How did Spanish ll in words like llamar, llave evolve from the Latin cl of clamare and clavis?
Latin CL to Spanish LL
- Thread starter Beachxhair
- Start date
The /k/ moves its point of articulation forward to match the /l/ and the whole cluster is then palatalized into /ʎ/, now often simplified to /ʝ/. The same thing occurs in Portuguese but the result is /ʧ/ then simplified to /ʃ/: chamar, chaves.
Oddly, French and Italian maintain the /k/: clef, chiave, chiamare.
There is an area between Aragon and Catalonia where the initial groups of consonant + 'l' have evolved to consonant + /ʎ/, for example, 'cllau' [kʎau] (Spanish 'llave', Catalan 'clau']. It has been suggested that this pronunciation could have existed in the past in Spanish as an intermediate change.
This holds for standard Italian only.Venetian, Tuscan and Sicilian dialects (the latter just in a small area near Agrigento) adopt the /tʃ/ phoneme. Namely not kiave, kiesa, kiamare but tʃiave, tʃiesa, tʃiamare. (key, church, call).
Last edited:
Lots of linguists have studied this, beginning with Menéndez Pidal himself. Search for 'dialecto ribagorzano' in internet.
Eastern Sicilian has [g] instead of [k]: ghiavi [giavi], ghiamari [giamari].
But not the /l/ in Italian, so even there the cluster /kl/ must have been palatalized at some stage.
In Italian, /l/ itself is palatalized in a consunant cluster (blancum>bianco, planum>piano, flumen>fiume, etc). It is not the /k/ or the cluster /kl/ that is palatalized.
Hi Outsider. I suspect there is something different happening in Italian since /l/ is lost completely after whatever consonant, and pretty much consistently: Chiaro, ghiaccio, piacere, piazza, spiaggia, bianco, fianco, fiore
Edit: Just saw Berndf's comment. Was the /l/ to /i/ palatalization? The liquid consonants changed to a vowel.
Last edited:
Probably yes with some exception like gloria, glossa, ... (but ghiaccio < glacium, ghiandola < glandula, ...).
Is it a vowel or rather a semivowel?
Hi Bibax. Words like gloria and glossa are probably Latin cultisms that were added at a later date by the Catholic church. Otherwise we might have had *ghioria or *ghioia and *ghiossa.
What puzzles me is a word like claro that is not llaro and charo in Spanish/Portuguese, unless "clear" is a Latin loanword.
You are right it would be a semi-vowel /j/ as it always glides into the following vowel.
I shouldn't say that /l/ is lost completely after wathever consonant.
Italian has a lot of words with this cluster.
These are a few examples.
Blaterare, clausura, flagranza, gloria, plettro, splendido parlare, slancio, atletico.
We have ghiaccio and ghiacciato but also glaciale as adjective and fiore as noun and floreale as adjective.
Ciao
Italian has a lot of words with this cluster.
These are a few examples.
Blaterare, clausura, flagranza, gloria, plettro, splendido parlare, slancio, atletico.
We have ghiaccio and ghiacciato but also glaciale as adjective and fiore as noun and floreale as adjective.
Ciao
Last edited:
Of course, but all your examples (except of parlare) are "parole dotte" (or cultismos), not direct contunuations of the corresponding Latin words.
(Parlare comes from *parabolare)
I know these studies only indirectly. The Spanish Wikipedia article and its "bibliografía" section should be a good starting point.I searched for 'dialecto ribagorzano', but no linguistic studies/articles came up. Do you have any particular articles you could recommend me? Thanks
I'm afraid that not everybody will agree with me, however I'd like to know the opinion of other foreros ...
I.e. I've noticed a "slightly" palatal pronounciation even of the double "ll" in (the modern) Italian. This may depend on the concrete region, of course, however I often hear the double "ll" prounounced somewhat patatalized (not exactly as the Spanish "ll", but something between the double "ll" and the double "ʎʎ", e.g. "grillo").
I don't agree with this statement.
Blaterare is a comic way to say that someone is complaining about something.
Clausura and plettro doesn't have synonyms (we can't say monaca di clausura, i.e nun belonging to an enclosed order, without using clausura and plettro is the only word to say guitar pick), gloria, splendido, parlare and atletica are the most used words to say glory, gorgeous, to speak, athletics, and slanci is mostly used in sport report.
Other non erudite words are bloccare, blindato, cliente, clima, classe, classifica, classico, cliente and so on.
This statement is not true.
I always thought Santa Lucia was an Italian song. But it struck me that placida, a word in the song, begins with pl-.
Now I know the song is Neapolitan, not Italian.
Perhaps the other Italian words with such clusters are borrowings from Neapolitan or some other Italic language.
(By the way, rl in parlare is not a cluster since the r and l belong to different syllables. Consonant clusters are groups of consonants that occur together in one syllable.)
Now I know the song is Neapolitan, not Italian.
Perhaps the other Italian words with such clusters are borrowings from Neapolitan or some other Italic language.
(By the way, rl in parlare is not a cluster since the r and l belong to different syllables. Consonant clusters are groups of consonants that occur together in one syllable.)
Nino, a cultism does not mean that a given word cannot be highly used today (even be in the top hundred) or that it must necessarily have a highfalutin abstract meaning, it just means that at some time or another the word was retaken from Latin, a dialect or some foreign language, long after native words had already changed /l/ to /j/ and that change had ceased to be active. That would account for the words you list.
I agree merquiades but there are also proper nouns as Claudio, Clara, Clorinda, Flavio that have been used from Roman Empire to nowadays and that have not followed that tendency.
I'm not saying that there wasn't this change (from /l/ to /i/) but that it wasn't so general as this statement (/l/ is lost completely after whatever consonant) would suggest.
I'm not saying that there wasn't this change (from /l/ to /i/) but that it wasn't so general as this statement (/l/ is lost completely after whatever consonant) would suggest.
Clausūra (< claudere) is clearly a Latin word (more precisely Late Latin).
The corresponding genuine Italian word is chiusura (cf. chiudere).
Interestingly chiusura probably also originates from the Late Latin clausura, it is not an independent derivation from the Italian verb chiudere.
The corresponding genuine Italian word is chiusura (cf. chiudere).
Interestingly chiusura probably also originates from the Late Latin clausura, it is not an independent derivation from the Italian verb chiudere.
Last edited:
The Neapolitan doesn't maintain these clusters, as well. E.g. chiagnere < plangere (it. piangere), chiù < plus (it più), chiamma < clamat (it. chiama), sciore < flore(m) (it. fiore), ecc ....
Last edited:
We can also take Spanish examples of the cultismo and the real, Latin-derived word to demonstrate: llave but also clave; llano but also plano; another example (without palatalization) would be fábrica and fragua (the former being the Latin loan mean 'factory' and the latter having evolved from the former, eventually meaning something totally distinct and used far less frequently than the latin loan.)
I.e. I've noticed a "slightly" palatal pronounciation even of the double "ll" in (the modern) Italian. This may depend on the concrete region, of course, however I often hear the double "ll" prounounced somewhat patatalized (not exactly as the Spanish "ll", but something between the double "ll" and the double "ʎʎ", e.g. "grillo").[/QUOTE]
Sorry Francis, but I have never heard such a sound?! All Spanish variants of the digraph LL and the pronunciation of the Italian geminate L are completely different sounds to my ear. Italian double LL is never palatalized, except maybe in some obscure dialects.
Sorry Francis, but I have never heard such a sound?! All Spanish variants of the digraph LL and the pronunciation of the Italian geminate L are completely different sounds to my ear. Italian double LL is never palatalized, except maybe in some obscure dialects.
Of course, also to my ears (both)
... However, independently on Spanish, I have noticed a slight "shift" towards the palatal pronounciation, without affecting the geminate character of the "LL", in some cases in Italian (perhaps when "ll" is preceded by the vowel "i" ??). Maybe it's only my brain that produces this "illusion", that's why I wanted to hear the opinion of other foreros ... P.S. I've noticed something similar also in my mother tongue, when spoken by some persons from Hungary (I am not able to indentify the region), but not in my surroundings.
Last edited:
In Messina (but not in the province) we have a kind of yeismo
We say /jj/ for /ʎʎ/ for example in maglietta /maʎʎetta/ in standard Italian and /majjetta/ in Messina.
But it is considered dialectal.
If I'm not mistaken, Francisgranada was talking about something else: palatalization of the geminate L (LL) in words like "illusione" or even "bello". The phenomenon described by Aefrizzo and Nico83 can be found in most Central-Southern Italian dialects.
Last edited:
Ah ok. I agree that in Italian there isn't something like that.
Cari amici, non cancellate nulla , è interessante quello che dite (almeno per me). Negli ultimi giorni viene pronunciata spesso la parola "Grillo" (5 stelle) in TV, quindi provo a vedere (o meglio: sentire) se mi sembra palatalizzata o no.
, è interessante quello che dite (almeno per me). Negli ultimi giorni viene pronunciata spesso la parola "Grillo" (5 stelle) in TV, quindi provo a vedere (o meglio: sentire) se mi sembra palatalizzata o no.
No, in the correct Italian pronunciation double L is never palatalized. We pronounce grillo, spillo etc. with the same doubleL sound as in palla, molla.
There are local 'dialect'-nuanced pronunciations (e.g. in the region around Ferrara) where LL is sort of palatalized, but it does not happen in the standard language.