# Exceptions to orthographic preservation of Latin initial h in Spanish/Portuguese/et al.?



## Lusus Naturae

Greetings

Are there many Spanish and Portuguese words (like _erva & yerba, _from _herba_) of Latin or Greek origin where the original initial _h _isn't preserved orthographically?

Are there many similar exceptions in the other Romance languages (like French) where original initial _h _is very often preserved orthographically?


----------



## Testing1234567

In Spanish, whenever the first letter is "u" followed by a vowel, an "h" is added before it regardless of its etymology (e.g. Latin *ovum* > Spanish *huevo*).

Latin *eccum hīc* > Spanish *aquí*

Note that *hierba* is a valid Spanish word (alongside with the variation *yerba*).

Latin *hac hora* > Spanish *ahora*, Portuguese *agora*.
Latin *hibernum* > Spanish *invierno*, Portuguese *inverno*
Latin *adhaerēre* > Portuguese *aderir* (cf. Spanish *adherir*)
Latin *hasta* > Spanish *asta* (maybe to distinguish between Spanish *hasta* of Arabic origin)
And everybody forgot the name of the language itself (at least the country): Latin *Hispanus* > Spanish *España*

In many other languages, the "h" in Latin *hic* (and its declined forms) are not kept.

French also does not keep all "h". Latin *habere* > French *avoir*; Latin *ab hoc* > French *avec*; Latin *hoc ille* > French *oui*; Latin *hīc* > French *y*.


----------



## Dymn

_Hierba _is more common than _yerba _though.

Spanish: _invierno _(< hibernum), _España _(< Hispania), _armonía _(< harmonia),  _yedra _(< hedera; alternative spelling of _hiedra_), _Elena _(< Helena)
Catalan: _Espanya _(< Hispania), _ordi _(< hordeum)
French: _avoir _(< habere), _Espagne _(< Hispania), _orge _(< hordeum)

If we include Germanic sources:

Spanish: _Enrique _(cf. Henry), _yelmo_ (cf. helmet), _izar _(< French hisser; cf. hoist)
Catalan: _Enric _(cf. Henry), _elm _(cf. helmet)


----------



## metaphrastes

There are in a few cases a difference between European and Brazilian Portuguese. For example, in Portugal one writes _húmido, humidade, _while in Brazil the mute _h _is dropped: _úmido, umidade. _I don't know the reason for this specific difference, since Portuguese has many words begun by _h _and, since it is soundless, it is there always due to etymology.

Romanian has no _h: umed, umiditate. _But now, in Romanian the _h _has always the aspirated sound and their writing system, being devised in XIX century, is mostly based on phonetics and very rarely there is any concession to etymology. Thus I would say that in Romanian one cannot find any trace of etymological, mute _h_, with the probable exception of loan words.


----------



## metaphrastes

One interesting case in Portuguese is _erva, _derived from Latin _herba. _While the noun dropped out the _h_, most derived words are closer to the Latin spelling: _herbáceo, herbanário, herbário, herbático, herbicida, herbífero, herbiforme, herbívoro, herboso._ Such cult forms, closer to Latin, sometimes coexist side by side with popular forms, such as _ervanário, ervicida, ervoso. _Sometimes, cult forms acquire a specialized meaning, distinct from the popular forms, more generic in usage, but in these cases there is no difference in meaning.

As a note, Romanian has for _herb _the word _iárbă_, plural _iérburi. _The singular form, for some reason, suffered metaphony, so that the _e _sound changed to _a. _However, the plural form kept the _e _sound, and both suffered _iotification _(that is common in Romanian, specially before any initial _e_). The short _i _sound serves to separate the initial vowel from the precedent word, specially if the later ends in vowel, too (in central Portugal, people may _iotify _words when speaking, in similar cases, although this is never written). An aspirated _h _would too mark the word's boundary, too. In old Portuguese spelling, a mute _h_, within a word, would mark a hiatus between vowels (what today is often marked by a stress accent in the second vowel of the hiatus). For example: _sahida _(in old spelling), _saída _(in modern spelling). Without an _h _or the stress mark, the vowels would form diphthong: _sai-da._

This remembered me the Spanish forms _yerba _or _hierba: _both forms suffered _iotification, _keeping or not the _h. _Thus my guess that as aspirate or mute _h _marked boundaries between syllables or words, iotification may appear as an alternative marker, either in written or in unwritten form. Romanian, in special, has many occurrences of unwritten iotification, although some eventually were adopted in official spelling.


----------



## Xavier61

Dymn said:


> _Hierba _is more common than _yerba _though.
> 
> Spanish: _invierno _(< hibernum), _España _(< Hispania), _armonía _(< harmonia),  _yedra _(< hedera; alternative spelling of _hiedra_), _Elena _(< Helena)


Hierba is more common in writing, but the most common pronunciation is yerba. Same with hiedra/yedra.


----------



## Lusus Naturae

Testing1234567 said:


> Latin *Hispanus* > Spanish *España*





Dymn said:


> _ España _(< Hispania)


Are there many examples of _Hi -> E ?_
There are early attestations of _Spania/Σπανία & Spanus/Σπανός._ Is _España _the result of prothesis?


----------



## Dymn

metaphrastes said:


> This remembered me the Spanish forms _yerba _or _hierba: _both forms suffered _iotification, _keeping or not the _h. _Thus my guess that as aspirate or mute _h _marked boundaries between syllables or words, iotification may appear as an alternative marker, either in written or in unwritten form.


I don't think _è > ye _in Spanish has to do with marking boundaries between words, basically it also happens inside a word: _siempre, miel, tierra, quiero_, etc.



Xavier61 said:


> but the most common pronunciation is yerba.


Wait, is there any pronunciation difference between _hierba _and _yerba_?


----------



## Penyafort

Apart from that case of words starting with ue- already mentioned, other non-etymological h's in Spanish are 

_henchir _(compare Portuguese _encher_, Aragonese _emplir_, Catalan _omplir_)

_hinchar _(compare Portuguese _inchar_, Catalan _inflar/unflar_)

a few words coming from initial Latin G-, where the palatal result got lost in Spanish, such as:

_hermano _(compare Portuguese _irmão_, Aragonese _chermano/chirmán_, Catalan _germà_)

_hielo _(compare Portuguese _gelo_, Aragonese _chelo/chel_, Catalan _gel_)

_hiniesta _(compare Portuguese _giesta_, Aragonese _chinestra_, Catalan_ ginesta_)
_
hinojo 'knee' _(compare Portuguese _joelho/geolho_, Aragonese _chenullo/chinollo_, Catalan _genoll/jonoll_)

but

_echar _(compare Aragonese _chitar_, Catalan _gitar_) 
_enebro _(compare Portuguese _zimbro/junípero_, Aragonese _chinipro_, Catalan _ginebre_)
_enero _(compare Portuguese _janeiro_, Aragonese _chinero_, Catalan _gener_)​
and obviously those words coming from initial Latin F-, although in this case the H- was functional, as the F- did not just drop but went into a transitional stage of aspiration, still preserved in some places:

_hacer, harina, hermoso, hiel, hierro, _etc. 
(the rest of the Romance languages in Iberia preserve the etymological F-)​


----------



## Xavier61

Dymn said:


> I don't think _è > ye _in Spanish has to do with marking boundaries between words, basically it also happens inside a word: _siempre, miel, tierra, quiero_, etc.
> 
> 
> Wait, is there any pronunciation difference between _hierba _and _yerba_?


Yes: /ˈjeɾ.βa/,  /ˈʝeɾ.βa/. (And more variants in the Americas)


----------



## Gavril

Dymn said:


> Wait, is there any pronunciation difference between _hierba _and _yerba_?



There is a difference among some speakers, as mentioned in the previous post, but I think this difference is due to orthographically-motivated hypercorrection (causing restoration of the diphthong pronunciation of _hie_-), not an etymological difference.

Some evidence for this is the contrast (in spelling and, sometimes, pronunciation) between

_hielo_ "ice" < Lat. _gelum_
vs.
_yema_ "yolk, bud" < Lat. _gemma_

Etymologically, both of these should (as I understand it) be spelled with _ye-_, and pronounced accordingly, but the former is spelled with _hie_- due to its connection with words like _helar_ "freeze" (where the _h_- marks lost *_y_-, as in _hermano_).


----------



## metaphrastes

Dymn said:


> I don't think _è > ye _in Spanish has to do with marking boundaries between words, basically it also happens inside a word: _siempre, miel, tierra, quiero_, etc.


Well, my point was not in any way that iotification has always to do with marking boundaries between words or syllables. In fact, iotification is a much more frequent phenomenon in Spanish than in Portuguese.

But now, comparing some languages, there are evidences that in some cases iotification indeed marks a boundary between different syllables or different words. For example, in Romanian there is the verbal form _miluieşte_, from the verb _a milui (to have mercy or compassion). _In the older spelling, it was written _milueşte_, being the _i _sound unwritten. There are many similar cases, where the _i _was unwritten in old spelling, but eventually it began to be written to conform with actual pronunciation. I can't think on just one hiatus in Romanian between any vowel and _e _without an intermediate short _i. _Besides that, virtually every native Romanian word begun by _e _suffers iotification, though unwritten: forms of the verb _a fi (to be): e, este, era _are said _ié, iéste, ierá. _The personal pronouns _eu, el (I, he) _are said _ieu, iel. _This is so standard that many Romanians are not even aware they pronounce a short _i. _The special need to iotify the initial _e _seems me to be born out of the need of marking the beginning of the word and, from a practical perspective, it works very well both to the hearer as well to the speaker.

Russian although not a Romance language may be of some help here, too. Iotification is basically present everywhere for all vowels (except _i _itself, sure). You have iotified or softened versions of _a, e, o _and _u _that sounds as _ya, ye, yo _or _yu. _Now, in non-stressed positions, _ya _or _ye _most often reduce to _i _- it is called _ikanie. _But now, some verbal forms end in two _yes. _But they do not merge in only one short _i_, through vowel reduction. The first is generally reduced in some degree, while the second has to be pronounced distinctly with the _ye _sound: _e-ye. _Whenever you have a hiatus, the _y _sound has to be present in the second vowel, while it disappears or is imperceptible in other contexts. The _y _clearly marks the boundaries between the syllables in such hiatus. Although most cases of iotification in Russian have no relation at all with words boundaries (it is present virtually in every Russian word), when a soft vowel begins a word or follows another vowel in a hiatus, the iotification has to be clear and audible.

As already said, in some regions of Portugal there is unwritten iotification, either in an initial vowel or in hiatuses. I would say that the great majority if not all cases of unwritten iotification comes from this particular need. The thing is probably more visible here exactly because iotification is by far much less frequent than in Spanish or Russian. In some cases, it may even be almost identical with Romanian. Example: _Ele é (He is). _In some local accents, the pronunciation is: _Ele ié. _In Romanian: _El e, El este (He is). _The pronunciation actually is: _Iel ié, Iel iéste. _The difference is that in Portuguese iotification is much less frequent and is used just between two vowels, while in Romanian it is used in initial position.

This is very clear from observation and comparison. What seems still to be seen is if some etymological relation actually exists between iotification and aspirated or mute _h._


----------



## Xavier61

metaphrastes said:


> This remembered me the Spanish forms _yerba _or _hierba: _both forms suffered _iotification, _keeping or not the _h. _Thus my guess that as aspirate or mute _h _marked boundaries between syllables or words, iotification may appear as an alternative marker, either in written or in unwritten form.


I don't see how a mute h could have marked any kind of boundary and what utility such a marker could have had. The h in "hierba" and, before that, in "herba" in vulgar Latin, was mute.


----------



## robbie_SWE

metaphrastes said:


> Well, my point was not in any way that iotification has always to do with marking boundaries between words or syllables. In fact, iotification is a much more frequent phenomenon in Spanish than in Portuguese.
> 
> But now, comparing some languages, there are evidences that in some cases iotification indeed marks a boundary between different syllables or different words. For example, in Romanian there is the verbal form _miluieşte_, from the verb _a milui (to have mercy or compassion). _In the older spelling, it was written _milueşte_, being the _i _sound unwritten. There are many similar cases, where the _i _was unwritten in old spelling, but eventually it began to be written to conform with actual pronunciation. I can't think on just one hiatus in Romanian between any vowel and _e _without an intermediate short _i. _Besides that, virtually every native Romanian word begun by _e _suffers iotification, though unwritten: forms of the verb _a fi (to be): e, este, era _are said _ié, iéste, ierá. _The personal pronouns _eu, el (I, he) _are said _ieu, iel. _This is so standard that many Romanians are not even aware they pronounce a short _i. _The special need to iotify the initial _e _seems me to be born out of the need of marking the beginning of the word and, from a practical perspective, it works very well both to the hearer as well to the speaker.
> 
> [...]




I don't want to contradict you, considering that I've read quite a few articles and heard quite a few people that confirm your affirmation about the pronunciation of initial 'e' in Romanian, but it's a bit more complicated than that.

I've heard many TV and radio presenters who pronounce *era*, *eram*, *erați*, *erau *etc. with a clear initial [e], and I admit that I also pronounce it like that. People I know from Bucharest pronounce these verb forms with an initial [e] and so does my 89 year old grandmother originally from Oltenia. Could this be a cultism specific for certain dialects?

The only initial iotacism I've heard and use frequently is in *el* (N.B. although I've heard people pronounce it as [el] when they want to emphasise the word), *ea*, *ei*, *ele*, *ești*,* este* and *e*.


----------



## ahvalj

metaphrastes said:


> Russian although not a Romance language may be of some help here, too. Iotification is basically present everywhere for all vowels (except _i _itself, sure). You have iotified or softened versions of _a, e, o _and _u _that sounds as _ya, ye, yo _or _yu. _Now, in non-stressed positions, _ya _or _ye _most often reduce to _i _- it is called _ikanie. _But now, some verbal forms end in two _yes. _But they do not merge in only one short _i_, through vowel reduction. The first is generally reduced in some degree, while the second has to be pronounced distinctly with the _ye _sound: _e-ye. _Whenever you have a hiatus, the _y _sound has to be present in the second vowel, while it disappears or is imperceptible in other contexts. The _y _clearly marks the boundaries between the syllables in such hiatus. Although most cases of iotification in Russian have no relation at all with words boundaries (it is present virtually in every Russian word), when a soft vowel begins a word or follows another vowel in a hiatus, the iotification has to be clear and audible.


It's an interesting illustration of how things can be interpreted by an unbiased observer. That's a good working explanation, though, etymologically, things mostly developed in a different manner, and Russian dialects and other Slavic languages will have these elements combined into other pictures. In particular, _j_ in the neuter of full adjectives (_beloje _"white") and in the Present of verbs (_delajem _"we do; we make") goes back to Proto-Indo-European and emerged many millennia before the Slavic palatalization of consonants (which developed only about 12 centuries ago). The initial _j_ before _e_ is present e. g. in Slovene, Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian, where there is no palatalization of consonants before _e _(e. g. _je_ "he/she/it is" but _berem/beru_ "I take").


----------



## Dymn

Lusus Naturae said:


> Are there many examples of _Hi -> E ?_
> There are early attestations of _Spania/Σπανία & Spanus/Σπανός._ Is _España _the result of prothesis?


There's Old Spanish _estoria _(and Old Catalan _estòria_, Old French _estoire_), modern _historia _(_història, histoire_).

I don't think the _e_ is the result of prothesis, but rather a typical _i _> _e _shift in early Romance. I think _istoria _is attested in Old Italian, but it could be a borrowing.


----------



## metaphrastes

robbie_SWE said:


> I've read quite a few articles and heard quite a few people that confirm your affirmation about the pronunciation of initial 'e' in Romanian, but it's a bit more complicated than that


Yes, sure! The very fact that this initial iotification, when it happens, remains unwritten in a highly phonetic spelling system as Romanian, is a token that it is not standard and it varies according local accents. The fact that your old grandmother does not iotify many of these words is telling that the non-iotification is not forcefully a matter of artificial pronunciation (as one might hear from TV or Radio presenters).
The examples I gave from Portuguese are unwritten, too, and I heard them only in rural areas in central Portugal, not on South or North. One example more: we have the feminine defined article _"a". _It means _"the"_, and is used before feminine nouns or names. If the noun happens to begin with an _"a", _too, it is hard to hear and to pronounce the article distinctly. Thus, in central Portugal, it is common to hear: _a iágua_, instead of _a água (the water); a iAna, _instead of _a Ana (the Anna, _it is common to use the article before proper nouns). I have heard such unwritten pronunciation both in speaking as well in singing.


Xavier61 said:


> I don't see how a mute h could have marked any kind of boundary and what utility such a marker could have had. The h in "hierba" and, before that, in "herba" in vulgar Latin, was mute.


Well, old spelling of Romance languages was far from following standard criteria, and it varied between adhesion to Latin patterns and essays to render actual pronunciation. However, I gave one example from old Portuguese spelling, of _sahida _instead of _saída (going out)_, where the mute _h _marks the hiatus and most probably the stress in _i_. Other examples from XVII century: _hia _instead of _ia (he/she/it went); hiaõ _instead of _iam (they went); ahi _instead of _aí (there); sahia _instead of _saía (he went out); sahiaõ _instead of _saíam (they went out); cahio _instead of _caiu (he/she/it fell); cahiraõ _instead of _caíram (they fell); destruhio _instead of _destruiu (he/she/it destroyed); trahia _instead of _traía (he/she betrayed).
_
Besides that cases where the mute _h _clearly marks the syllable boundaries, there are also words received from Greek, as _Jerusalem _(ultimately, from Hebrew). In Koine Greek, its standard spelling was *Ἱεροσόλυμα*, with a rough breathing - that is, an aspirated sound. However, there was some variation on spelling and one might find the spelling *Ἰεροσόλυμα*, with smooth breathing - that is, no aspiration at all. There is some discussion if the sign of smooth breathing had actually any sound, of old, but the fact is that conventionally, any word begun by a vowel should have an initial breathing, either smooth (non-aspirated or smoothly aspirated) or rough (distinctly aspirated). In other words: in Greek, any breathing is a marker of the beginning of a word, and there is the possibility that the smooth breathing actually had some smooth sound. Later, the smooth breathing became just a convention, but still as a marker of an initial word boundary.

Anyway, we find in Latin the form _Hierosolyma_, where the mute _H _is clearly etymological, and points to the Greek smooth breathing. One may find also the spelling _Ierusalem, _as in the Clementine Vulgate, being probably more of a phonetic than etymological spelling. Since we received Greek words mostly through Latin, and not directly, we inherited the convention of a mute _h_ instead of a smooth breathing, marking the beginning of a word. One cannot say that every and each initial mute _h _actually came from a Greek smooth breathing (most came from Latin words with no Greek root), but yes, in many cases there is a relation between an initial mute _h _and a conventional word boundary. In Latin, a mute _h _may have had other functions besides signaling an etymological smooth breathing, but this particular function may not be overlooked.


----------



## irinet

metaphrastes said:


> I can't think on just one hiatus in Romanian between any vowel and _e _without an intermediate short _i_



I can think of some:
*maestru, aerisit, idee *(I pronounce *ideie* , and I am from Moldova region)*, agreez, poet, poezie, menuet, duel.
*
As to iotification, this is  mainly characteristics to the region of Oltenia (e.g. Rom. linguist Sever Pop).


----------



## irinet

robbie_SWE said:


> I don't want to contradict you, considering that I've read quite a few articles and heard quite a few people that confirm your affirmation about the pronunciation of initial 'e' in Romanian, but it's a bit more complicated than that.
> 
> I've heard many TV and radio presenters who pronounce *era*, *eram*, *erați*, *erau *etc. with a clear initial [e], and I admit that I also pronounce it like that. People I know from Bucharest pronounce these verb forms with an initial [e] and so does my 89 year old grandmother originally from Oltenia. Could this be a cultism specific for certain dialects?
> 
> The only initial iotacism I've heard and use frequently is in *el* (N.B. although I've heard people pronounce it as [el] when they want to emphasise the word), *ea*, *ei*, *ele*, *ești*,* este* and *e*.



That is the standard pronunciation.


----------



## Testing1234567

Lusus Naturae said:


> Is _España _the result of prothesis?


I think you are right.


----------



## Xavier61

Testing1234567 said:


> I think you are right.


When "Hispania" lost its first syllable and why?


----------



## Testing1234567

Xavier61 said:


> When "Hispania" lost its first syllable and why?


It's not really a syllable. It's just one vowel. You can call that procope/apheresis/aphesis. Remember that the *h* in Latin had been silent a long time ago.

*Spania* and *storia* are Late Latin forms of *Hispania* and *historia* respectively.

Below are my two _*hypotheses*_:

In Late Latin, various words beginning with s+consonant (e.g. *schola*, *scire*, *status*, *statio*, *spatha*) have suffered epenthesis (prepending of a vowel at the beginning) in Western Romance and Sardinian. Thus, the form *Spania* represents a hypercorrection.
The aphetic form *Spania* in Late Latin is _completely irrelevant_. The form *Hispania* (in Vulgar Latin pronounced /esˈpa.nʲa/) developed to Old Provençal *Espanha*, Old Spanish *Espanna*, and Italian *Spagna*. These forms were then borrowed into other Romance languages.


----------

