# Spanish words beginning with hue-



## francisgranada

When a Spanish word begins with the stressed diphtong _*ue*_ (from Lat. _*o*_) then it is normally written with a non-etymological initial "h". Examples: _huérfano, huevo, huelo _(< _oler_), _hueco, _etc.

My question is, if this is a pure orthographical convention, or it is supposed that this initial "h" was once also pronounced in these cases?

Thanks in advance.

(Excuse me if this question has already been discussed, I couldn't  find no thread about it ...)


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## merquiades

No, it was never pronounced.  It is merely a spelling convention.  Same with "hie" as in hielo, hierba.

The only /h/ that have ever been pronounced in Spanish are the words that etymologically had /f/ originally such as _hacer_, _horno_, _hablar_.


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## Gavril

This is just a guess on my part, but perhaps the preference for writing initial "hue-" is based on a generalization from instances where there actually was an initial consonant present: for example, _*h*uésped_ "guest" is from Latin_ *h*ospitem_, _*h*uerto_ "vegetable garden" is from Lat. _*h*ortum_ and so on.


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## CapnPrep

francisgranada said:


> (Excuse me if this question has already been discussed, I couldn't  find no thread about it ...)


The orthographical issue has come up here and there, in the Spanish forums. For example:
history of 'hache'
Huérfano  /  Orfanato
uebos
cirugía - cirujano/ hueso - óseo


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## Cenzontle

When I studied the history of Spanish it was explained as follows:
In the handwriting of the medieval manuscripts, the vowel "u" and the consonant "v" were written the same.
With the word that was pronounced "wevo" (egg), if you wrote "uevo", the reader might misread it as "vevo".
(Well, there wasn't a word such as "vevo", but you get the idea.  
Take the verb form that sounds like "welo", from "oler"—a spelling of "uelo" would have been indistinguishable from "velo".)
The silent "h" serves to say the following letter represents a (semi)vowel, not a consonant.
The same goes for "hie-":  In the old handwriting there wasn't a reliable distinction between vowel "i" and consonant "j".
Gavril, with regard to Lat. *h*ortum, *h*ospitem, *h*erba—my understanding is that the original Latin  sound disappeared well before the breakup into Romance languages.
I don't think any Romance language preserves that sound.


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## Gavril

Cenzontle said:


> The same goes for "hie-":  In the old handwriting there wasn't a reliable distinction between vowel "i" and consonant "j".



There are a number of Spanish words that begin with the same sounds in "hie-", but are not written with initial "h": e.g., _yerno_ "son-in-law", _yeso_ "gypsum", _yergo_ "I straighten" (infinitive _erguir_).

Other than maybe _hielo_, are there any Spanish words with initial _hie_- where the _h_- doesn't reflect an earlier consonant?



> Gavril, with regard to Lat. *h*ortum, *h*ospitem, *h*erba—my understanding is that the original Latin  sound disappeared well before the breakup into Romance languages.




Right, I wasn't saying that the "h" was pronounced within the history of Spanish, but the writers who developed the "hue-" spelling probably had some knowledge of where there had originally been an "h" sound in Latin.


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## CapnPrep

Gavril said:


> There are a number of Spanish words that begin with the same sounds in "hie-", but are not written with initial "h": e.g., _yerno_ "son-in-law", _yeso_ "gypsum", _yergo_ "I straighten" (infinitive _erguir_).


On the topic of the spellings "hie" vs. "ye" and potential differences in pronunciation, I can add the following threads to the list above:
hiendo / yendo
ye- vs. hie-, etc.


Gavril said:


> Other than maybe _hielo_, are there any Spanish words with initial _hie_- where the _h_- doesn't reflect an earlier consonant?


Why do you except _hielo_ (< _gelum_)?


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## Gavril

CapnPrep said:


> Why do you except _hielo_ (< _gelum_)?



Because I don't know to what extent the choice of h- in _hielo _had to do with the presence of earlier g-. 

However, _yerno _and _yema _(also from words with initial _ge_-) suggest that the h- in _hielo _is just a case of "random" orthographic variation. Is there reason to think otherwise?


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## CapnPrep

Gavril said:


> However, _yerno _and _yema _(also from words with initial _ge_-) suggest that the h- in _hielo _is just a case of "random" orthographic variation. Is there reason to think otherwise?


It's not random, it maintains the link with other words containing the same root but without the diphthong (_helar_, _helado_, _helero_, etc.).


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## Gavril

CapnPrep said:


> It's not random, it maintains the link with other words containing the same root but without the diphthong (_helar_, _helado_, _helero_, etc.).



OK, I see. In any case, the point I was making is that the _hie_- spelling seems to occur mainly (or only) where an initial consonant such as _f_-, _h_- or _g_- has been lost, whereas the _hue_- spelling seems to occur anywhere where a word begins with the diphthong _ue_ from earlier _o_.


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## francisgranada

I've been "speculating" for a while if a secondary *h* (or semivowel/aspirate near to *h*) could not appear in the pronounciation in case of the initial stressed _*ue*_ that lead to this spelling. I've thought e.g. of a process similar to what happend in case of Germanic loanwords (*warda > guarda, welf >güelfo ...).


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## CapnPrep

Gavril said:


> the point I was making is that the _hie_- spelling seems to occur mainly (or only) where an initial consonant such as _f_-, _h_- or _g_- has been lost, whereas the _hue_- spelling seems to occur anywhere where a word begins with the diphthong _ue_ from earlier _o_.


I think you are right for modern Spanish, but one would have to look at older texts to see if the use of "hie" (alongside "ie-", "je-", "ye-", etc.) paralleled the introduction of "hue-" for "ue-". 


francisgranada said:


> I've been "speculating" for a while if a secondary *h* (or semivowel/aspirate near to *h*) could not appear in the pronounciation in case of the initial stressed _*ue*_ that lead to this spelling. I've thought e.g. of a process similar to what happend in case of Germanic loanwords (*warda > guarda, welf >güelfo ...).


Some of the previous threads I referred to above mention the pronunciation (and sometimes spelling) of "hue-" as "güe-" in many varieties of Spanish (see the DPD entry). I don't believe that this was the reason why the "h" was added in the spelling of these forms (or conversely, that the presence of the orthographic "h" causes this pronunciation, as the DPD seems to suggest), but I don't have any direct evidence either way.


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## merquiades

_Hielo, hierro
Huelga, huerta, huérfano_
Besides the "h" serving to keep the words from starting with a diphthong, _ie_ or _ue_ (arising from open e and o), these sounds were and are still vocalic in Spanish.  The pronunciation is exactly the same as the diphthongs in _cielo, cierra, suelo, tuerta_.  "H" is silent but it is the consonant giving overlying orthographic support to the syllable, as the "c, s, t" do in the other examples.

_Yeso, yema, yerno
Guarda, guante_
The_ y, gu_ are consonants, and do not arise from any vocalic process forming diphthongs. Indeed, as you have said they arise from various consonants in origin "g", "w" "f" etc. and that is still apparent. The pronunciation is that of a consonant "y" or "gu" followed by a vowel, not of a diphthong "ie, ue".


Listen to the pronunciation of hielo and hierba, and compare that to yeso and  yema.
Also huelga and guante


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## francisgranada

CapnPrep said:


> ... Some of the previous threads I referred to above mention the pronunciation (and sometimes spelling) of "hue-" as "güe-" in many varieties of Spanish (see the DPD entry) ...


Yes, I've read them and thank you .
(For some reasons I couldn't reopen all of the threads, so I prefered not to mention this explicitely, but it is not important.)



> I don't believe that this was the reason why the "h" was added in the spelling of these forms (or conversely, that the presence of the orthographic "h" causes this pronunciation, as the DPD seems to suggest), but I don't have any direct evidence either way.


This DPD entry is interesting for me, as until the opening of this thread, I haven't  read about any possible (or impossible ) explanation of this spelling. 

 In a thread you refer to, the distinction between "ve" and "ue" (as the letters u and v didn't represent different sounds) is proposed as the reason for this spelling. For example, to indicate the clear difference between "uelo" and "velo" at the absolute beginning of a sentence (or after n/m etc.) 

 Now, do these two approaches (necessarily) contradict to/exclude each other? ...


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## Gavril

merquiades said:


> _Hielo, hierro
> Huelga, huerta, huérfano_
> Besides the "h" serving to keep the words from starting with a diphthong, _ie_ or _ue_ (arising from open e and o), these sounds were and are still vocalic in Spanish.  The pronunciation is exactly the same as the diphthongs in _cielo, cierra, suelo, tuerta_.  "H" is silent but it is the consonant giving overlying orthographic support to the syllable, as the "c, s, t" do in the other examples.
> 
> _Yeso, yema, yerno
> Guarda, guante_
> The_ y, gu_ are consonants, and do not arise from any vocalic process forming diphthongs. Indeed, as you have said they arise from various consonants in origin "g", "w" "f" etc. and that is still apparent. The pronunciation is that of a consonant "y" or "gu" followed by a vowel, not of a diphthong "ie, ue".



But there are many words with initial ye- that *do* arise from diphthongization: _yegua _"mare", _yerro_ (< _errar_), _yergo _(< _erguir_).

Also, doesn't the _hie_- in _hielo_ reflect the same initial sequence (_ge_-) that _yerno_ does? Is there a reason why _hielo_ is written with _hie_- rather than _ye_-, other than to indicate a connection with words like _helar_?



> Listen to the pronunciation of hielo and hierba, and compare that to yeso and  yema.
> Also huelga and guante



I do hear a slight difference between _ye_- and _hie_-, at least in some of the samples, but I wonder how consistently this difference is maintained (especially in regions that don't have "šeísmo" or "žeísmo"): when I went to Wordreference's entries for _hierro_ and _yerro_ (noun) and listened to the recordings, they sounded pretty much the same to me.

(I hope this isn't getting too far off-topic, since Francisgranada's initial question was about _hue_- rather than _hie_-.)


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