Spanish: hue- and hie-

Hulalessar

Hulalessar

Senior Member
Andalucía
English - England
What is the reason for the Spanish orthographic rule that words cannot begin with <ie-> or <ue->? It has lead to the oddity that some Spanish words have an <h> which they did not have in Latin, e.g. huevo, hueso and huérfano.
 
    • The rule is you cannot start a word with any rising diphthong.

    The reason I heard was at one time u was usually written v, the Latin way. So without an h you'd see vevo, veso, vérfano which could lead to lots of confusion.

    It seems to me as well that in older Spanish ie at the beginning of a word was written ye: yerro, yelo, yedra

    Putting an h standardized the treatment of rising diphthongs, even if it created irregular verbs like oler, but extended h to helar....

    Starting words with rising diphthongs is also seen an anomoly in Spanish, and sounds weird to natives especially when it's unaccented. Over the certuries many of the words that had diphthongs lost them. One of them that comes to mind now if enero which previously was *yenero-ienero-hienero. In recent times the hui/huo/hue has been strengthened by g to get rid of the diphthong sound so hueso might sound like güeso, even loaned words like whiskey can be pronounced güisqui.

    You might ask this in the etymology forum too
     
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    It comes from a long time ago. There are examples of use that are more than 600 years old. I'm not an expert in the subject but some people say it was intended to represent the semiconsonantal sound of <i> and <u> in that position. In the case of <i> some words, like hierro, make use of <h> and some other words, like yerro (from the verb errar), make use of <y> what would deserve a thread by itself as it depends on the original Latin term involved and the word itself. It would be a good idea if you asked in the EHL forum too.

    merquiades said:
    The rule is you cannot start a word with any diphthong.
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    Not really. There's aire, aura, eutanasia...
     
    One of the incoherences that nowadays is difficult to get rid of. Medieval Aragonese also had hueyto, hueyllo, etc., but now it's written as ueito and uello. That's one of the reasons why there are always trouble with the H of Uesca in road signs.
     
    Penyafort said:
    One of the incoherences that nowadays is difficult to get rid of. Medieval Aragonese also had hueyto, hueyllo, etc., but now it's written as ueito and uello. That's one of the reasons why there are always trouble with the H of Uesca in road signs.
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    I wouldn't see a problem with writing Huesca nowadays. Aragonese isn't Castilian anyway.
     
    merquiades said:
    I should have said rising diphthongs with i,u
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    Just for the record, there are a few exceptions: ionosfera, iota, iotacismo, iotización and the well-known old Spanish uebos. There are also a few words that admit the writing with <i> or with <y> like iodo/yodo or iatrogenia/yatrogenia but in those cases the spelling with <y> is the most usual one (and almost ubiquitous, I'd say). There's also the case of ion (and words derivated from it) that is written just with initial <i> (no <y> option) but it's not a dypthong but an hiatus, at least for most speakers, so it used to have an accent mark (ión) to mark it.
     
    merquiades said:
    I wouldn't see a problem with writing Huesca nowadays. Aragonese isn't Castilian anyway.
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    The adjective is oscense, so it persists in the oddity the OP mentions. Nowadays, the original reason not existing any longer, it could indeed be corrected. But unlike Aragonese, Spanish has indeed the burden of a very established modern spelling, so it's mainly a reason of habit. If it was only Huesca, it wouldn't hurt to turn it into Uesca. The real problem is that some words like huevo or hueso are just too common.
     
    Circunflejo said:
    In the case of <i> some words, like hierro, make use of <h> and some other words, like yerro (from the verb errar),
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    Errar admits the conjugation yerro, yerras, yerra... and erro, erras, erras... too, eliminating the diphthong..
    Hierro is another kettle of fish. It came from Fierro, so in some dialects, I assume in Latin America they pronounce it jierro.
     
    Hierro and yerro in Spanish do make perfect sense, though, from an etymological point of view. It's a completely different case.

    Which is why I also prefer hiedra to that yedra that hurts my eyes, despite being accepted.
     
    Circunflejo said:
    Yes, but, as you said, it's yerro; i.e.: it's not hierro (nor ierro).
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    Maybe hierro from errar on paper looks weird because of the verb herir which absolutely must have the diphthong... hiero, hieres, hiere. You cannot have *yero. Yerro or erro adds distance.

    Penyafort said:
    Which is why I also prefer hiedra to that yedra that hurts my eyes, despite being accepted.
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    Me too.
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    I guess you all hate yerba too.
     
    In French there are also some words with unetymological "h" at the beginning of the word, e.g. huit, huile, ...

    Is it the same phenomenon as in Spanish, or there is another reason to write some words with initial "h" in French?
     
    francisgranada said:
    In French there are also some words with unetymological "h" at the beginning of the word, e.g. huit, huile, ...

    Is it the same phenomenon as in Spanish, or there is another reason to write some words with initial "h" in French?
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    I cannot think of any word in French that starts with ui, or ua or ué for that matter. So I think it's safe to say it doesn't exist. With an h, there are several words.

    Besides many of these hui words, such as huit, have an aspirate h. Le huit not l'huit. Huile is feminine.
     
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    merquiades said:
    Besides many of these hui words, such as huit, have an aspirate h. Le huit not l'huit. Huile is feminine.
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    The h of huit wasn't historically aspirated (< octem, and it lacks any Germanic cognate that could have influenced it as happened to altum + hauh > haut) it just belongs to a word class that recently (well, since a century or so) started blocking sandhi. L'huit has become le huit in the same way l'une has become la une and l'onze le onze, not much to do with the graphical h.

    The other root with that digraph that seems to have developed a similar property is huis, but only in the compound huis-clos (without public or spectators, or a closed room mystery) and in Belgium huissier but here it behaves like a /w/ initial word ("chez le huissier" is /ʃel.wi.sje/ which isn't how a sandhi blocking word behaves: you'd expect /ʃe.lə.wi.sje/)

    In other word, the presence of a graphical h doesn't seem linked to the sandhi-blocking property of most words in hui-, except maybe huis-clos.
     
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