SPAIN AND SPANISH

QUE HABLAS?

In Spain, Barcelona is pronounce "Barthelona" but very seldom if even as "Barselona".  It sounds like it's said with a "lisp". This pronunciation is specific to Castilian or Catalan, or Madrileños speech or even  common to all of Andalucía (Spain),  Seville (Saviye), Malaga, Salamanca, Granada, Toledo, Madrid, Medina del campo, Medina de Rioseco. Pehaps even the whole of Castile and León.  

There is so much hearsay about the Spaniard's "lisp". Rumour has it that originated from Arabic and has existed since the Arabic / Moorish occupation of the Iberian peninsula.  Comparing the Arabic alphabet the English alphabet, A = Alif, B = Baa and C= Thaa. Resulting in Spaniards pronouncing the English C  as "TH".  Spaniards however vehemently deny this, denying Arabic heritage, claiming they're not the offspring of Arabs or Jews or Moors who coexisted in harmony for eight centuries. 

The mere fact that the Arabs/Moors  ruled Spain for 800 years implies that there was and extended interaction between the "invaders" and the Spaniards. Inter trade, inter marriage, inter religion, inter education, culinary influence and social and cultural interaction meant that there had to be a common form of communication in use and if there wasn't, one was developed.

For example, Afrikaans is a bastardized South Africa tongue somewhat resembling Dutch, introduced by Jan van Riebeeck and his Dutch colonialist in 1652. This Euro Dutch became mixed with the languages of the slaves they traded, languages of the exiles that was banished to South Africa, etc. It can thus be said that Akrikaans was a mix of  Dutch  Malaysian/Indonesian, Hindi, and Arabic, in an attempt towards mutual understanding.

The first Dutchman who arrived here in the Cape some 363 years ago, give birth to Afrikaans - the youngest of world languages. Today less than 400 years later Afrikaans is spoken by some 60 million South Africans as either their first or second language. Whereas the Arabs were in Spain for more than twice as long. Therefore it's painfully obvious that the language would somewhat change and merge, adapted to common understanding.

However, one school of though attributes the "lisp" to a Spanish king whose subjects mimiced his speech, so as not to constantly remind him of his speech impediment. But that's just folk law. It is also speculated that originally the Spanish C (cedilla) made a "ts" sound and that the Spanish Z (dezir) made a "dz" sound, both of which were contracted into the "lisp".

Some even say these two sounds are representative of "zz" like "ts" in Tuscan Italian when enunciating "pizza". However this "lisp" is not unique to Castilians, it is actually quite rife among the Portuguese, since  the entire inland border of Portugal embraces all of Castille -as can be seen by the map. Interaction, communication, cross border activities and speech rubbed off.  

If you speak Portuguese, you know exactly what I mean, because spoken Portuguese sound very much like a Spaniard speaking with a really bad speech impediment. In fact the comedian Russel Peters jokes about this in one of his sets, saying that Portuguese sounds like the speech of a Spanish retard. Play nice Russel!

So lets look at the remnants of Arab / Moorish language and culture to see it any still remains after 800 years of denial.  The rock of Gibraltar is the Spanish rendition of the Arabic name Jabal Ṭāriq (جبل طارق). Jabal means mountain in Arabic and the Arab who conquered this rock was non other than Tariq ibn Ziyad. Subsequently called the mountain of Tariq or the Jabl of  Tariq which eventually ended up mispronounced as Jabral Tariq and misspelt to Gibraltar. 

The word Medina in Arabic means City therefore Medina del Campo means City in the Country which is a mixture of Arabic and Spanish. In Medina de Rioseco, Medina means city and Rioseco means tolerance and acceptance. It is obvious that it was called - Medina tu Sabr, means City of Patience /Tolerance. 

To get back to the "lisp". Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian are the five romance languages  but none have anything to do with Love and Romance. It has to do with the Romans who spoke Latin. The 5 romance languages are also based on the Latin script. 

During the 800 years of Arabic rule, Arabic was the lingua franca and Arabic script was the script of choice. With its consonantal  alphabet a (alif), b (baa), t (taa), th (thaa), j (jeem), h (ha), k (ko), d (dal), dh (dhal), r (ra), z (za), s (seen), sh (sheen), etc. The latin script a, b, c, coincided with Arabic a, b, t, as such t (taa), th (thaa), was used interchangibly  as the third Latin alphabetical character representing the third Arabic alphabetical character.

This language influence is not unique to Spanish and not the only word derivatives. Spanish is fraught with Arabic words among which are, but to mention but a few:-

Arabic Spanish (English)

al-zayt aceite (olive oil)

tassah taza (cup)

al-tūn atún (tuna)

al-sukkar azúcar (sugar)

qīṯārah gitara (guitar)

nāranǧ naranga (orange)

al-jabr Algebra (math subject)

aruzz Aarroz (rice) 

al-qutn algodón (cotton)

Šarāb Jarabe (syrup)

The Arabic  influence on the Spanish language and culture, agriculture and culinary art are unmistakenly strong, so-much-so that according to Spanish historian and philologist Rafael Lapes — former director of the Spanish Royal Academy — that  4,000 words of modern Spanish come from Arabic and in his book Historia de la lengua española he poses the rhetorical question "How did this happen and what does it mean for Spanish today?"