# Spanish, Portuguese which is more conservative?



## killerbee256

I know Spanish and Portuguese and I’m interested in the history of languages, and I’m wondering which of these Iberian romance languages is more conservative, represents early Iberian romance? In some ways I want to say Portuguese as it lacks diphthongs; but I wonder if Portuguese had diphthongs earlier in its development as some words like dormir are stem vowel changing o-u in first person present similar to Spanish o-ue in the same word & tense. Portuguese maintains use of Cedilla which Spanish has discarded. Also Judeo-Spanish is said to sound like “Portuguese accented Spanish” to modern Spanish speakers, and it’s basically a snapshot of 15th century Spanish. However Portuguese is more divergent in some ways mãe, pai vs. madre, padre. For “thank you” Spanish uses gracias while Portuguese uses obrigado, a cognate to gracias, graças exists but the meaning has changed, like wise Spanish has obligado but the meaning is different if related to obrigado.


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## Outsider

killerbee256 said:


> I know Spanish and Portuguese and I’m interested in the history of languages, and I’m wondering which of these Iberian romance languages is more conservative, represents early Iberian romance?


It depends on which metric you use, as your own examples show.



killerbee256 said:


> In some ways I want to say Portuguese as it lacks diphthongs; but I wonder if Portuguese had diphthongs earlier in its development as some words like dormir are stem vowel changing o-u in first person present similar to Spanish o-ue in the same word & tense.


Not as far as I know. It's a characteristic trait of Portuguese that stressed short vowels did not turn into diphthongs as they did in Spanish. But then again who's to say that o > ue is a greater change than o > u? It's only the spelling that creates that impression.



killerbee256 said:


> Portuguese maintains use of Cedilla which Spanish has discarded.


That's mostly just a spelling convention, so it doesn't really tell you that much. 



killerbee256 said:


> Also Judeo-Spanish is said to sound like “Portuguese accented Spanish” to modern Spanish speakers, and it’s basically a snapshot of 15th century Spanish.


I'd never heard that description before. I do see some archaic features in Judeo-Spanish, although there are innovations/simplifications as well, but I wonder if the term "Judeo-Spanish" isn't a bit misleading. There used to be a "Judeo-Portuguese" language/dialect as well, and although Wikipedia describes it as "extinct" perhaps it was more the case that, since there were fewer speakers of Judeo-Portuguese than of Judeo-Spanish living in the diaspora, the former language eventually merged with the latter. If so then modern Judeo-Spanish might reflect ancient Spanish, but with a little bit of ancient Portuguese mixed in.



killerbee256 said:


> However Portuguese is more divergent in some ways mãe, pai vs. madre, padre. For “thank you” Spanish uses gracias while Portuguese uses obrigado, a cognate to gracias, graças exists but the meaning has changed, like wise Spanish has obligado but the meaning is different if related to obrigado.


Yes. Overall I tend to think that all Romance languages are more or less equally far apart from Latin -- but in different directions. It seems to me that terms like "conservative language" are only useful when some metric or set of metrics is assumed (perhaps implicitly).


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## Ben Jamin

Outsider said:


> I'd never heard that description before. I do see some archaic features in Judeo-Spanish, although there are innovations/simplifications as well, but …


I have recently heard to a course in Ladino, and the “accent” was clearly Spanish, but some sounds conserved from the XV century Spanish, like the sound [ʃ] where contemporary Spanish has ‘j’ make it sound “more” Portuguese. 
Ladino like Spanish has no nasal vowels, is syllable timed, and conserves all ‘o’ as [o], while Portuguese has changed many of them into .
In my opinion Portugues is phonetically much far away from Latin than Spanish: 

Nasal vowels
Stress timing
Loss of many consonants (like in French)
Loss of many vowels (in speech)
Conjugated infinitive
Compare (L/S/P):
mater / madre / mãe
pater / padre/ pai
volare / volar / voar
arena / arena /areia


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## Miguel Antonio

killerbee256 said:


> Also Judeo-Spanish is said to sound like “Portuguese accented Spanish” to modern Spanish speakers, and it’s basically a snapshot of 15th century Spanish.


I had a similar feeling when I watched the Spanish TV Documentary _El Último Serfardí. _It's on You Tube, the full version. I'm afraid posting a link there is against forum rules, but it's easy to find.

Other than that, I cannot add much to the excellent explanations by Outsider.


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## CapnPrep

Outsider said:


> IBut then again who's to say that o > ue is a greater change than o > u? It's only the spelling that creates that impression.


Well, a diphthong is certainly more complex than a simple vowel, and not only orthographically. And diphthongization of _o_ has definitely had a greater impact on Spanish (in terms of the number of words affected, and the effect on the entire phonological system of the language) than the metaphonic raising of stressed _o_ to _u _exemplified by Portuguese _durmo_. However, Portuguese also has a much more pervasive phenomenon of raising unstressed _o_ to _u_ (not generally indicated in writing). Taking this into account, the proportion of forms of _dormir_ with a "conservative" pronunciation (i.e. containing a mid vowel [o] or [ɔ]) is:

27/62 (44%) in Spanish [based on this table] 
4/57 (7%) in Portuguese [based on this table]


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## killerbee256

CapnPrep said:


> However, Portuguese also has a much more pervasive phenomenon of raising unstressed _o_ to _u_ (not generally indicated in writing)


Is this Universal throughout all Portuguese dialects? I know that Brazilian Portuguese is more conservative in its phonics.I’ll have to “open my ears” more to see what people around me here in Rio Grande do Sul sound like.


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## Outsider

killerbee256 said:


> Is this Universal throughout all Portuguese dialects?


If the unstressed syllable is the last one, then yes. Otherwise, it varies with dialect, with the Brazilian dialects generally being more conservative in this respect, as you say.



Ben Jamin said:


> In my opinion Portugues is phonetically much far away from Latin than Spanish:
> 
> Nasal vowels
> Stress timing
> Loss of many consonants (like in French)
> Loss of many vowels (in speech)
> Conjugated infinitive


Latin probably had nasal vowels, though not in the same place as Portuguese. So, is Portuguese the most innovative language because it reinvented nasal vowels, or Spanish because it lost them altogether?... 

Timing seems to be a disputed concept in linguistics.

As far as the loss of consonants is concerned I think you're right, though there are also words here and there that Spanish simplified more (e.g. _duda_, _según_...)

The "loss" (or sometimes perhaps just devoicing) of many unstressed vowels is more difficult to compare. For instance, I noticed that in Latin poetry there were some elisions at word boundaries that are similar to the ones made in spoken Portuguese and French... but not in Spanish.

The conjugated infinitive may be an innovation, but then Portuguese still uses the future subjunctive, which has fallen out of use in Spanish...



CapnPrep said:


> However, Portuguese also has a much more pervasive phenomenon of raising unstressed _o_ to _u_ (not generally indicated in writing). Taking this into account, the proportion of forms of _dormir_ with a "conservative" pronunciation (i.e. containing a mid vowel [o] or [ɔ]) is:
> 
> 27/62 (44%) in Spanish [based on this table]
> 4/57 (7%) in Portuguese [based on this table]


I'm not sure what you mean by "mid vowel"... But supposedly Latin short "o" was pronounced [ʊ], so neither [o] nor [ɔ] are the original sounds. If anything, the Portuguese vowels may be slightly closer to the original, in as much as Latin near-high [ʊ] would have been somewhere between Portuguese [o] (mid-high) and  (high), whereas Spanish [o] is a mid vowel and [ɔ] is low-mid.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> But supposedly Latin short "o" was pronounced [ʊ]


Where did you get that from? After all I know, the Latin short vowels are assumed to have been lower and more central than their long counterparts (with the exception of "a"), i.e. close to the German vowel system. Click.

[ʊ] is then the sound of the short "u" and not of the short "o". In Vulgar Latin (see here) /ʊ/ and /u/ then merged to /u/ following the loss of phonemic vowel length. But I have never heard or read anywhere that the short "o" should ever have been [ʊ].


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## CapnPrep

Outsider said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by "mid vowel"...


I mean some variety of _o_, from [o] (mid-close) to [ɔ] (mid-open), as distinct from _u_ ( or [ʊ]). 


berndf said:


> In Vulgar Latin (see here) /ʊ/ and /u/ then merged to /u/ following the loss of phonemic vowel length. But I have never heard or read anywhere that the short "o" should ever have been [ʊ].


Me neither. But there is a mistake in the table you refer to. Short _ŭ_ merged with long _ō_ in VL to produce the phoneme /o/ in proto-Romance.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> But there is a mistake in the table you refer to. Short _ŭ_ merged with long _ō_ in VL to produce the phoneme /o/ in proto-Romance.


Of course. I should have spotted that. Stupid mistake.


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## tFighterPilot

I think everyone are missing the fact that Iberian Romance isn't a language. Is there any proof that the entire peninsula ever shared a language?


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> I think everyone are missing the fact that Iberian Romance isn't a language. Is there any proof that the entire peninsula ever shared a language?


Iberian Romance is a language _group_ and nobody here said anything to the contrary. The term "conservative" is meant with respect to Classical Latin.


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## tFighterPilot

berndf said:


> Iberian Romance is a language _group_ and nobody here said anything to the contrary. The term "conservative" is meant with respect to Classical Latin.


Well, Classical Latin never reached anywhere outside Italy in ancient times, so if anything it should be compared with Vulgar Latin, which again wasn't a single language. The original poster, however, did ask which was closer to the "early Iberian Romance"


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> Well, Classical Latin never reached anywhere outside Italy in ancient times, so if anything it should be compared with Vulgar Latin, which again wasn't a single language. The original poster, however, did ask which was closer to the "early Iberian Romance"


Since Classical Latin is the point of departure for all Latin vernaculars, or at least the closest approximation we know, the way the question is asked is valid.

Italian dialects were probably just as different from the standard language as Iberian ones, maybe even more. Colonial dialects often tend to stay closer to the standard as they do not compete with traditional vernaculars of that language but are directly derived from the standard.


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## killerbee256

berndf said:


> Since Classical Latin is the point of departure for all Latin vernaculars, or at least the closest approximation we know, the way the question is asked is valid.
> 
> Italian dialects were probably just as different from the standard language as Iberian ones, maybe even more. Colonial dialects often tend to stay closer to the standard as they do not compete with traditional vernaculars of that language but are directly derived from the standard.


That is an interesting point, dialect leveling of Roman settlers combined with the Language shift of the native Iberians would lead to a less varied more consistent dialect.


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## Angelo di fuoco

killerbee256 said:


> I know Spanish and Portuguese and I’m interested in the history of languages, and I’m wondering which of these Iberian romance languages is more conservative, represents early Iberian romance? In some ways I want to say Portuguese as it lacks diphthongs; but I wonder if Portuguese had diphthongs earlier in its development as some words like dormir are stem vowel changing o-u in first person present similar to Spanish o-ue in the same word & tense. Portuguese maintains use of Cedilla which Spanish has discarded. Also Judeo-Spanish is said to sound like “Portuguese accented Spanish” to modern Spanish speakers, and it’s basically a snapshot of 15th century Spanish. However Portuguese is more divergent in some ways mãe, pai vs. madre, padre. For “thank you” Spanish uses gracias while Portuguese uses obrigado, a cognate to gracias, graças exists but the meaning has changed, like wise Spanish has obligado but the meaning is different if related to obrigado.



First of all, if you take the literal meaning of "obligado" and "obrigad@", it's the same. There's no difference in meaning, but there's a difference in use. It's only the translation to English of this word in a special context that makes you think that it's different.
The same about gracias & graças.

And then, until now you've considered only phonology and the meaning of some random, even if frequently used words.

If you take grammar into account, the results will be largely different: Portuguese grammar is more conservative than Spanish, and Galician even more so.


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## Outsider

berndf said:


> Where did you get that from? After all I know, the Latin short vowels are assumed to have been lower and more central than their long counterparts (with the exception of "a"), i.e. close to the German vowel system. Click.
> 
> [ʊ] is then the sound of the short "u" and not of the short "o". In Vulgar Latin (see here) /ʊ/ and /u/ then merged to /u/ following the loss of phonemic vowel length. But I have never heard or read anywhere that the short "o" should ever have been [ʊ].


I messed up that part about the vowels. My apologies to all, and especially to CapnPrep. I shouldn't post so late in the evening... 



Angelo di fuoco said:


> First of all, if you take the literal meaning of "obligado" and "obrigad@", it's the same. There's no difference in meaning, but there's a difference in use. It's only the translation to English of this word in a special context that makes you think that it's different.
> The same about gracias & graças.


In fairness, I think Killerbee's point may have been that the Latin word for "thank you" was *gratias*, which is precisely the etymon of Spanish *gracias*, whereas Portuguese *obrigado/a* comes from a different Latin source, with a different (I assume) original meaning. In a sense, this word did not change on the way from Latin to Spanish, but changed significantly on the way from Latin to Portuguese (*graças* still exists with a related meaning, but it's no longer used specifically for thanking people). Of course, there are plenty of cases where the opposite happened...


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## killerbee256

Angelo di fuoco said:


> First of all, if you take the literal meaning of "obligado" and "obrigad@", it's the same. There's no difference in meaning, but there's a difference in use. It's only the translation to English of this word in a special context that makes you think that it's different.
> The same about gracias & graças.


 Typical semantic shift, in a sense *obrigado* with its literal meaning of "I'm obligated to you" less literally "I owe you one" reminds me of the origins of *por favor *“for my favour” and *Ciao*/*tchau *from Venetian *sciào vostro*, “I’m your slave,” or less literally "At your service, if you ever need it."


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> Since Classical Latin is the point of departure for all Latin vernaculars, or at least the closest approximation we know, the way the question is asked is valid.
> 
> Italian dialects were probably just as different from the standard language as Iberian ones, maybe even more. Colonial dialects often tend to stay closer to the standard as they do not compete with traditional vernaculars of that language but are directly derived from the standard.


One should be careful about mentioning “Italian dialects” in this context, as it can make somebody believe that Latin was a vernacular of all Italy since times immemorial. The subjugated peoples of Italy adopted Latin only gradually, and the “Italian dialects” are often marked by the earlier, preroman substrate. Many of today’s “Italian dialects” (in official use in Italy) are classified by linguists as separate Romance languages (like Romagnolo which is classified as a Gallo-Roman language, just as French, or Nnappulitano which has a complex substrate, consisting in a large degree of Greek).


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> One should be careful about mentioning “Italian dialects” in this context, as it can make somebody believe that Latin was a vernacular of all Italy since times immemorial.


Yes, of course. In this context "Italian dialects" obviously means "dialects of Latin spoken in Italy".


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> Yes, of course. In this context "Italian dialects" obviously means "dialects of Latin spoken in Italy".



Thanks, I thought you meant the dialects formed after Latin was dead.


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## merquiades

It depends how you look at the question.  From a purely Spanish point of view, Portuguese seems older and more conservative, so probably closer to Latin.  In fact Portuguese helps me understand old Spanish literature.  Just a few thoughts:  1) phonetics- the pronunciation of consonants like f, s,z, g, j, x used to be pronounced like in Portuguese but have shifted into very different sounds in Spanish.  2)  orthography in old Spanish resembles Portuguese (ç, ss, x).  3)  Portuguese keeps alive some verb tenses lost in Spanish (future subjunctive, pluperfect indicative), also the preterite is used more like in older versions of Spanish.  4) In morphology, dipthonging occurred intensively in Spanish, but hasn't occurred in portuguese yet (sorte, porto, terra not suerte, puerto, tierra) 4)  Lots of words that have long since died out in Spanish are still used in Portuguese (coitado...)

All these make me believe Portuguese to be the more conservative of the languages.


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## miguel89

merquiades said:


> It depends how you look at the question.  From a purely Spanish point of view, Portuguese seems older and more conservative, so probably closer to Latin.  In fact Portuguese helps me understand old Spanish literature.  Just a few thoughts:  1) phonetics- the pronunciation of consonants like f, s,z, g, j, x used to be pronounced like in Portuguese but have shifted into very different sounds in Spanish.  2)  orthography in old Spanish resembles Portuguese (ç, ss, x).  3)  Portuguese keeps alive some verb tenses lost in Spanish (future subjunctive, pluperfect indicative), also the preterite is used more like in older versions of Spanish.  4) In morphology, dipthonging occurred intensively in Spanish, but hasn't occurred in portuguese yet (sorte, porto, terra not suerte, puerto, tierra) 4)  Lots of words that have long since died out in Spanish are still used in Portuguese (coitado...)
> 
> All these make me believe Portuguese to be the more conservative of the languages.


I also have this impression when I read something in Portuguese, but perhaps it is purely subjective. It would be interesting to know what is the impression of Portuguese speakers when reading in Spanish.


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## Hulalessar

When asking if one language is more conservative than another it assumes that there is some yardstick for measuring change and that you have decided what you are measuring. What weight should be given to phonological, morphological and lexical changes?

Many of the things I buy here in Spain have instructions on them in both Spanish and Portuguese. Comparing the two it is obvious that you are looking at two closely related languages. However, listen to someone read them out loud and it is a different story. The other day I was listening to a concert from Lisbon and could understand nothing of what the announcer said. (That contrasts with listening to a concert from Italy where I can at least usually follow the drift.) It is a well-observed phenomenon that intelligibility between spoken Portuguese and Spanish is essentially only one way. Whilst phonological changes only need to be minimal to prevent intelligibility (cf this thread) this suggests that at least on the phonological front it is Spanish and not Portuguese that is the more conservative.

Someone said that all Romance languages are similar to each other apart from French; I would be inclined to add to that Romanian and Portuguese. If one disregards geography and politics, then the Romance languages can be seen to comprise an inner circle of languages (e.g. Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and Italian) that have more in common with each other than with those in the outer circle of languages (e.g. French, Portuguese and Romanian) exhibiting distinct wayward tendencies. Such a classification is though perhaps no guide to degrees of conservativeness since Romanian has preserved three genders and some of the cases of Latin.


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## merquiades

Hulalessar said:


> When asking if one language is more conservative than another it assumes that there is some yardstick for measuring change and that you have decided what you are measuring. What weight should be given to phonological, morphological and lexical changes?
> 
> Many of the things I buy here in Spain have instructions on them in both Spanish and Portuguese. Comparing the two it is obvious that you are looking at two closely related languages. However, listen to someone read them out loud and it is a different story. The other day I was listening to a concert from Lisbon and could understand nothing of what the announcer said. (That contrasts with listening to a concert from Italy where I can at least usually follow the drift.) It is a well-observed phenomenon that intelligibility between spoken Portuguese and Spanish is essentially only one way. Whilst phonological changes only need to be minimal to prevent intelligibility (cf this thread) this suggests that at least on the phonological front it is Spanish and not Portuguese that is the more conservative.
> 
> Someone said that all Romance languages are similar to each other apart from French; I would be inclined to add to that Romanian and Portuguese. If one disregards geography and politics, then the Romance languages can be seen to comprise an inner circle of languages (e.g. Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and Italian) that have more in common with each other than with those in the outer circle of languages (e.g. French, Portuguese and Romanian) exhibiting distinct wayward tendencies. Such a classification is though perhaps no guide to degrees of conservativeness since Romanian has preserved three genders and some of the cases of Latin.



Probably what throws you off in Portuguese are all the reduced vowel sounds in unstressed syllables.  Everything becomes a kind of schwa sound and whole syllables drop off complete.  Maybe also the nasal combinations they have.  All vowel sounds in Spanish are pure, just like in Italian. So I'd agree that regarding vowel sounds Portuguese is highly innovative.  But as for consonants it's the opposite.  Spanish has changed weakened or modified probably most consonants in some way or another.  
Put two languages together, even if linguistically they are basically the same, with one of them modifying consonants, the other vowel sounds, I suppose intelligibility  will obviously occur.


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## Outsider

miguel89 said:


> I also have this impression when I read something in Portuguese, but perhaps it is purely subjective. It would be interesting to know what is the impression of Portuguese speakers when reading in Spanish.


I might say something similar about Spanish. For example, regarding phonology: yes, overall Portuguese is more conservative as far as _f_, _g_, _j_ are concerned. But as far as the sibilants are concerned, it's more complicated.  Portuguese did retain the voiceless-voiced contrasts that were lost in  Spanish: _ss_ vs. -_s_-, _ç/c_ vs. _z_, _x_ vs. _j/g_. But then Portuguese is (overwhelmingly) _seseante_, while at least standard Spanish still distinguishes _s_ from _c/z_ in speech. Of course, most Spanish dialects are actually _seseantes_, too. On the other hand, unstressed vowels are definitely more conservative (closer to  Latin and Italian) in Spanish than in Portuguese, as others have  remarked...

We also often notice words in Spanish that are now old-fashioned or have changed meaning in Portuguese.



Hulalessar said:


> I would be inclined to add to that Romanian  and Portuguese. If one disregards geography and politics, then the  Romance languages can be seen to comprise an inner circle of languages  (e.g. Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and Italian) that have more in common  with each other than with those in the outer circle of languages (e.g.  French, Portuguese and Romanian) exhibiting distinct wayward  tendencies.


Catalan vowels, at least in some of its dialects, are  not that far apart from (European) Portuguese vowels. The acoustic  impression which the two make is remarkably similar, although I would  add that at a deeper level, when one adds other linguistic dimensions,  Spanish and Portuguese are overall clearly closer to each other than  either of them is to Catalan.


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## elwizard

I don't believe Portuguese is more conservative than Spanish (or the other way around). That's because all are living languages, so perhaps Portuguese changed in some aspects of the language and Spanish could be changed in other aspects, as it could be grammar, syntax or others, differents from Portuguese. Perhaps your overall appreciation outside the iberian area could be that, but, in fact, all living languages has got that. Dead languages don't success this.


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## Erick404

Outsider said:


> We also often notice words in Spanish that are now old-fashioned or have changed meaning in Portuguese.



Yes, I have some native Spanish speaker friends living here in Brazil who use words like _todavia_ or _interceptar _in the spoken language, which are almost only found in written portuguese. 

Actually, I doubt that most of these words that are common use in Spanish but old fashioned in Portuguese can trace their origin all the way down to spoken Latin, but I have the feeling that the opposite (common use in Portuguese with old fashioned cognate in Spanish) is much less common.


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## killerbee256

miguel89 said:


> I also have this impression when I read something in Portuguese, but perhaps it is purely subjective. It would be interesting to know what is the impression of Portuguese speakers when reading in Spanish.


I'm not a native speaker, but in the case of Brazil the same is true. Some forms and usages common in Spanish are considered formal or old fashioned in Brazilian Portuguese. I sometimes use Creio que instead acho que and I am always corrected by people. And most notable in most of Brazil people don’t use tu. Thought it should be noted that European Portuguese is conservative in its grammar while Brazilian Portuguese is more conservative in phonics. So I think some things that are formal in Brazil are in common use in Portugal. Overall I get the feeling that Old Portuguese and Old Castilian were close enough to be considered dialects of each other, but the political separation of Portugal and Spain caused them to drift apart.


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## HUMBERT0

Before the emergence of the different Iberian kingdoms, in the VI century the common day speech may not have been that different throughout the entire peninsula, and maybe the dialectal continuum was not as marked and still didn’t hinder intelligibility. I wonder how other languages such as Old Gallego and Leones-Arturiano used at their respective courts before the successful emergence of the dialects of nascent Condados of Castille or Portugal, influence the latter? Maybe the latter are less conservative in all aspects.
Saludos


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## killerbee256

HUMBERT0 said:


> I wonder how other languages such as Old Gallego and Leones-Arturiano used at their respective courts before the successful emergence of the dialects of nascent Condados of Castille or Portugal, influence the latter? Maybe the latter are less conservative in all aspects.
> Saludos


Well at the time Gallego was and debatably still is a dialect of Portuguese.


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## CapnPrep

killerbee256 said:


> Well at the time Gallego was and debatably still is a dialect of Portuguese.


And/or vice versa…


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## merquiades

killerbee256 said:


> Well at the time Gallego was and debatably still is a dialect of Portuguese.



Old Galego was the parent language of both modern Galego and Portuguese.  Divergence between the two occurred after the border was set up and political separation became permanent.


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## Outsider

CapnPrep said:


> And/or vice versa…


Indeed. It's purely a matter of labels. Academics call the medieval language Galician-Portuguese to emphasize that the two simply weren't distinguished.


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## Miguel Antonio

HUMBERT0 said:


> I wonder how other languages such as Old Gallego and Leones-Arturiano used at their respective courts before the successful emergence of the dialects of nascent Condados of Castille or Portugal, influence the latter? Maybe the latter are less conservative in all aspects.


King Alfonso X of Castile chose to compile a series of songs to Our Lady in Galician*. Why? I wouldn't know, I wasn't born yet...



killerbee256 said:


> Well at the time Gallego was and debatably still is a dialect of Portuguese.


 Quite frankly, I fail to comprehend why so many people insist on underrating Galician language (of old and of today) by making such kind of comments. Would you be so kind as to state your case?  



CapnPrep said:


> And/or vice versa…


Personally, I'm for 'or' but not 'and'. The 'politically correct' answer is rather:



Outsider said:


> Academics call the medieval language Galician-Portuguese to emphasize that the two simply weren't distinguished.


 Which I agree to.


* Or Galician-Portuguese, if you will.


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## Outsider

Miguel Antonio said:


> King Alfonso X of Castile chose to compile a series of songs to Our Lady in Galician*. Why? I wouldn't know, I wasn't born yet...


It was the language traditionally used by peninsular troubadors, as I understand. (I wonder, though, if this was extensive to the whole of Iberia, or just the central and eastern western regions; surely in the east Catalan/Valencian/Occitan would have been the preferred choice...)


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## Favara

Outsider said:


> [...] surely in the east Catalan/Valencian/Occitan would have been the preferred choice...)


Here Provençal (Occitan) was regarded as "the most beautiful language", and was widely used in poetry. I've never heard about any Valencian/Catalan author from that time using anything other than Provençal, Catalan, Latin or (rarely) Arabic.


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## relativamente

Portuguese has made also important innovations that are far from conservative. Specially the extensive use of infinitives, for example in conditional sentences.
 Even has created the “personal infinitive” that is typical of Portuguese
 I copy and paste from wikipedia
Infinitivo pessoal Formação  O infinitivo pessoal é formado a partir do infinitivo impessoal, adicionando-se as desinências iguais às do futuro do subjuntivo: -, -es, -, -mos, -des, -em. Por isso, nos verbos regulares esses dois tempos se confundem.
 Exemplo: *cantar, cantar*es*, 	cantar, cantar*mos*, cantar*des*, cantar*em*.* Uso  Costuma-se usar o infinitivo pessoal quando:


refere-se a um sujeito próprio, diferente do da oração 	principal;  	
 _Para __*conseguirmos*__ 	sair, alguém precisa destrancar a porta._ 

 	o sujeito a que se refere é expresso antes do infinitivo;  	
 _Para __*nós conseguirmos*__ 	sair, precisamos abrir a porta._ 

 	o sujeito é indeterminado na terceira pessoa do plural.


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## Angelo di fuoco

I don't know much about Latin, but as for all I know the extensive usage of infinitive constructions is one of the most distinctive features of Latin syntax, rather than object clauses common to most of Romance (and other modern Indoeuropean) languages. Of course, the usage is not exactly the same, but I imagine that Portuguese personal infinitve has inherited many functions of the Latin infinitive clauses.
The fact that future subjunctive and personal infinitve are morphologically identical for almost all verbs may be confusing, but they are distinct forms: "no caso de ires à praia irei contigo" is not exactly the same as "se fordes à praia irei contigo".


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## XiaoRoel

This link is classic academic information on the subject of the origins of Portuguese. More information. More. A modern bibliography.


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## Outsider

Angelo di fuoco said:


> The fact that future subjunctive and personal infinitve are morphologically identical for almost all verbs may be confusing, but they are distinct forms: "no caso de ires à praia irei contigo" is not exactly the same as "se fordes à praia irei contigo".


Well, I agree that they're distinct forms, but the semantic difference between them in those two particular sentences is vanishingly small at best.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Sorry for the error...
Yes, in those two sentences it is small, but if you add final clauses and the like, the difference will greatly increase.


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## merquiades

The use of "ter (tener)" as an auxiliary verb to form the perfect tenses is an invention of Portuguese.  Spanish keeps traditional Latin "haber" to form the perfect tenses (also impersonal expressions such as "haber de", "hay que", "hay") which has grown archaic in Portuguese.  

El empleo del verbo "ter-tener" como auxiliar para crear los tiempos compuestos parece ser una invención del portugués.  El castellano sigue prefiriendo "haber" para crear el perfecto (al igual que las expresiones impersonales como "haber de ", "hay que", "hay").  En este caso, el uso de "haber" es más antiguo


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## Angelo di fuoco

Hoy leí algunas poesías en catalán antiguo (Ausias March, entre otros) y vi varios ejemplos de empleo de "haver" en el sentido de "poseer". ¿La extensión del uso de ter-tener-tenir-tindre será un proceso común a todas las lenguas iberoromanas? En particular me gustaría saber si en catalán es un proceso propio o si el castellano ha contribuido a hacer que tenir-tindre se use como verbo de posesión.


----------



## merquiades

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Hoy leí algunas poesías en catalán antiguo (Ausias March, entre otros) y vi varios ejemplos de empleo de "haver" en el sentido de "poseer". ¿La extensión del uso de ter-tener-tenir-tindre será un proceso común a todas las lenguas iberoromanas? En particular me gustaría saber si en catalán es un proceso propio o si el castellano ha contribuido a hacer que tenir-tindre se use como verbo de posesión.



El uso de "tenir" en catalán corresponde más o menos al de "tener" en castellano (posesión + auxiliar + el impersonal hay/hi ha) pero no se usa en perífrasis verbales para expresar obligación o necesidad (tener que = haver de), pero parece que hoy en día "tenir que" se está imponiendo y en este último caso es obvio que es por influencia castellana.  
También en español antiguo "haber" podía ser sinónimo de "tener" y se usaba a veces para indicar posesión.  Luego fue sustituido paulatinamente por "tener" excepto en el caso de los auxiliares.  En portugués se perdió por completo. Me gustaría saber por qué.


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## skizzo

merquiades said:


> El uso de "tenir" en catalán corresponde más o menos al de "tener" en castellano (posesión + auxiliar + el impersonal hay/hi ha) pero no se usa en perífrasis verbales para expresar obligación o necesidad (tener que = haver de), pero parece que hoy en día "tenir que" se está imponiendo y en este último caso es obvio que es por influencia castellana.
> También en español antiguo "haber" podía ser sinónimo de "tener" y se usaba a veces para indicar posesión.  Luego fue sustituido paulatinamente por "tener" excepto en el caso de los auxiliares.  En portugués se perdió por completo. Me gustaría saber por qué.



Haver is still used in European Portuguese as an auxiliary verb.


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## XiaoRoel

En todo el hilo hay un problema de base, que es considerar el portugués como dialecto originario del latín vulgar. Esto es un mito de la lingüística portuguesa, pero no se sostiene a la vista de los datos históricos.
Portugal es una unidad geográfica moderna, que designó en Edad Media el territorio de la antigua Gallaecia Bracarensis, a partir del nombre de la actual Porto.

Antes del s. XII no existe Portugal como reino independiente, por lo que no se puede hablar de portugués. Sólo tras la toma de Lisboa, se puede hablar de rasgos dialectales portugueses en la lengua común a los ya diferenciados reinos de Galicia y Portugal, y sólo con el deplazamiento del poder real al sur (Lisboa-Coimbra serán ahora los centros de las innovaciones lingüísticas)empezo ya la deriva que acabaría separando el portugués del gallego que es un dialecto directo del latín.

Tanto Galicia como Portugal (y Asturias y León) pertenecieron a la provincia romana de Gallaecia, con capital en Braga que con Lugo y Astorga forman la red administrativa romana. Gallaecia es la primera nación que se separa del Imperio Romano, con la llegada de los suevos en el primer decenio del s. V. Tras la invasión musulmana a comienzos del s. VII, la antigua Gallaecia no es ocupada por los sarracenos, y los pequeños contingentes de bereberes que campaban por la zona,  por el 740, rompen su alianza con los árabes y se retiran. Pronto la frontera segura se establece ene el Miño, donde destaca el obispado de Ourense. La siguiente línea de frontera con los musulmanes será en Duero, quedando en disputa las tierras del Mondego (con importantes núcleos mozárabes, cosa importante en la deriva fonológica del portugués). Coimbra cambia de manos varias veces hasta quedar definitivamente en manos  del ya independiente reino de Portugal, reconocido por el papa de Roma a mediados del s. XII (hablo de memoria, pero cualquiera puede corregir las fechas, hay abundantes materiales sobre la reconquista portuguesa en la red).
Por tanto ya es una contradictio in terminis hablar de Portugal, y por ende de la lengua portuguesa, antes de 1125.
Si analizmos los textos medievales escritos en gallego a ambos lados del Miño, veremos que no hay grandes diferencias (es decir, casi no hay diferencias) entre lo que escriben en Tui o Ourense y lo que escriben en Braga o Porto.
Sólo a partir del s. XV, y con esfuerzo grande de la corte (los miembros de la familia real son escritores ellos mismos) la prosa portuguesa empieza a diferenciarse de la ya declinante lengua escrita gallega (los últimos documentos son de la época de la muerte de la reina Juana, sobre 1520 ó 21) y la aparición del estilo italiano en poesía, es decir, del Renacimiento afecta de lleno al portugués que con su proipio nombre continuará el gallego medieval que hasta el s. XVIII es una lengua oral (con excepciones escritas) y que sólo se normaliza como lengua escrita a partir del s. XIX.
Además el gallego sufre desdel s. XV una erosión como lengua B frente a la lengua A en la diglosia (que no bilingüismo) que afectará de manera importante al léxico (muy especialmente en los ss. XIX y XX), pero no a la morfología, la fonética o la sintaxis.

La pérdida de la claridad vocálica del portugués de Portugal (aparte idiotismos y usos léxicos) es lo que más diferencia las lenguas de Galici y Portugal.
Pero dentro del portugués europeo, la región que hay entre el Duero y el Miño, de primitiva lengua gallega, todavía se opone al resto del portugués en mantener la indiferencia entre /v/ y /b/ que sólo se realizan como oclusiva bilabial sonora (y sus alófons fricativo)  [b/ß], la ch se pronuncia como en gallego [y en español y no como palatal fricativa sorda (en el resto del sominio de la engua portuguesa), las vocales átonas no se debilitan como al sur del Duero y son claramente perceptibles, muchos hechos de léxico común  (en la lengua rural y marítima, muchos celtismos de substrato, que al sur del Duero son substituídos por arabismos de superestrato).

Ya no hablemos de cultura popular, de ocupación y uso de la tierra, de técnicas marineras, y un largo etc.

Por tanto, el Portugués no crea ni elimina  ni cambia nada desde el latín vulgar, sino desde el gallego medieval: infinitivo histórico, uso de haber, perífrasis verbales, no creación de tiempos compuestos, orden de los clíticos, todos son elementos que el portugués recibe de la lengua base gallega. 

Por eso en caso de ser dialecto alguna lengua de la otra (con dialecto me refiero a un hecho diacrónico, no sincrónico), lo sería el portugués del gallego. En la actualidad son lenguas muy próximas, pero con un 10/15 % de diferencias , especialmente de tipo fonético.


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## Miguel Antonio

XiaoRoel said:


> Por eso en caso de ser dialecto alguna lengua de la otra (con dialecto me refiero a un hecho diacrónico, no sincrónico), lo sería el portugués del gallego. En la actualidad son lenguas muy próximas, pero con un 10/15 % de diferencias , especialmente de tipo fonético.


Ben falado, Xiao!


----------



## skizzo

These sounds in portuguese altered a lot:

Originally:

ss/s(initial) = s^
s (between vowels) = z^
ç/ce/ci = ts
z = dz
ch = tsh
x = sh
rr/r(initial) = R
ou = ow
ô = ô
ei = ej

Then (around XVI century)

ss/s(initial) = s^
s (between vowels) = z^
ç/ce/ci = s
z = z
ch = tsh
x = sh
rr/r(initial) = R
ou = ow
ô = ô
ei = ej

Now:

ss/s (initial) = s
s (between vowels) = z
ç/ce/ci = s
z = z
ch = sh
x = sh
rr/r(initial) = ʁ
ou = ô
ô = ô
ei = ɐj


There has been a massive simplication since the original sounds.
Basically, nowadays there is no distinction between "passo" and "paço", "sinto" and "cinto", "coser" and "cozer", "couro" and "coro", "cheque" and "xeque".


----------



## Ben Jamin

skizzo said:


> These sounds in portuguese altered a lot:
> 
> Originally:
> 
> ss/s(initial) = s^
> s (between vowels) = z^



What kind of sounds are s^ and z^?


----------



## skizzo

Ben Jamin said:


> What kind of sounds are s^ and z^?



Apico alveolar sibilants


----------



## merquiades

skizzo said:


> These sounds in portuguese altered a lot:
> "couro" and "coro"


I've heard people making this distinction in Portugal nowadays.


----------



## Ben Jamin

skizzo said:


> Apico alveolar sibilants



Is the" s^" similar to contemporary Castillan 's' (an 's' with a weak "sh" quality)?


----------



## merquiades

Ben Jamin said:


> Is the" s^" similar to contemporary Castillan 's' (an 's' with a weak "sh" quality)?



Implosive "s" (end of syllable, end of word) has become "sh" [ʃ] in Portugal.  This coincides with the "x" and "ch" spelling which are also [ʃ].  In between vowels "s" is [z], at the beginning of a word it's [s], like Spanish. The spelling "c" and "ç"  and "ss" also represent [s]. "z" is [z] before a vowel, [ʃ] or [ʒ] before a consonant, or at the end of word. "j" is [ʒ].  I'll stop there cause I've probably told you more than you want to know.


----------



## berndf

merquiades said:


> Implosive "s"


Implosive "s"? What is that supposed to mean? How can a fricative be plosive (im- or ex-)?


----------



## merquiades

berndf said:


> Implosive "s"? What is that supposed to mean? How can a fricative be plosive (im- or ex-)?



When "s" is not followed by a vowel sound it's known as "implosive s" in Spanish and Portuguese (at least).  It has different characteristics and pronunciation from "explosive s".  Perhaps this cannot (or doesn't need to) be applied to other languages.


----------



## Ben Jamin

merquiades said:


> Implosive "s" (end of syllable, end of word) has become "sh" [ʃ] in Portugal.  This coincides with the "x" and "ch" spelling which are also [ʃ].  In between vowels "s" is [z], at the beginning of a word it's [s], like Spanish. The spelling "c" and "ç"  and "ss" also represent [s]. "z" is [z] before a vowel, [ʃ] or [ʒ] before a consonant, or at the end of word. "j" is [ʒ].  I'll stop there cause I've probably told you more than you want to know.



You have told much, but it's about other consonants than I asked.


----------



## merquiades

Ben Jamin said:


> You have told much, but it's about other consonants than I asked.



Which other ones?

Ok. Maybe you were just interested in how the explosive /s/ is pronounced before vowels.  Here's wikepedia's description:  



> /s/ and /z/ are normally lamino-alveolar, as in English. However, a number of dialects in northern Portugal pronounce /s/ and /z/ as apico-alveolar sibilants (sounding somewhat like a soft [ʃ] or [ʒ]), as in the Romance languages of northern Iberia. A very few northeastern Portugal dialects still maintain the medieval distinction between apical and laminal sibilants (written s/ss and c/ç/z, respectively).


----------



## berndf

merquiades said:


> When "s" is not followed by a vowel sound it's known as "implosive s" in Spanish and Portuguese (at least).  It has different characteristics and pronunciation from "explosive s".  Perhaps this cannot (or doesn't need to) be applied to other languages.


Thank you for the information. It is certainly a use of the terms which is completely different from that in general phonetics (here). Maybe it is indeed terminology specific to Spanish and Portuguese. I have never come across it.


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## skizzo

Ben Jamin said:


> Is the" s^" similar to contemporary Castillan 's' (an 's' with a weak "sh" quality)?



Yes. It has a "hissing" sound".


----------



## Alderamin

skizzo said:


> These sounds in portuguese altered a lot:
> 
> Originally:
> 
> ss/s(initial) = s^
> s (between vowels) = z^
> ç/ce/ci = ts
> z = dz
> ch = tsh
> x = sh
> rr/r(initial) = R
> ou = ow
> ô = ô
> ei = ej
> 
> Then (around XVI century)
> 
> ss/s(initial) = s^
> s (between vowels) = z^
> ç/ce/ci = s
> z = z
> ch = tsh
> x = sh
> rr/r(initial) = R
> ou = ow
> ô = ô
> ei = ej
> 
> Now:
> 
> ss/s (initial) = s
> s (between vowels) = z
> ç/ce/ci = s
> z = z
> ch = sh
> x = sh
> rr/r(initial) = ʁ
> ou = ô
> ô = ô
> ei = ɐj
> 
> 
> There has been a massive simplication since the original sounds.
> Basically, nowadays there is no distinction between "passo" and "paço", "sinto" and "cinto", "coser" and "cozer", "couro" and "coro", "cheque" and "xeque".



Hi all,
I've been reading this thread, which has pleased me, and the answer that I liked to read the most was Xiaoroel's answer. 
But, I am curious about Skizzo's statement... 
Skizzo, I can assure you that I make a real distinction between "couro" and "coro" when I spell both words.
Regarding the word "coro" it depends on the meaning (coro: choir; eu coro: I blush); the "o" is closed in the first word, and opened in the second.
As for "couro" I assure you that we spell the diphthong "ou". This word can be written and spelled as "coiro" too.
Yes, as for the rest of the words no distinction is made in their sound. In oral speech, they're only recognised by the context.
Where it is written that words containing diphthongs such "ou" are spelled "ô" ? Am I missing something?


----------



## killerbee256

I was wondering recently what was the proto sound for "r" and “rr”. In Portuguese both sounds are like English "h," being more guttural in European Portuguese; while Spanish is some what closer to English with “r” while “rr” is an Alveolar trill. What was the sound in old Spanish and old Portuguese?


----------



## Angelo di fuoco

Spanish isn't really "closer" to English: the simple "r" is an alveolar tap, while the double rr is an alveolar trill (in English it's an approximant). That was also the case in Old Portuguese. In contemporary European and Brazilian Portuguese the pronunciation of the simple "r" depends on its phonological context and the dialect, the alveolar variant (tap and trill) being not kicking (since it's lost ground to allophones), but still alive and even dominant in some varieties and phonological contexts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_phonology#Consonants (an introduction)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R#Portuguese (a more detailed version)


----------



## berndf

killerbee256 said:


> I was wondering recently what was the proto sound for "r" and “rr”. In Portuguese both sounds are like English "h," being more guttural in European Portuguese; while Spanish is some what closer to English with “r” while “rr” is an Alveolar trill. What was the sound in old Spanish and old Portuguese?


Originally (i.e. in Latin) just a short and a long "r", as it is still the case in Italian.


----------



## olaszinho

Morphologically speaking, European Portuguese is one of the most conservative and complicated Romance Languages. I am referring to the enclitic and mesoclitic personal pronouns: _digo-te _but in negative sentences _eu nao te digo _or dar-to-ei, the preservation of a synthetic pluperfect _eu dissera; _the future subjunctive:_ eu disser, tu vieres;  _the personal infinitive: _para tu cantares.
_


----------



## Angelo di fuoco

The personal infinitive is a feature unique to Portuguese. All but the irregular forms of the personal infinitive are identical with the forms of the future subjunctive, which stems from the Latin imperfect subjunctive, but the irregular verbs have different stems, e. g. the verbs ser and ir have the non-conjugated infinitive as the stem of the personal infinitive and the third person plural of the simple past or pluperfect (for|am) for the future subjunctive.

Old Spanish (I read "Lazarillo de Tormes" this summer) knows constructions like "dártelo he" which corresponds to the Portuguese "dar-to-ei" and enclitic object pronouns in the indicative mood (like "dígotelo"), but both constructions are hopelessly obsolete, although the enclitic pronouns were in use until the 20th century in Spain and I actually encountered several appearances in the writings of the Cuban author Alejo Carpentier.

Spanish also knows both the syntetic pluperfect (since the 15th century more frequently, and nowadays almost exclusively used as the _subjuntivo en -ra_) and future subjunctive, but the pluperfect is alive (not kicking) only in some novelists like Isabel Allende and (as my Spanish teacher at the university told us) also in newspaper articles. Future subjunctive has survived in some fossilised expressions and in legal texts like the Spanish Constitution of 1978, but also contemporary texts like the copyright warnings of the Ediciones Cátedra:



> Reservados todos los derechos. El contenido de esta obra está protegido por la Ley, que establece penas de prisión y/o multas [...] para quienes _*reprodujeren*_, _*plagiaren*_, _*distribuyeren*_ o _*comunicaren*_ públicamente [...] una obra literaria, artística o científica [...] sin la preceptiva autorización.



This one is from the 24th edition (printed in 2009) of a collection of Spanish-language poetry of the Siglo de Oro originally published in 1979.

I once read in Adam Ledgeway's excellent "Grammatica diacronica del napoletano" that Old Napoletan also had the syntetic pluperfect: a remnant of Latin.


----------



## merquiades

Angelo di fuoco said:


> The personal infinitive is a feature unique to Portuguese. All but the irregular forms of the personal infinitive are identical with the forms of the future subjunctive, which stems from the Latin imperfect subjunctive, but the irregular verbs have different stems, e. g. the verbs ser and ir have the non-conjugated infinitive as the stem of the personal infinitive and the third person plural of the simple past or pluperfect (for|am) for the future subjunctive.



I think you mean it's rather the personal infinitive that's always regular:  por, seres, irmos, terdes, poderem...  and the future subjuntive that is irregular:  puser, fores, formos, tiverdes, puderem 

The personal infinitive exists in Galician and Sardinian too in that infinitives can take verbal endings in these languages.  In other Romance languages like Spanish a kind of personal infinitive exists also but the infinitve can take no endings.  Spanish:  sin abrir yo la puerta...



> Old Spanish (I read "Lazarillo de Tormes" this summer) knows constructions like "dártelo he" which corresponds to the Portuguese "dar-to-ei" and enclitic object pronouns in the indicative mood (like "dígotelo"), but both constructions are hopelessly obsolete,


Interesting.  I'd never made the rapprochement between the Lazarillo forms and Portuguese



> Spanish also knows both the syntetic pluperfect (since the 15th century more frequently, and nowadays almost exclusively used as the _subjuntivo en -ra_) and future subjunctive, but the pluperfect is alive (not kicking) only in some novelists like Isabel Allende and (as my Spanish teacher at the university told us) also in newspaper articles. Future subjunctive has survived in some fossilised expressions and in legal texts like the Spanish Constitution of 1978, but also contemporary texts like the copyright warnings of the Ediciones Cátedra:


I think the synthetic pluperfect indicative is very much alive and kicking.  I think I see it more often than before especially in subordinate clauses like "como, cuando" etc.


Otherwise, in general, Latin America writers are very conservative and it doesn't surprise me to view more archaic-like structures such as putting object pronouns after: Dícese or dígote, or using hyperbaton, future subjuntives and synthetic pluperfects.


----------



## Angelo di fuoco

merquiades said:


> I think you mean it's rather the personal infinitive that's always regular:  por, seres, irmos, terdes, poderem...  and the future subjuntive that is irregular:  puser, fores, formos, tiverdes, puderem
> 
> The personal infinitive exists in Galician and Sardinian too in that infinitives can take verbal endings in these languages.  In other Romance languages like Spanish a kind of personal infinitive exists also but the infinitve can take no endings.  Spanish:  sin abrir yo la puerta...



Probably you are right about Portuguese, it's a language I don't speak, I only read and write it (with the aid of a dictionary).
Are you sure about the personal infinitive in Sardinian? It's a language I've only read about a little bit, but they write that Sardinian is the only language which has conserved the Latin imperfect subjunctive (in -re), whereas Spanish and Portuguese have reanalised it as future subjunctive.
About Spanish... yes, I've noticed my boyfriend using it sometimes, but I don't think it's considered a very cultured way of speaking.



merquiades said:


> Interesting.  I'd never made the rapprochement between the Lazarillo forms and Portuguese


It took me some time to make this rapprochement because orthography does condition our perception of grammatical forms.



merquiades said:


> I think the synthetic pluperfect indicative is very much alive and kicking.  I think I see it more often than before especially in subordinate clauses like "como, cuando" etc.



Sure about it? In clauses with "como" it could be an archaism or an imitation of Latin which prescribes the subjunctive mood in clauses with "cum" without semantic distinctions that are made in Spanish, but one should see the examples
 The articles I've read about the use of the syntetic pluperfect say that in contemporary Spanish it is used only in in subordinate clauses, never in main clauses (except in Galicia, where it's also used in colloquial speech due to the influence of the Galician adstratum), and the examples in contemporary prose I've seen seem to confirm that.
Anyway, as long as I don't hear it in (conceptually) oral speech in other places than Galicia, I won't think it's kicking... 



merquiades said:


> Otherwise, in general, Latin America writers are very conservative and it doesn't surprise me to view more archaic-like structures such as putting object pronouns after: Dícese or dígote, or using hyperbaton, future subjuntives and synthetic pluperfects.



I don't think so: "dícese" is an archaic formula which has survived only in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (perpetuating the entries of the Diccionario de Autoridades), future subjunctive is used only in very limited contexts I've described above, and I think the use or non-use of the synthetic pluperfect is a matter of personal preference.
E. g. García Márquez hardly ever uses subjunctive in -se, whereas, as for all I know (personal observations) in Spain it's more often used by writers from the North, especially where another of the _lenguas españolas_ is spoken. I gave Allende as example because she's my personal most-read Spanish-language writer (until I began studying Hispanism I knew very little about contemporary Spanish literature and I don't think I've made big progress until now).


----------



## merquiades

Angelo di Fuoco said:
			
		

> Sure about it? In clauses with "como" it could be an archaism or an imitation of Latin which prescribes the subjunctive mood in clauses with "cum" without semantic distinctions that are made in Spanish, but one should see the examples
> The articles I've read about the use of the syntetic pluperfect say that in contemporary Spanish it is used only in in subordinate clauses, never in main clauses (except in Galicia, where it's also used in colloquial speech due to the influence of the Galician adstratum), and the examples in contemporary prose I've seen seem to confirm that.
> Anyway, as long as I don't hear it in (conceptually) oral speech in other places than Galicia, I won't think it's kicking...



I've heard it used orally in central Spain in subordinate clauses by people who are not necessarily literary.  After "como" comes to mind in like "como dijera, como tuviera".  Sometimes it even sounds like an indefinite form would have sufficed:  "como dijo, como tuvo".



			
				Angelo di Fuoco said:
			
		

> I don't think so: "dícese" is an archaic formula which has survived only in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (perpetuating the entries of the Diccionario de Autoridades), future subjunctive is used only in very limited contexts I've described above, and I think the use or non-use of the synthetic pluperfect is a matter of personal preference.
> E. g. García Márquez hardly ever uses subjunctive in -se, whereas, as for all I know (personal observations) in Spain it's more often used by writers from the North, especially where another of the lenguas españolas is spoken. I gave Allende as example because she's my personal most-read Spanish-language writer (until I began studying Hispanism I knew very little about contemporary Spanish literature and I don't think I've made big progress until now).



I wouldn't say these archaic forms are super widely used in colloquial L.A. Spanish, it's just more common, especially in authors.  There is more appeal.  
-Se subjunctive forms are definitely used more in northern Spain and some areas in L.A. (I remember in another thread an Argentine saying the -se sounded better to him)  but -Ra elsewhere, even in Madrid, not just the south

Anyway, to swing back to the topic, all these issues we talk about as residual or sporadic use in Spanish are the norm in Galician and Portuguese.  

@Sardinian.  Just looking around the net, it seems there is a personal infinitive.  Interesting language; it's retained Latin neuter nouns and the salty articles.


----------



## olaszinho

@Sardinian.  Just looking around the net, it seems there is a personal infinitive.  Interesting language; it's retained Latin neuter nouns and the salty articles.[/QUOTE]

I don't think Sardinian, even in the most conservative dialects, retains Latin neuter nouns.
Italian "dicesi" dicasi" are more common than the Spanish counterparts.
All modern Spanish grammars (particularly the ones for foreigners) do not even mention the future subjunctive or the synthetic pluperfect tense. To be honest, It rarely occured to me to find some synthetic pluperferct forms in newspapers or books.
As for the future subjunctive it is even rarer than the French "imparfait du subjonctif".

"and I think the use or non-use of the synthetic pluperfect is a matter of personal preference." Angelo di Fuoco.

I do think most Spaniards don't know that this tense exists in Spanish. Generally Spanish people tend to mistake the Portuguese tense: _eu dissera, eu tivera _for the imperfect subjunctive.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Future subjunctive in Spanish is common in legal texts, but otherwise pretty rare: I even heard from a native speaker who himself was a language teacher in a very good language school in Madrid that future subjunctive doesn't exist. I preferred to keep silence and not contradict hiim.
In French, there are even nowadays authors who use the imparfait du subjonctif very often: e. g. Amélile Nothomb makes the concordance des temps in the subjonctif in roughly 50% of the cases.



> "and I think the use or non-use of the synthetic pluperfect is a matter of personal preference." Angelo di Fuoco.
> 
> I do think most Spaniards don't know that this tense exists in Spanish. Generally Spanish people tend to mistake the Portuguese tense: eu _dissera_,_ eu tivera_ for the imperfect subjunctive.



I was talking only about literature and journalistic texts, not about colloquial speech.


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## merquiades

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Future subjunctive in Spanish is common in legal texts, but otherwise pretty rare: I even heard from a native speaker who himself was a language teacher in a very good language school in Madrid that future subjunctive doesn't exist. I preferred to keep silence and not contradict hiim.
> In French, there are even nowadays authors who use the imparfait du subjonctif very often: e. g. Amélile Nothomb makes the concordance des temps in the subjonctif in roughly 50% of the cases..



Cuando a Roma fueres haz como vieres.  I should have liked to play dumb and ask him what verb forms these are. 

You can avoid imperfect subjunctive almost always in French, but when a good writer who is narrating in the past comes up against  "bien que, pourvu que" or some adverbial clause requiring subjunctive (s)he either has to rephrase (and lose the desired effect), change to present or bite the bullet and put an imperfect subjunctive.  It's really not so hard though.  Frenchmen would have you believe it's the most difficult tense imaginable on earth.  Yet all you have to do is add a circumflex accent and a non-pronounced "t" to the past simple and it's the same, even in pronunciation.  Sometimes it has a "t" anyway too!  



			
				Olaszinho said:
			
		

> I don't think Sardinian, even in the most conservative dialects, retains Latin neuter nouns.


I'll take your word for it.  I don't know the language at all and was just going by what people have written about it on the net.


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## Angelo di fuoco

merquiades said:


> Cuando a Roma fueres haz como vieres.  I should have liked to play dumb and ask him what verb forms these are.



It would have been a great pleasure to show him the copyright warning I quoted some posts earlier, but unfortunately that very day I left the anthology of the Renaissance and Siglo de Oro poetry at the apartment where I lived.



merquiades said:


> You can avoid imperfect subjunctive almost always in French, but when a good writer who is narrating in the past comes up against  "bien que, pourvu que" or some adverbial clause requiring subjunctive (s)he either has to rephrase (and lose the desired effect), change to present or bite the bullet and put an imperfect subjunctive.  It's really not so hard though.  Frenchmen would have you believe it's the most difficult tense imaginable on earth.  Yet all you have to do is add a circumflex accent and a non-pronounced "t" to the past simple and it's the same, even in pronunciation.  Sometimes it has a "t" anyway too!



Unfortunately, most of the writers (even the most renouned, like Houellebecq) just use the présent du subjonctif when & where a century ago they would have used the imparfait du subjonctif, some use it inconsistently (like Nothomb) and some authors (like José Frêches) use it in the narrative text, but not in direct speech (because nowadays you won't hear it). By the way, your derivation rule is correct only for the 3rd person singular, bur the morphology and correct usage are nevertheless very easy to learn (contrarily to the future subjunctive in Portuguese, where the correct use is something I still struggle with).
I learned the forms only through reading (although the correct usage took some time to learn - with unavoidable mistakes, there for my whole French class to see), my first book in French being "Les Misérables" and since then I have taken to using them in formal written texts (and when I like to produce some effect, even in unorganised spontaneous discourse).


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## olaszinho

Cuando a Roma fueres haz como vieres.  I should have liked to play dumb and ask him what verb forms these are. 



This proves that the future subjunctive is a very old-fashioned tense in Spanish. You can just find it in sayings, literature from the "siglo de oro" (mostly) and the most formal legal documents, as Angelo di fuoco said.


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## skizzo

Alderamin said:


> Hi all,
> I've been reading this thread, which has pleased me, and the answer that I liked to read the most was Xiaoroel's answer.
> But, I am curious about Skizzo's statement...
> Skizzo, I can assure you that I make a real distinction between "couro" and "coro" when I spell both words.
> Regarding the word "coro" it depends on the meaning (coro: choir; eu coro: I blush); the "o" is closed in the first word, and opened in the second.
> As for "couro" I assure you that we spell the diphthong "ou". This word can be written and spelled as "coiro" too.
> Yes, as for the rest of the words no distinction is made in their sound. In oral speech, they're only recognised by the context.
> Where it is written that words containing diphthongs such "ou" are spelled "ô" ? Am I missing something?



I'm not talking about spelling, I'm talking about pronunciation. I clearly said "sounds" not "spellings".


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## berndf

skizzo said:


> I'm not talking about spelling, I'm talking about pronunciation. I clearly said "sounds" not "spellings".


C'mon. It is totally obvious that he just used the wrong English verb and that where he wrote _spell_ he meant _pronounce_.


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## killerbee256

Since this thread has been revived I have a question about first syllable of the words like llamar/Chamar or llave/chave. From looking at other Romance languages I can see that the Portuguese spelling is etymological, but the actual pronunciation isn't, as it sounds like "sh" in English. I think the late Latin pronunciation was with a hard c almost a k, like in Catalan, Italian and Romanian if someone could confirm that it would be great. So I can see that both are innovative but which is closer to medieval North western Iberian speech?


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## merquiades

The origin is Latin initial CL or PL.  In Spanish these sounds regularly palatalized to /ʎ/ which is the origin for the "ll" spelling as it coincided with the other words in the language that were pronounced with the same palatal lateral..  In Galician the same combinations became /ʧ/ which was naturally given then the "ch" spelling.  Both are part of this "Iberian" early palatalization with different results.  Portuguese subsequently simplified /ʧ/ to /ʃ/ at a much later date.  In French and Catalan this palatalization did not occur.  Compare clamer, clamar, llamar, chamar and pleuvoir, ploure, llover, chover....  It Italian it seems the L in all clusters initial or otherwise (cl, pl, fl, gl...) vocalizes to /j/:  chiamare (the h was added to preserve the hard k sound before i in Italian), piovere.


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## Quiviscumque

Merquiades is right. However, perhaps it would be better to say that CL and PL become  /ʎ/ in Castilian. In Aragonese dialects the groups were preserved (as in present Catalan); Menéndez Pidal hypothesizes that, before the expansion of Castilian,  they were preserved in all eastern and southern regions down to Duero river. On the other hand, in Asturias and León they become  /ʧ/ (as in present Galician).

So, concerning "(high) medieval North western Iberian speech", the more approximate answer seems to be  /ʧ/.


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## leolucas1980

killerbee256 said:


> Is this Universal throughout all Portuguese dialects? I know that Brazilian Portuguese is more conservative in its phonics.I’ll have to “open my ears” more to see what people around me here in Rio Grande do Sul sound like.



Rio Grande do Sul's dialect is known to be more conservative than other Brazilian dialects with regards to vowel pronunciation. Some say that is due to Spanish and late European immigrants (mainly Italians and Germans) who learned Portuguese based on its orthography mainly.


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## Penyafort

killerbee256 said:


> Since this thread has been revived I have a question about first syllable of the words like llamar/Chamar or llave/chave. From looking at other Romance languages I can see that the Portuguese spelling is etymological, but the actual pronunciation isn't, as it sounds like "sh" in English. I think the late Latin pronunciation was with a hard c almost a k, like in Catalan, Italian and Romanian if someone could confirm that it would be great. So I can see that both are innovative but which is closer to medieval North western Iberian speech?



Regarding phonological evolution, the palatalization of PL, CL and sometimes FL in many core words is probably one of the few clearly _North-West Iberian_ traits (i.e., the ancient Kingdom of Asturias). Even if it affects a relatively small number of words, it is something that bound Galician-Portuguese, Asturian/Leonese and Spanish together in front of the other Peninsular Romance languages _(_Aragonese and Catalan in the North-East, _Mozarabic _in the central-southern areas), Gascon-Occitan and the Oil group (French), all of which preserved the clusters. There is, though, a Ribagorzan area, encompassing both eastern Aragonese and north-western Catalan, in which initial stages of palatalization exist: pll-, cll-, fll-.

CL- was likely the first to start a palatalization, probably going through a cll- [kλ] stage too. This would go further into two areas: a [λ] or eastern one (most of Asturian and Castilian) and a [tʃ] or western one (western Asturian and Galician/Portuguese), which in turn would later simplify into [j] and [ʃ] respectively in most places.

So even if the North-West Iberian group is thought of as conservative, and rightly so, regarding this particular trait it was rather innovative.


These are twelve terms compared. Notice how, when not in initial position, it is after a nasal and always becomes [tʃ], in Spanish too.


*Latin:* CLAVE, CLAMARE, PLAGA, PLANTAGINE, PLANU, PLENU, PLICARE, IMPLERE, PLORARE, PLOVERE, FLAMA, INFLARE


*(W) Portuguese & Galician:* chave, chamar, chaga, tanchagem/chantaxe, chão/chan, cheio/cheo, chegar, encher, chorar, chover, chama, inchar

*(E) Spanish & Asturian:* llave, llamar, llaga, llantén, llano/llanu, lleno/llenu, llegar, henchir/hinchir, llorar, llover, llama, hinchar


_Mozarabic (extinguished, but attested words preserve the cluster)_

*Aragonese:* clau, clamar, plaga, plantaina, plan(o), plen(o), plegar, emplir, plorar, plever, flama, inflar

*Catalan:* clau, clamar, plaga, plantatge, pla, ple, _(a)plegar_, omplir, plorar, ploure, flamar, inflar/unflar

*French:* clef/clé, clamer, plaie, plantain, _plain_, plein, _plier, _remplir, pleurer, pleuvoir, flamme, _enfler _​


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## Sardokan1.0

_*Latin *- *Sardinian *comparison_
_*
Latin:*_ 
_CLAVE, CLAMARE, PLAGA, PLANTAGINE, PLANU, PLENU, PLICARE, IMPLERE, PLORARE, PLOVERE, FLAMA, INFLARE_

*Sardinian (Logudorese, central-northern Sardinia) :*
_JAE, JAMARE, PIÀE, NELVIÀDILE, PIANU, PIENU, PIJÀRE, PIENARE, PIÀNGHERE, PIÒERE, FIACCA, UFFIARE
_
*Sardinian (Nuorese, central-eastern Sardinia) :*
_CRAE, CRAMARE, PRÀE, NERVIÀDILE, PRANU, PRENU, PRICÀRE, PRENARE, PRÀNGHERE, PRÒERE, FRACCA, UFFRARE_


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## guihenning

Penyafort said:


> *(W) Portuguese & Galician:* chave, chamar, chaga, tanchagem chantagem/chantaxe, chão/chan, cheio/cheo, chegar, encher, chorar, chover, chama, inchar


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