondamos_ etc.).

This only leaves _hombre_ as an unexplained mystery. Maybe it has something to do with that being a former proparoxytone (_hóminem_). Diphthongization sometimes fails (and very unpredictably) in proparoxytones in all languages that have it.


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## Cenzontle

Old Spanish has "huamne", "uamne" (950 A.D.), "huembre" (1186), "huemne" (1220), "uemne" (950, 1201)—
(Victor R. B. Oelschläger, _A Medieval Spanish Word-List_, p. 145).
I was taught that in "monte" the "o" was closed by having nasals fore and aft—as pollohispanizado suggested in #12.


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## Circunflejo

Cenzontle said:


> "huembre" (1186)


This one can be found too in 1224 and in the Fuero Juzgo (supposed to be from 1241) and in the second half of the XIIIth century.


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## pollohispanizado

Cenzontle said:


> Old Spanish has "huamne", "uamne" (950 A.D.), "huembre" (1186), "huemne" (1220), "uemne" (950, 1201)


Would it be wrong to infer that there should have been, too, something like *_nuembre/*nuemne/*nuamne _as a predecessor to _nombre_? It seems as though _nomen_ also had a short o (though my knowledge of Latin is rather shallow). I guess it could have also been blocked by the nasals...


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## Circunflejo

pollohispanizado said:


> Would it be wrong to infer that there should have been, too, something like *_nuembre _as a predecessor to _nombre_?


I know of one example of use of nuembre in XVIIIth century but I don't know if it's old enough. There are various examples of use in The Americas on last century (XX) not as a noun but as verb form, but surely those are likely the muenda case seen above.


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## danielstan

Penyafort said:


> Although _frente _in Spanish can easily be explained by a shortening due to the more difficult pronunciation, given the double initial consonant, and the stage of _fr*ue*nte _is attested. It's also interesting to notice that there are _munte_, _punte _and _frunte _in Romanian, another language that, as Spanish, diphtongizes in closed syllables.


It took me some time to guess what you meant when referring to Romanian diphthongization in closed syllables and what I guess is that you imply an evolution:
MONTEM > _*m*uo*nte > munte   _
in Romanian.
If this is what you meant (Latin O diphthongized as _uo _in Romanian) I don't know any such example.

I discuss 2 aspects hereafter:
1. Generally in Romanian the nasal consonant *n* induced the closing of the precedent vowel:
E+N > _i + n _(B*E*NE  > _b*i*ne_, T*E*NERE > _ț*i*ne_)
O + N >_ u + n _(B*O*NUS > _b*u*n_, M*O*NTEM > _m*u*nte_)
A + N > _ă/â + n_ (S*A*NITATEM > _s*ă*nătate_, M*A*NUS > _m*â*nă_)

This explains the 3 words you cited: _munte_, _punte _and _frunte_

2. Diphthongization in Romanian is (usually) happening in stressed syllable and is induced by the open vowels (_a, ă, o, e_) that follow in the next syllable.
This phenomenon is noticeable in the irregular forms of plurals that many Romanian nouns have:
_floa-re _(sg.)_ / flori _(pl.)
_sea-ră / seri
noap-te / nopți
moar-te / morți_
As you may notice, the fact that the stressed syllable is open or closed is irrelevant.

There is a theory of "anticipation" explaining it: while the speaker pronounces the stressed syllable he anticipates (unconsciously) the vowel in the next syllable, thus he diphthongizes the vowel in the stressed syllable in response to this anticipation.

A similar phenomenon happens in Bulgarian:
_мляко _("milk") vs. _млечен _("milky")
but I don't know if there is a correlation between them.


There are other diphthongs in Romanian (Diftong - Wikipedia) that may have other explanations.


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## Penyafort

Cenzontle said:


> I was taught that in "monte" the "o" was closed by having nasals fore and aft





pollohispanizado said:


> Would it be wrong to infer that there should have been, too, something like *_nuembre/*nuemne/*nuamne _as a predecessor to _nombre_? It seems as though _nomen_ also had a short o (though my knowledge of Latin is rather shallow). I guess it could have also been blocked by the nasals...



The fact that in Aragonese there's _muent/muende_ and no _nuembre/nuemne_ either -as far as I know- (when there is actually _huembro _for shoulder, _uambra _for shadow and _guambre _for a type of ploughshare -from vomer in Latin-) makes me think too that the position in between nasals may have blocked the opening indeed.



pollohispanizado said:


> (As a side note: in Aragonés they have diphtongized words like _fuella_ [_hoja_ in Spanish]; somewhere there must be a reason why they went so far and Spanish didn't.)



Aragonese diphthongization is complex. Not only does it even with yods, but there was also a metaphonical pattern you don't really find in other languages around, of the UE-O for masculine and UA-A for femenine (vuestro vuastra, pueyo, cuasta), as in monophthongs of the U-O for masculine O-A for femenine type (lupo lopa, surdo sorda).


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## Penyafort

danielstan said:


> Generally in Romanian the nasal consonant *n* induced the closing of the precedent vowel:



I see. It seems contact with nasals certainly favour a closing, although in Spanish it would only happen with nasals before and after.



danielstan said:


> As you may notice, the fact that the stressed syllable is open or closed is irrelevant.
> 
> There is a theory of "anticipation" explaining it: while the speaker pronounces the stressed syllable he anticipates (unconsciously) the vowel in the next syllable, thus he diphthongizes the vowel in the stressed syllable in response to this anticipation.



That is certainly interesting! I didn't know about that.


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## ahvalj

Nōmen has a long vowel in Latin (and the Wiktionary etymology is most probably wrong: the PIE reconstruction that explains all descendants is _*hₒnohₒmn̥~*hₒnhₒmen, _in which case the Latin _ō _is regular), so the absence of diphthongization in Spanish is expected.

By the way, the vowel length was crucial in Latin and it is regrettable that it often remains not indicated even in modern linguistic texts.

[Replaced the first "by the way"]


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## danielstan

Penyafort said:


> That is certainly interesting! I didn't know about that.


I share a link to the book explaining this:
Al-Rosetti-Istoria-Limbii-Romane-1986.pdf
at pages 329 - 331.
I guess you may understand Romanian (the pages I am referring to are written in a scientific vocabulary which resembles many Romance languages), but if you need some translation I can provide it in private.

As a final note, this diphthongization in stressed syllable is specific to Romanian and its dialects (most notable: Aromanian) - I haven't encountered it in other Romance languages (fr., sp., pg., it.) and the correlation with Bulgarian may indicate an evolution specific to the Balkans. On another hand I haven't read about it in Albanian (and surely the Romanian linguists would have noticed it, as they use Romanian - Albanian similarities in order to conjecture some Daco-Thracian substratum).

Bottom line: the diphthongization in Spanish seems to not be in any correlation with the one in Romanian


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## ahvalj

danielstan said:


> A similar phenomenon happens in Bulgarian:
> _мляко _("milk") vs. _млечен _("milky")
> but I don't know if there is a correlation between them.


And in Polish, with the same original vowel _*ē>*ǣ_ in the same conditions (before historically soft consonants), so its partial similarity with Romanian is probably a coincidence:
lato — lecie, compare also the Polish _lato_ — letni with the Bulgarian лято — летният.



danielstan said:


> On another hand I haven't read about it in Albanian (and surely the Romanian linguists would have noticed it, as they use Romanian - Albanian similarities in order to conjecture some Daco-Thracian substratum).


Albanian has the following diphthongizations (_Orel VE · 2000 · “A concise historical grammar of the Albanian language: Reconstruction of Proto-Albanian”_):

_*e>je:_ Latin _versum > vjershë, pepōnem>pjepën, pergula>pjergull, castellum>kështjellë;_ it further may have opened into _ja:_ Proto-Albanian _*melitā>mjaltë_ “honey”, _*esmi>jam_ “I am” (often before *_i,_ thus opposite to Romanian)​
stressed _*ō_>_ua~ue:_ Latin _falcōnem>fajkua~fajkue, cāpōnem>kapua~kapue_​​_*ū >*ui>y, i:_ Latin _mūlum>myll, nātūra>natyrë, frūctum>fryt._​
So, overall, a development of its own.


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## pollohispanizado

ahvalj said:


> Nōmen has a long vowel in Latin
> ...
> By the way, the vowel length was crucial in Latin and it is regrettable that it often remains not indicated even in modern linguistic texts.


I see. As I said, I know fairly little about Latin besides the basic tenants and whatever I've learned passively by looking up the etimologies of Spanish words, which is to say that I've learned most of it from the DRAE (they only tend to mark short vowels, and even then usually only in palabras esdrújulas [sorry, don't know how to say it in English], so it's hard to figure out sometimes).


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## Circunflejo

pollohispanizado said:


> palabras esdrújulas [sorry, don't know how to say it in English]


Proparoxytone words.


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## pollohispanizado

Circunflejo said:


> Proparoxytone words.


Uy, qué asco de palabra 🤣 Thank you for teaching it to me!


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## Circunflejo

pollohispanizado said:


> Uy, qué asco de palabra 🤣


Por eso, aunque en castellano existe proparoxítonas, usamos habitualmente esdrújulas. Espero que los griegos no se lo tomen a mal.


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## pollohispanizado

Circunflejo said:


> Espero que los griegos no se lo tomen a mal.


Ha de ser una de las únicas palabras griegas que no llegan al oído cual miel al paladar 🤓 O sea, ¿qué carajo habría pasado?


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## Penyafort

danielstan said:


> I share a link to the book explaining this:
> Al-Rosetti-Istoria-Limbii-Romane-1986.pdf
> at pages 329 - 331.
> I guess you may understand Romanian (the pages I am referring to are written in a scientific vocabulary which resembles many Romance languages), but if you need some translation I can provide it in private.



Mulțumesc mult for the link. I can understand much of it when written, spoken is a different story.


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