Greek and Spanish comparison

Well, maybe we should look a little closer than Greece...

Castilian was born next to what it's today the Basque Country. In the Iberian peninsula Castilian is the only language with exactly 5 vowel sounds, just like Basque. Besides this strong hint Castilian like basque often changes the initial "f" - which does not exist in Basque - to a mute "h", just to mention one.

In other words... Castilian is - probably - the latin spoken by the Basques or - at least - has very strong Basque influence.

Did Castilian take the five vowel sounds from Basque or from Latin? Why didn't this happen to French, Galician-Portuguese or Catalan which have more than 5 vowel sounds?

Latin only had five vowel qualities (though they each had long and short versions and there were diphthongs too), so the 5-vowel system doesn't necessarily come from Basque. The identity of the pre-Latin language(s) of Spain isn't really established. Basque was there, but so were some Celtic languages and possibly others.

How many languages have five vowel sounds only?

"Latin only had five vowel qualities..., so the 5-vowel system doesn't necessarily come from Basque"
True. Anyway I said probably... My point is that romance languages didn't take the vowel sounds from from Latin. Italian might be an exception. Not sure.

"How many languages have five vowel sounds only? "

>> Only Latin and its dearest son Spanish. ^^!

>> Besides this strong hint Castilian like basque often changes the initial "f" - which does not exist in Basque - to a mute "h", just to mention one.<<

This rendering of -F- isn't an Iberian or an Pyrenean phenomenon, but was also an Estruscan phenomenon....

"How many languages have five vowel sounds only? "

Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, various Italian dialects, Basque, Spanish, Swahili, Japanese.
Czech too, I think.


"Castilian was born next to what it's today the Basque Country."
A strong Basque substrate seems indeed the most sensible explanation.

Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, various Italian dialects, Basque, Spanish, Swahili, Japanese.
Czech too, I think.

Thank-you, OïL.


I didn't know about Bulgarian or Czech.

<Have you noticed that Spain, Italy, Greece and Japan are more or less on the same latitude? >

So is the US (my latitude is about the same as Rome's). I suppose this means that the Native American languages should sound a lot like Spanish or Italian, etc.?

Le bulgare a six phonèmes vocaliques: a, e, i, o, u, plus una vocale neutrale (schwa, le "a" de l'anglais "beggar"). Cette voyelle peut se trouver soit en situation atone, soit, en situation tonique.

"Pet" veut dire "cinq". "Pët", chemin, fois".

Oups, tu as raison Mallorqui.
C'est le macédonien, pas le bulgare, qui a le système à 5 voyelles (bien que bulgare et macédonien soient virtuellement des dialectes d'une même langue).


"How many languages have five vowel sounds only? "
— I forgot: Esperanto!

K. T.<<<I'm glad that someone introduced this topic. We used to have Greek news on the TV and I'd listen to it and think, "Whaaaaa?" It was like listening to Spanish, but I couldn't understand most of it. I knew the word "Thelo", but I never thought about it being like "Quiero"; is "Qu" related to "The"? I'm not a linguist, just a polyglot, so I'd be interested in what those with a linguistic background think about this. In Spanish "Te" is used without the "h" for words that originally had the theta. >>>

Greek comes directly from Proto-Indo-European, while Spanish comes from a Mixture of Latin, Ibero-Celtic and Germanic, which all come like Greek from Proto-Indo-European but belong to distinct branches of it. Any correspondence between Spanish and Greek must come from Proto-Indo-European. But I doubt that after the creolization that went along with the blending many elements other than the etymology of the vocabulary remains from Proto-Indo-European in Spanish.

"Greek comes directly from Proto-Indo-European, while Spanish comes from a Mixture of Latin, Ibero-Celtic and Germanic, which all come like Greek from Proto-Indo-European but belong to distinct branches of it."

Here is a list of Castilian words that came directly from Basque. We could easily assume that the these are the obvious ones and the list could be much bigger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Spanish_words_of_Basque/Iberian_origin

BTW, I am not a Basque.

"Greek comes directly from Proto-Indo-European, while Spanish comes from a Mixture of Latin, Ibero-Celtic and Germanic"

Spanish is not a mixture or a creole based on the languages you have mentioned, it is a direct sescent of Latin with some words borrowed from other languages , not only those ones. Although 70% of its vocabulary and 90% of usual vocabulary comes from Latin. So Spanish has the same relationship with Proto Indoeuropean that Greek: PI->Old Greek->Modern Greek and PI-> Latin->Spanish.

<<"Greek comes directly from Proto-Indo-European, while Spanish comes from a Mixture of Latin, Ibero-Celtic and Germanic"

Spanish is not a mixture or a creole based on the languages you have mentioned, it is a direct sescent of Latin with some words borrowed from other languages , not only those ones. Although 70% of its vocabulary and 90% of usual vocabulary comes from Latin. So Spanish has the same relationship with Proto Indoeuropean that Greek: PI->Old Greek->Modern Greek and PI-> Latin->Spanish. >>

How do you explain then that Spanish is so far away from classical Latin? Educated Greeks can understand Koine, while educated Spaniards don't understand a single latin sentence.