# Spanish j (Arabic influence)



## MarX

*In order to manage this multi-topic thread, I have deleted the folk etymology (usted and ojalá), since the main question -- contrary to what the original title suggested -- seems to be about Spanish 'j'. My apologies for the late reaction and my apologies for editing (snipping from) a few individual posts. *


*Frank*
*Moderator EHL*



Hello!


What I'd like to know is whether the Spanish pronunciation of *J* is due to Arabic influence.

Thank you!


MarK

PS: Puede también responder en castellano o alemán.


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## jazyk

Spanish's sister language, Portuguese, has also been heavily influenced by Arabic. They are in the same peninsula, after all, and the Arabs were there for eleven centuries, if my memory serves me right. 

Spanish j doesn't have anything to do with Arabic. Click here.


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## MarX

Thank you for your replies!

When did the Moors left Spain?
I remember that they stayed in Granada for the longest time, and that they were not as long in Portugal, which is why Spanish has more Arabic influence.

According to the link Jazyk provided, the Spanish J got its today's sound somewhere in the 17th century.


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## tenseconds

The Moors left Granada in 1492, Portugal in 1249.


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## Mahaodeh

MarX said:


> What I'd like to know is whether the Spanish pronunciation of *J* is due to Arabic influence.


 
Maybe, but I can't say for sure; I don't speak Spanish but up to my understanding they pronounce the j as a y (or something similar).  There was an old ancient dialect in Arabic the pronounced the j as a y.  Starting from the 7th century, all dialects died out and only the "standard" remained; later on, new dialects began to surface based on the "standard" (fusha).

However, small remnants of the old dialects survived especially the pronunciation of j (letter jeem in Arabic) one of them is pronouncing it as a y (example, instead of pronouncing the name "jamal" with a j it is pronounced "yamal").  The strange thing is that up to my understanding the only place where this pronunciation is used in the utmost east of the Arab world - the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula in the area known as "gulf area" (referring to the Persian gulf), moreover, it is not universal in that area and not for all words - usually when there can be some confusion the letter is pronounced as a j.

I have no idea whether this was due to the influence of a certain tribe that moved from the east to Spain in Medieval times and later on the descendants of this tribe in Maghrib (the western parts of the Arab World) adopted the normative pronunciation (a wild guess); or it is due to some other non-Arabic influence.


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## Outsider

MarX said:


> What I'd like to know is whether the Spanish pronunciation of *J* is due to Arabic influence.


This is the kind of "just-so" explanation that always makes me skeptical. Which tends to get me into heated arguments. I will try to behave this time. 

MarX, you should remember that the Spanish "J" did not have the same pronunciation as today in medieval times. There is solid evidence to the contrary. It was pronounced as in Portuguese and Catalan. By the way, why didn't Portuguese and Catalan "catch" the same sound? They had as much influence from Arabic as Spanish!



MarX said:


> When did the Moors leave Spain?
> I remember that they stayed in Granada for the longest time, and that they were not as long in Portugal, which is why Spanish has more Arabic influence.


Tenseconds gave you the official dates, but it must be said that the former one (1492 for the annexation of Grenada by Castile and Aragon) is mostly just symbolic. Grenada was a small enclave of Islamic culture which managed to survive a few extra centuries by being subservient to its Christian neighbours, and due to infighting and loss in interest for the Reconquest by the Christians. I would say that by the late 13th century the Christians had taken back practically the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. There may be some truth to the idea that Spanish had (or retained?) more Arabic influence than Portuguese, but I don't think it was by a very significant amount. And I understand that Catalan was even a bit _more_ influenced by Arabic than either Spanish or Portuguese!



Mahaodeh said:


> Maybe, but I can't say for sure; I don't speak Spanish but up to my understanding they pronounce the j as a y (or something similar).


The (modern) pronunciation of the Spanish "J" varies a little with dialect, but in most of Spain it seems to be pronounced like an Arabic _kha'_, or very close to it.


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## Mahaodeh

Outsider said:


> The (modern) pronunciation of the Spanish "J" varies a little with dialect, but in most of Spain it seems to be pronounced like an Arabic _kha'_, or very close to it.


 
If so, then I doubt it is due to Arabic influence unless there is an Arabic dialect that I don't know about that pronounces it that way or some similar way.


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## patman0623

My complete guess, as a non-expert who simply has a passing interest in languages, is that the two are unrelated. In Latin, *J* (also written as an *I*) was pronounced like an English *Y*. It evolved into a soft *Zh *sound (pronounced like garage, see this), as one can hear in French, Italian, or Portuguese(you will notice that many modern dialects of Spanish pronounce both Y and LL as the same sound; check the Caribbean pronunciation of pasi*ll*o; this is the same evolution, 1500 years later). However, the soft sound simply morphed into an h like sound in Spanish due to regular language evolution. That's my non-expert two cents.


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## berndf

The palatalized "G" is also pronounced "kh". As it is in Dutch. The Netherlands were long enough Spanish to make mutual influence plausible (e.g. the Spanish coin "Dollar" is derived from the Dutch pronunciation of the German coin "Thaler"). If the Spanish "J" and "G" have something to do with Dutch "G", I wonder which way the influence went.


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## patman0623

Probably from Spanish, is my guess. The palatized G and the J are the same in all the other Romance languages.


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## PABLO DE SOTO

I think Arabic influence on Spanish remains only on the vocabulary, especially in new items brought to Spain from the Moors or developed during the centuries the Moors lived here, but nothing on the grammar and I also think it is very uncertain its influence on the pronunciation.


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## Outsider

patman0623 said:


> The palatized G and the J are the same in all the other Romance languages.


In some they are affricates (as in English), in others they are plain postalveolars (as in French). And I wouldn't be surprised to find unexpected pronunciations in some of the minority Romance languages.


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## MarX

berndf said:


> The palatalized "G" is also pronounced "kh". As it is in Dutch. The Netherlands were long enough Spanish to make mutual influence plausible (e.g. the Spanish coin "Dollar" is derived from the Dutch pronunciation of the German coin "Thaler"). If the Spanish "J" and "G" have something to do with Dutch "G", I wonder which way the influence went.


You're right! I never thought about that!
Compare Dutch *jij *and Flemish *gij*.


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## HUMBERT0

Maybe long contact with the Arab language prepare the language for a sound shift centuries after the Arabs had actually left, in this particular case, though as it has already been said it doesn’t appear on other Iberian Romance languages. 

And if memory serves me right, in Sephardic which it’s basically XV century Castilian, the sound is that of the one used in Portuguese or Catalan. So the spread of these new sounds for modern Jota had to have taken place after 1492. I think, the usage of voiceless uvular fricative /χ/ in the peninsular Spanish against the widespread use of voiceless velar fricative /x/ in Spanish America suggest to me, that the sound shift  happened in the early colonial period in southern Spain and crossed over to America.

  Maybe the sound shift produce and ambivalence between /x/ and /χ/ sounds as they lived side by side, maybe /χ/ was only preferred in Castile, and with time prevailed in the rest of the nearby peninsular regions where the Castilian standard prevail, whereas in America the other sound shift pattern was preferred and maintained.

Here are the sounds for /χ/ and /x/:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/spanish/frameset.html


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## Qcumber

Not only is Modern Spanish /x/ unrelated to Medieval Arabic /x/, but also Medieval Arabic spoken in Andalusia was somehow influenced by Spanish.


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## zpoludnia swiata

Some questions:
1.  Why should or would the Spanish pronunciation of "j" (like kh, or h) have anything to do with Arabic?  Why not with some other language:  Dutch, Gothic,...Greek?  Then, why shouldn't Spanish pronunciation of "l" or "m" or "a" have something to do with Arabic?  Are the sounds (kh) or (h) so quintessentially Arabic that this question would even be raised?
2.  About the Dutch "g" pronounced like (kh).  The same happens in Northern German dialects with g in word-final positions.  Example:  Guten Tag (guten takh).  I think that connection is much more plausible than anything with Spanish, since they form a dialect continuum (Flemish, Dutch, Northern German).


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## HUMBERT0

Your right it doesn’t necessarily have to be Arabic. I think people immediately think of Arabic because of long contact between the populations at large.

 It may well be, that it was an internal natural evolution of the language after all, without an external influence in the XVII century.


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## Qcumber

HUMBERT0 said:


> Your right it doesn’t necessarily have to be Arabic. I think people immediately think of Arabic because of long contact between the populations at large.
> It may well be, that it was an internal natural evolution of the language after all, without an external influence in the XVII century.


Not "may well be"! It is an internal evolution. It can't be due Arabic and quite doubtfully to Dutch! This question has been studied by scholars a long time ago. A great consonant shift took place in Spanish in the course of the 17th century.


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## 0scar

Historia de la letra jota, la i larga, llamada durante mucho tiempo jota holandesa porque fue introducida en España por un tipógrafo holandés.
En este artículo no se menciona la influencia del árabe en su pronunciación.

http://etimologias.dechile.net/?J


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## Spectre scolaire

There were many indigenous languages in the Iberian Peninsula prior to the introduction of vernacular Latin. Perhaps the sound in question is due to a substratum rather than to a dubious Arabic adstratum?

As far as I can remember, Carlo Tagliavini is talking about another substratum effect on today’s Spanish in his book _Le origine delle lingue neolatine_. ***)




			
				HUMBERTO said:
			
		

> [T]he spread of these new sounds for modern Jota had to have taken place after 1492.


 I can’t see why this is necessarily the case.

And we have the following _crux_:




			
				outsider said:
			
		

> [W]hy didn't Portuguese and Catalan "catch" the same sound? They had as much influence from Arabic as Spanish!


 We may be talking about a _phonetic isogloss_ which had a significant, but geographically limited effect.
 ​***): Please don’t ask me to substantiate my claim in any detail; I don’t have _Tagliavini_ next to me.


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## Outsider

Spectre scolaire said:


> Perhaps the sound in question is due to a substratum rather than to a dubious Arabic adstratum?


No, because the sound was not present in medieval Spanish.

Not everything comes from ad- or sub-strata. Every now and then, a language comes up with a few tricks of its own.


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## Qcumber

0scar said:


> Historia de la letra jota, la i larga, llamada durante mucho tiempo jota holandesa porque fue introducida en España por un tipógrafo holandés.
> En este artículo no se menciona la influencia del árabe en su pronunciación.
> 
> http://etimologias.dechile.net/?J


You are not talking about the sounds of Spanish, but about its alphabet, its orthography and its typography 

I have a Spanish-Tagalog dictionary published in 1613 in the Philippines. The author (a learned Franciscan monk) follows the usage of his time: <u> and <v> are interchangeable for the value . So are <u>, <v> and <b> for the value *, <i> and <j> for the value [Z] > [x], <i> and <y> for the value  or the value [j].*


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## 0scar

Qcumber said:


> You are not talking about the sounds of Spanish, but about its alphabet, its orthography and its typography


 
Obviamente no leiste el link que puse:

http://etimologias.dechile.net/?J


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## Qcumber

0scar said:


> Obviamente no leiste el link que puse:
> 
> http://etimologias.dechile.net/?J


 
Indeed <jota> was pronounced "yota" in 1600 Spanish because of the interchangeability of the letters <i>, <j> and <y>. 
At that time <Iesu> was pronounced "Yésu" ['je su] , but <Jesus> was pronounced "Zhesús" [Ze 'sus].
Such was the spelling of the time.
The sound [x] didn't exist in Spanish in 1600.


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## Sorcha

I have read this thread and remain unsatisfied, I still dont know where the jota sound came from (I'm not sure how it supposed to be written phonetically), it was just a random evolution of the spanish language? Where? When? Did I miss something in this discussion?


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## Outsider

Sorcha said:


> I have read this thread and remain unsatisfied, I still dont know where the jota sound came from (I'm not sure how it supposed to be written phonetically), it was just a random evolution of the spanish language?


Most likely, it was a _natural_ evolution of the Spanish language. How random it was, I wouldn't know. The Irish language has a sound that is very similar, if not identical to it; it's the "ch" as in "loch". The same set of questions could be asked of the Irish sound. Was it "just a random evolution"?



Sorcha said:


> Where?


In the whole of Spain, as far as I'm aware. 



Sorcha said:


> When?


After the Renaissance, most likely. I don't know the exact date by heart, but if you're really interested do some research on the merger of the sounds "j" and "x" of medieval Spanish.


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## vince

Does the name "México" predate this change of x/j from [zh] to [kh]?

Because the people in the area called themselves the Mexica, where the "x" sounds like the Portuguese/Catalan x and not the modern Mexican one.

I would think that if the sound change had already occurred when the Spaniards named the region "Mexico", then they should have spellt it "Méyico" or "Méllico", comparable to how many Mexican immigrants pronounce the English "j" sound as a "y".


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## 0stsee

vince said:


> Does the name "México" predate this change of x/j from [zh] to [kh]?


I suppose so.


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## HUMBERT0

When the Spaniards arrived to Mexico in 1519, they found this sound /ʃ/ not only in Nahuatl but in other languages, which they represented with an equis "x". During the 17th. century a sound shift occurred in Spanish, the sound for equis “x” changed to /χ/ or /x/ and it was replace with letter jota “j” with its modern sound, though some words retain their old spelling, that’s why Mexico once stood for Me/ʃ/ico and now is read as Me/x/ico.


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## martinka! :)

You mean: 
"Ma nella Penisola Iberica il sostrato delle lingue romanze che vi si vennero in seguito formando non è naturlamente solo celtico. Abitata fin da epoca antichissima, la Penisola Iberica presenta condizioni etimologiche complesse che devono ricevere qualche luce (..) è infatti la sola regione d'Europa in cui si conservi,non allo stato di relitti toponomastici, ma come lingua tuttora vivente e parlata, un idioma preromano certamente indoeuropeo. Questa lingua è il BASCO. " (Tagliavini 1964: 101-102).
But when he lists the "tendenze fonetiche dovute al sostrato", the only phenomenon which could come into question the changeover from f > h. "Il passaggio avvenne nello Spagnolo quando h era ancora una vera aspirata" (Tagliavini 1964: 107). Maybe this? Maybe this j is the result of the evolution/fricativization/ of the aspired h? I'm not that convinced yet.. But FILIU(M) > hijo. What I've described is why f>h. But this aspired j comes from LI, which in Italian will be gl (λ).


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## 0scar

Si el vasco es de origen indoeuropeo entonces no es muy original, toda Europa habla  lenguajes indoeuropeos, probablemente todos los idiomas de la humanidad tuvieron su origen en una región del norte de la India y Paquistán. (teoría de la monogenesís de los idiomas)

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioma_sánscrito
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arios


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