History of the Spanish language

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Spanish language

Names for the language History Pronunciation Dialects Orthography Grammar: Determiners Nouns Pronouns Adjectives Prepositions Verbs Conjugation Irregular verbs
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The Spanish language developed from vulgar Latin, with influence from Basque in the north and Arabic in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronic phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida; Latin lupus, Spanish lobo), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish año) and diphthongation of short E/O from vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo; Latin tempus, Spanish tiempo; Latin ferrum, Old Spanish fierro and modern hierro). Similar phenomena can be found in most other Romance languages as well, especially after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD reduced cultural contact with Rome.

External history

The standard Spanish language is also called Castilian. In its earliest form, and up through approximately the fifteenth century, the language is customarily called Old Spanish. From approximately the sixteenth century on, it is called Modern Spanish. Spanish of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is sometimes called "classical" Spanish, referring to the literary accomplishments of that period. Unlike English and French, it is not customary to speak of a "middle" stage in the development of Spanish. Castilian Spanish originated, after the decline of the Roman Empire, as a continuation of spoken Latin in the Cordillera Cantábrica, in northern Spain, in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, according to most authorities; but others claim it came from Franco-Navarrese and Gothic-Castilian dialects in the 11th century AD. With the Reconquista, this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the provincial dialects, at the same time as it borrowed massively from the vocabulary of Moorish Arabic and was influenced by Mozarabes (the Romance speech of Christians living in Moorish territory) and medieval Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). These languages all but vanished in the Iberian peninsula by the late 16th century. The prestige of Castile and its language was propagated partly by the exploits of Castilian heroes in the battles of the Reconquista — among them Fernán González and Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (El Cid) — and by the narrative poems about them that were recited in Castilian even outside the original territory of that dialect. The "first written Spanish" is traditionally considered to have appeared in the Glosas Emilianenses. These are "glosses" (translations of isolated words and phrases in a form more like Spanish than Latin) added between the lines of a manuscript that was written earlier in Latin. Their date, derived by various means, is often estimated as A.D. 978. The first steps toward standardization of written Castilian were taken in the thirteenth century by King Alfonso X of Castile, known as Alfonso el Sabio. He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian, of extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge. Antonio de Nebrija wrote the first grammar of Spanish and presented it, in 1492, to Queen Isabella, who is said to have had an early appreciation of the usefulness of the language as a tool of hegemony, as if anticipating the empire that was about to be founded with the voyages of Columbus. The Spanish Royal Academy was founded in 1713, largely with the purpose of preserving the "purity" of the language. The Academy published its first dictionary in six volumes over the period 1726–1739, and its first grammar in 1771, and it continues to produce new editions of both from time to time. Each of the Spanish-speaking countries has an analogous language academy, and an Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951. The language was brought to the Americas (Latin America, especially Mexico, Central America and western South America), and to the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau and the Philippines, by the Spanish colonization which began in the 16th century. The Spanish failed to exercise land claims over the Solomon Islands and Micronesia, where a map reader can find some geographic place names in Spanish, but no major Spanish cultural influence is felt in distant, often isolated islands in the three centuries of Spanish administrative rule in these areas later acquired by the Germans and Americans by 1900. The Catholic church preached Christianity to the natives in selected local languages such as Mayan, Aztecan, Guaraní, Quechua and Aymará in the Americas, and Tagalog in the Philippines, rather than Spanish, for ease of conversion and to separate them from the direct influence of the non-missionary Spaniards, held by the church to be "evil", uncivilized and unfavorable for the natives, and to further expand assimilation of natives to the introduced Spanish culture. In the Americas its usage was continued by the descendants of the Spaniards, whether by the large population of Spanish criollos or by what had then become the mixed Spanish-Amerindian (mestizos) majority. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century, the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population to strengthen national unity, and the encouragement of all natives to become fluent in Spanish has had a certain amount of success, except in very isolated parts of the former Spanish colonies. The still Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico encouraged more immigrants from Spain in the late 19th century, and similarly other Latin American countries such as Argentina, nearby Uruguay and to a lesser extent Chile, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, attracted waves of European Spanish and non-Spanish, Caucasian immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There, the countries' large (or sizable minority) population groups of second- and third-generation descendants adopted the Spanish language as part of their governments' official assimilation policies to include Europeans who were Catholics and agreed to take an oath of allegiance to their chosen nation's government. In the Philippines, this process did not occur for several reasons. It was isolated as the only Spanish colony in Asia, far removed from all of Spain's colonies in the Americas. Rather than being a direct colony of Spain, the Philippines was in fact a colony of another Spanish colony, New Spain , and was administered from Mexico City, thereby lessening the ties and interest of Spain proper, and disabling the large scale Spanish migration experienced across the Americas. From the Spanish claim on these islands in 1535 to the late 1800s, the Philippines was the only "direct" European colony in terms of cultural influences in Southeast Asia. In comparison to its counterparts in Spanish America, the Philippine population was, and still is, almost exclusively native, and mixed Spanish-Filipinos (Filipino mestizos) were few in number, while Spaniards (of which a great many were actually Mexican Criollos) accounted for even fewer than the Mestizos. Following the Spanish-American War the small number of Spaniards and Latin Americans present in the country eventually returned to New Spain (Mexico) and Spain, or a smaller wave of Hispano-Filipinos had settled in United States–annexed Hawaii and the western U.S. in the early 1900s (see Filipino Americans). Ultimately, at the culmination of the Philippine-American War many of the already minuscule Mestizo population was decimated as casualties of war. English was then declared an official language. Spanish finally ceased to be an official language of the Philippines in 1973. A creole language called Chabacano developed as a lingua franca in the south when the Spaniards built forts to combat the Muslims and imported workers from all over the country. The local languages, then and now, are not mutually intelligible. However, Spanish like English (but more preferable) is still studied by educated Filipinos and professionals who might emigrate to Mexico. Unlike the Philippines, when Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States as consequence of the same Spanish-American War, its population was by then almost entirely of Spanish and mixed Afro-Caribbean Spanish (mulatto and mestizo) descent , thereby enabling the retention of their inherited Spanish language as a mother tongue while co-existing with the American imposed English as co-official. Puerto Rico has received immigration from Europe, when Spanish colonial officials invited farmers and island fishers from Corsica, the Canary Islands, the Azores, Greece, Malta, Italy and Ireland, while millions of Puerto Ricans went to the mainland U.S. in the 20th century. (see Puerto Rican and Puerto Ricans in the United States). A similar situation occurred in the American Southwest including California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where Spaniards, then Californios (Spanish criollos in California) followed by Chicanos (Mexican Americans) and later Mexican immigrants, maintained Spanish alive before, during and after the American appropriation of those territories, since the 1500s. Spanish continues to be used by millions of citizens and immigrants from Latin America to the United States (for example, many Cuban Americans arrived in Miami, Florida beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, and followed by other Latin American groups. The local majority is now Spanish-speaking). Spanish is now treated as the country's "second language," and over 5 percent of the U.S. population are Spanish-speaking, but most Latino/Hispanic Americans are bilingual or also regularly speak English. In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara after periods of Spanish colonial rule, and it is also studied and spoken in former French and Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia, but it is not the main languages of these areas. It is also spoken in parts of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City, at first by immigrants from Puerto Rico, and later by other Latin American immigrants who arrived there in the late 20th century. In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War, but native inhabitants may speak Chamorro an Austronesian language, some German and later English, Japanese and Korean introduced in the early 20th century, and some languages introduced by immigrants from the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Language politics in Francoist Spain declared Spanish as the only official language in Spain, and to this day Castilian Spanish is the most preferred language in government, business, public education, cultural arts and the media. But in the 1960s and 1970's, the Spanish parliament agreed to allow provinces to use, speak and print official documents in three other languages: Catalan for Catalonia, Basque, a non Indo-European language for the Basque provinces, and Galician, akin to Portuguese, for Galicia. Since the early 1980s after Spain became a multi-party democracy, these regional and minority languages have rebounded in common usage as secondary languages, but Castilian Spanish remains the universal language of the Spanish people.

Influences

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Influences on the Spanish language. ()

Main article: Influences on the Spanish language

Possible Basque influence

Many Castilians who took part in the reconquista and later repopulation campaigns were of Basque lineage and this is evidenced by many place names throughout Spain. The change from Latin 'f-' to Spanish 'h-' (discussed at length below) is commonly ascribed to the influence of Basque speakers for a few reasons. The change from f to h was first documented in the areas around Castile and La Rioja, areas where many Basques were known to have lived. The change to h took place to a greater degree in the Gascon language in Gascony in France, an area also inhabited by Basques. The Basque language lacked the f sound and thus substituted it with h, the closest thing to f in that language.
There are some difficulties with attributing this change to Basque though. There is no hard evidence that medieval Basque had an h sound, but there is also no hard evidence that it didn't. Adding to this is the fact that the f to h phenomenon is not peculiar to Spanish. In fact, the change from f to h is one of the most common phonological changes in all kinds of world languages. According to the explanations which negate or downplay Basque influence, the change occurred in the affected dialects wholly independent of each other as the result of internal change (i.e. linguistic factors, not outside influence). It is also possible that the two forces worked in concert and reinforced each other.

Possible Celtic influence

Two specific types of lenition, the voicing of voiceless consonants and the elision of voiced consonants (both of which are discussed at greater length below), are the phonological changes of Spanish which are most often attributed to the influence of Celtic languages. While examples of these two types of lenition are ubiquitous and well-documented in Spanish, two assumptions need to be made if these two types of lenition are to be attributed to patterns of lenition in Celtic languages. The first assumption is that a population of bilingual Celtiberian-Romance speakers existed long enough to have had an influence on the development of Castilian. The second assumption is that Continental Celtic, an extinct branch of Celtic, did indeed exhibit the types of lenition which are known to exist in modern Insular Celtic languages. (Furthermore, it should be noted that such lenitions are a very common kind of change in languages all around the world, and similar phenomena are found also in Romance languages such as Corsican and Sardinian, where no Celtic causation is plausible; the Spanish development may therefore just be an internal process, not due to outside influence.)

Germanic influence

Although Germanic languages by most accounts affected the phonological development very little, many Spanish words of Germanic origin are very common in all varieties of everyday Spanish. The words for cardinal directions (norte, este, sur, oeste) are all taken from Germanic words (north, east, south and west in Modern English) after the contact with Atlantic sailors.

Arabic influence

Main article: Arabic influence on the Spanish language

An important number of Spanish nouns start with the syllable al- (such as alcohol "alcohol", alcoba "alcove, room", almohada "pillow", algodón "cotton", alcalde "mayor", alcázar "castle", alfalfa "alfalfa", almirante "admiral" (with an added -d- by erroneous association with the Latin prefix ad-), almíbar "syrup", alcatraz "albatross", álcali "alkali", alquimia "alchemy", algoritmo "algorithm", álgebra "algebra", albacora "albacore", Alhambra "Red Castle", Al-Andalus "Andalusia" (note that Al-Andalus is how Arabs referred to the land inhabited by the Vandals, since Arabic does not have a "v" sound) have Arabic origins, as well as many that start with at-, az- and others (such as azufre "sulfur" and ataúd "coffin", azúcar "sugar", azul "blue, azure"), azafrán "saffron". This is due to the interpretation of the Arabic proclitic definite article al as part of the following word. see also: Arabic Al-, Mozarabic language, Al-Andalus

Internal history

It has been suggested that Spanish vocabulary be merged into this article or section. ()

At first just one of many dialects of Iberian Romance spoken in Iberia, the dialect of Castile eventually became identified as the Spanish language (called español or castellano in Spanish). This is due in large part to the cultural hegemony of the Castilians during and after the Reconquista. Modern Spanish is strikingly different from Latin, its main source language, in many ways, but determining exactly when these changes took place is often problematic. The main reason for this lack of hard evidence is the fact that the system of orthography used by speakers of Iberian Romance in the Middle Ages was extremely similar to if not identical to that of Classical Latin. While there were undoubtedly phonological and morphemic differences between Iberian Romance and Latin (and later, between Castilian and Iberian Romance), most of these differences were not reflected in writing until after the Reconquista and even later.

Abandonment of phonological length

At a very early time in the development of Romance, the distinction between Latin long vowels and short vowels was very slight and the number of minimal pairs based on vowel length is much smaller than in Latin.

Minimal pairs in Latin
Long vowel	Meaning	Short vowel	Meaning
pīlum	javelin	pilum	hair
līber	free	liber	book
fīdēs	you will trust	fidēs	faith
lēvis	smooth	levis	light (adj.)
lēgit	he read	legit	he reads
sēdēs	abode	sedēs	you sit
mālum	apple	malum	bad
lābrum	washtub	labrum	lip
lātus	wide	latus	side
ōs	mouth	os	bone
pōpulus	poplar	populus	people
sōlum	alone	solum	soil
fūris	thief	furis	you rage

This loss of distinction in vowel length would have made the nominative case and the ablative case of the first declension identical in sound.

Loss of case system

The gradual loss in the number of grammatical cases in Indo-European languages has been happening since long before Classical Latin and the trend culminated (in the Italic family) in the complete loss of inflection seen in all of the Romance languages (except Romanian). This means that Spanish, like other Indo-European languages, through its oldest to its modern form, has steadily depended less on inflections (suffixes on nouns, adjectives etc.) to demonstrate syntactical relationships and more on word order and prepositions. Quintilian (c. AD 35-95) remarked that the final 'm' of most Latin words was barely pronounced. This observation suggests that the nominative case and the accusative case of the first declension were merged in speech (but the -m was retained in writing). Similarly, the accusative case and the ablative case of the third declension would have merged in speech. This implies that the distinction between the nominative case and the accusative case probably barely existed from the beginning of the common era in Iberia if at all.

Loss of deponent verbs

Latin had nearly 1,000 deponent verbs, but by the time Castilian emerged as the dominant dialect of Spanish, all of them had either been switched to one of the regular verb conjugations or disappeared from the vocabulary altogether. The process of converting deponent verbs to regular conjugations began in Latin before the common era. Plautus used horto, lucto and sortio (regular conjugation) in place of hortor, luctor and sortior (deponent).

Switch/loss of deponent verbs
Status	Latin deponent	Regularized Spanish
regularized	demoliri, demorari, metiri, mori, nasci, operari, ordiri, pati, sequi	demoler, demorar, medir, morir, nacer, operar, urdir, padecer, seguir
"lost"	conari, loqui, oriri,

In some cases, the deponent verb was lost, but noun, adjectives etc based on that verb were kept. From the Latin 'conari' (to try, attempt) comes the Spanish 'conato' (an attempt, effort). From Latin 'loqui' (to speak) comes the Spanish 'elocuente' (eloquent) and 'locutor' (speaker, radio announcer).

Latin 'f-' to Spanish 'h-'

'F' was almost always initial in Latin words and most of these words developed in Spanish to begin with [h], now for the most part lost (although kept in spelling). There are many words where the 'f-' was maintained, but most of these examples are from learned words (words transmitted primarily by writing rather than orally). This is one of the most predictable patterns in the development of Spanish and the first written record of it is from 863 when the Latin 'Forticius' was written as 'Ortiço.' The h- was originally pronounced as an aspirate (i.e. as an h in English) but is now gone from most varieties. The Latin grapheme f represented either a voiceless labiodental fricative (exactly like f in Modern English and Modern Spanish) or a voiceless bilabial fricative (similar to f in Modern English and Modern Spanish and exactly like the 'f' sound of Japanese).

Examples of Latin 'f-' to Spanish 'h-'
consonants	Latin word	Spanish word
f- ---> h-	fabulare, facere, facienda, factus, famen, farina, femina, Ferdinandus, ferrum, ficatum, filius, folia, formosus, fumus, fungus, furca	hablar, hacer, hacienda, hecho, hambre, harina, hembra, Hernando or Fernando, hierro, hígado, hijo, hoja, hermoso, humo, hongo, horca

Voicing

One of the most common and predictable changes from Latin to Spanish is the voicing of voiceless consonants. The three voiceless consonants affected most often were p, t and c (where c was pronounced hard, as c in cake). The voiced equivalents of these three unvoiced consonants are b, d and g (where g was pronounced hard, as g in girl). The initial and final consonants are rarely affected, but Intervocalic consonants (between two vowels) were affected more often than not.

Examples of voicing in Spanish
consonants	Latin word	Spanish word
p ---> b	aperire, apotheca, cooperire, lupus, opera, populus	abrir, bodega, cubrir, lobo, obra, pueblo
t ---> d	civitatis, digitus, latus, mater, mutare, scutum, venite	ciudad, dedo, lado, madre, mudar, escudo, venid
c ---> g	apotheca, dico, focus, lacus, locus, saeculum	bodega, digo, fuego, lago, luego, siglo

Examples of words in which more than one consonant has been voiced (such as the above bodega) are not uncommon in Spanish, and in this case the change /p/ > /b/ probably occurred before loss of initial a-. Many words also underwent voicing and elision (discussed below). In the Latin 'digitus,' the 'g' was elided and the 't' was voiced to 'd' and it became dedo. The case of digo is an interesting example as it shows different phonetic changes appearing in different verb forms. Notably, some forms of decir will feature the Latin /k/ to Spanish /θ/ change (which occurs when Latin /k/ is followed by /i/ or /e/), but in other verb forms /k/ is voiced to /g/. This also occurs in a few other Spanish verbs ending in -cer or -cir, as in the table below:

Forms with /k/ -> /θ/			Forms with voicing of /k/ to /g/
English	Latin	Spanish	English	Latin	Spanish
To say, to tell It says, it tells	dicere /diːkere/ dicet /diːket/	decir /deˈθiɾ/ dice /ˈdiθe/	I say, I tell May it tell	dico /diːkoː/ dicat /diːkat/	digo /ˈdigo/ diga /ˈdiga/
To do, to make It does, it makes	facere /fakere/ facit /fakit/	hacer /aˈθeɾ/ hace /ˈaθe/	I do, I make May it make	facio /fakjoː/ faciat /fakjat/	hago /ˈago/ haga /ˈaga/

Elision

While voiceless intervocalic consonants were often voiced, many voiced intervocalic stops (d, g, and occasionally b) were simply dropped from words altogether through a process called elision.

Examples of elision in Spanish
consonant	Latin word	Spanish word
b ---> Ø	vendebat	vendía
d ---> Ø	comedere, hodie, quomodo?	comer, hoy, como?
g ---> Ø	cogitare, digitus, legere, regis	cuidar, dedo, leer, rey

Voicing

Some syllable-final consonants, regardless whether already syllable-final in Latin or brought into that position by syncope, became glides. Labials (b, p) yielded the rounded glide [w] (which was in turn absorbed by a preceding round vowel), while the velar c ([k]) produced the palatal glide [j] (which could palatalize a following [t] and be absorbed by the resulting palatal affricate). (The forms debda, cobdo, and dubdar are documented in Old Spanish; but the hypothetical form *oito had already given way to ocho by the time Castilian became a written language.)

Syllable-final vocalization
change	Latin word	intermediate form	Spanish word
p ---> w	baptista	--	bautista
b ---> w	debita	debda	deuda
b ---> w ---> Ø	cubitu, dubitare	cobdo, dubdar	codo, dudar
ct ---> ch	octo, nocte	*oito, noite	ocho, noche

Syncope

Syncope in the history of Spanish refers to the loss of an unstressed vowel from the syllable immediately preceding or following the stressed syllable. Early in its history, Spanish lost such vowels where they preceded or followed R or L, and between S and T:

Early syncope in Spanish
environment	Latin words	Spanish words
_r	aperīre, humerum, littera, opera	abrir, hombro, letra, obra
r_	eremum, viride	yermo, verde
_l	acūcula, fabula, insula, populum	aguja, habla, isla, pueblo
l_	solitarium	soltero
s_t	positum, consūtūra	puesto, costura

Later, unstressed vowels were lost between other combinations of consonants:

Later syncope in Spanish
environment	Latin words	Spanish words
b_t	cubitum, dēbita, dūbita	codo, deuda, duda
c_m, c_p, c_t	decimum, acceptōrem, recitāre	diezmo, azor, rezar
d_c	undecim, vindicāre	once, vengar
f_c	adverificāre	averiguar
m_c, m_n, m_t	hamiceolum, homine, comite	anzuelo, hombre, conde
n_c, n_t	dominicum, bonitātem, cuminitiāre	domingo, bondad, comenzar
p_t	capitālem, computāre, hospitālem	caudal, contar, hostal
s_c, s_n	quassicāre, rassicāre, asinum, fra[ks]inum	cascar, rascar, asno, fresno
t_c, t_n	masticāre, portaticu, trīticu, retina	mascar, portazgo, trigo, rienda

Diphthongization

Diphthongization in Spanish typically happens to Latin short mid vowels (e, o) that are stressed, as the conjugation of Modern Spanish verbs can attest: yo quiero, nosotros queremos; yo puedo, vosotros podéis; etc.

Examples of diphthongization in Spanish
vowel	Latin word	Spanish word
e ---> ie	bene, terra	bien, tierra
o ---> ue	bonus, focus	bueno, fuego

Monophthongization

Many of the examples of monophthongization in Spanish actually occurred in Latin itself. The change from ae to e is thought in some instances to be a product of the influence of the Faliscan and Umbrian dialects.

Examples of monophthongization in Spanish
vowel	Latin word	Spanish word
ae ---> e	caespite, saeta, faenu	césped, seda, heno
au ---> o	taurus, causa, aurum	toro, cosa, oro
oe ---> e	poena, foedus, coena	pena, feo, cena

Learned words and consonant cluster simplification

Learned words became increasingly frequent with the works of Alfonso X in the mid-to-late 1200s. Many of these words contained consonant clusters which had usually been reduced to simpler consonant clusters or single consonants in previous centuries. This same process affected many of these new, more academic, words, especially when the words extended into popular usage in the Old Spanish period. Some of the consonant clusters affected were -ct-, -ct[i]-, -pt-, -gn-, -mn-, and -mpt-. Most of the simplified forms have since reverted back to the learned forms or are now considered to be uneducated.

Reduction of consonant clusters
Consonant cluster	Latin form	Learned form	Old Spanish form	Modern Spanish form
ct ---> t	effectum, perfectum, respectum, sectam	efecto, perfecto, respecto, secta	efeto, perfeto, respeto, seta	efecto, perfecto, respeto/respecto, secta
ct[i] ---> cc[i] ---> c[i]	affectiōnem, lectiōnem, perfectiōnem	affección, lección, perfección	afición, lición, perfeción	afición/afección, lección, perfección
pt ---> t	acceptāre, baptismum, conceptum	aceptar, baptismo, concepto	acetar, bautismo, conceto	aceptar, bautismo, concepto
gn ---> n	dignum, magnificum, significāre	digno, magnífico, significar	dino, manífico, sinificar	digno, magnífico, significar
mn ---> n	columnam, solemnitātem	columna, solemnidad	coluna, solenidad	columna, solemnidad
mpt ---> nt	promptum, exemptum	prompto, exempto	pronto, exento	pronto, exento

Most of these words have modern forms which more closely resemble Latin than Old Spanish. In Old Spanish, the simplified forms were acceptable forms which were in coexistenece (and sometimes competition) with the learned forms. The Spanish educational system, and later the Real Academia Española, with their demand that all consonants of a word be pronounced, steadily drove most simplified forms from existence. Many of the simplified forms were used in literary works in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (sometimes intentionally as an archaism), but have since been relegated mostly to popular and uneducated speech. Occasionally, both forms exist in Modern Spanish with different nuances of meaning or in idiomatic usage. Afición is a 'fondness for' of 'taste for' while afección is 'affection,' or 'illness.' Modern Spanish respeto is 'respect' while con respecto a means 'with regard to.'

Modern sound changes

By the 16th century the consonantal system of "Castilian" Spanish underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from such related Romance languages as Portuguese, Ladino and Catalan:

The initial [f], which had evolved into a vacillating [h], was lost in most words (although the h- has been preserved in spelling).
The voiced bilabial fricative [β] (written u or v) merged with the bilabial plosive [b] (written b). Contemporary Spanish letters b and v do not correspond to different phonemes, as the spelling has been modified to reflect the etymological distribution of b and v in Latin.
The voiced alveolar fricative [z] (written s between vowels) merged with the voiceless [s] (written s, or ss between vowels), now written s everywhere.
Voiced dental affricate [ʣ] (written z) merged with the voiceless [ʦ] (written ç, or c before e and i), and then [ʦ] evolved into the interdental [θ], now written z, or c before e and i. But in Andalusia, the Canary Islands and the Americas these sounds merged with [s] as well. Notice that the ç (c with cedilla) was in its origin a Spanish letter. In the Andalusian merger of [s] with [θ], the resulting unitary phoneme could be either. Coastal regions preferred [θ], and that pronunciation is called ceceo. More inland regions preferred [s], and are called seseo dialects. The seseo region included Seville, the major Spanish port at that time (on the river Guadalquivir); and hence most of those who were destined to settle the new worlds stayed for a while in Seville before heading off, and nearby locals supplied many of the seamen and other hands on ship. It should not be surprising, then, that the entire Spanish-speaking new world speaks a language derived, essentially, from the language of Seville. See also Ceceo and seseo.
The voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ] (written j, or g before e and i) merged with the voiceless [ʃ] (written x, as in Quixote), and then [ʃ] evolved by the 17th century into the modern velar sound [x], now written j, or g before e and i. In much of Latin America, especially in coastal areas of Central America and northern South America, the same letters correspond to a glottal fricative, [h]. In the highlands of Mexico and generally in the southern part of the continent (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) j/g correspond to a velar fricative [x], as in standard European Spanish, but this phoneme has a palatalized allophone [ç] (German "ich" sound) in front of front vowels /i/ and /e/: general [çeneˈral], gitano [çiˈtano].

Later is the merger, in most dialects, of the palatal lateral and non-lateral consonants [ʎ] and (historical) [j] into a single non-lateral consonant, generally a palatal fricative (but also postalveolar and/or affricate in some dialects). This merger is called yeísmo (from the name of the letter y) (Hammond 2001).

References

"From Latin to Spanish" by Paul M. Lloyd (ISBN 0-87169-173-6)
"The University of Chicago Spanish Dictionary" by Carlos Castillo and Otto F. Bond (ISBN 0-671-74348-1)
"Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española" by Guido Gómez de Silva (ISBN 968-16-2812-8)
"The Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary" by John C. Traupman (ISBN 0-553-57301-2)
"Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition" (ISBN 0-02-863474-8)

External links

The history of Spanish language Castilian Spanish and the history of Spanish language.
A recording of the sibilants, as they would have been pronounced in medieval Spanish.
A History of the Spanish language (sample from the second edition, 2002), by Ralph Penny

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