A History of the Spanish Language

By Ralph Penny

Book Overview

El espa?ol es el segundo idioma en importancia y la tercera lengua m?s hablada de nuestro planeta. Cuenta con m?s de 400 millones de parlantes nativos. Tal como hoy lo conocemos es el fruto de un... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521397847
• ISBN13: 9780521397841
• Release Date: April 1991
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 335 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.9" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A History of the Spanish Language

This is a college textbook so it's not easy reading. If you are already familiar with Latin, it will help to show you how Spanish evolved from it. It's filled with very specific grammatical and pronunciation symbols and terms. Because I learned Italian and Portuguese before learning Spanish, it's helping me understand why and how these Romance languages differ. This is a book that will make you wish to do more reading and research. One technical observation: the copy I received has a defective cover so I think it's actually a reject. The word "Language" is omitted on the cover title. But all pages seem intact.

Excellent resource

An excellent book and if you are interested in where words come from besides Latin (pre-Roman languages, Greek, French, Arabic) etc.) and how they have changed, the extremely interesting history and development of Spain and the languages therein,and the historical romance of it all, you want this book. John Lipski's books are equally interesting and informative.

A History of the Spanish Language - Ralph Penny

Magnificent book. Absolutely wonderful. Well researched and fascinating for anyone who speaks the Spanish language and is interested in linguistics and its history. Having spent some time in Spain and many years in South America, I developed a strong interest in the Romance languages but Spanish has such a geographic expansion that accents, regions, epochs are as interesting as its origins, its borrowings, its Amerindianisms, Latinisms, Arabisms et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This book provided me with many answers and fascinating explanations to the so many questions I had regarding sounds and accents and different usage of the same language in different regions of the wide Spanish speaking world. I loved it and I consult it often.

Solid scholarship, sound history

This book is extremely complete and quite well written. In the introduction we find some general observations on the nature of linguistic studies, consideration of the various peoples who have contributed to the make-up of what we know as modern Spanish, and other "humanistic" considerations. The phonology section covers all kinds of historical change (this is the section that held most interest for me). Under morphology and syntax there are a bunch of things that, as I read them, I felt like kicking myself because they had never occurred to me. The part on the lexicon is vastly instructive, with discussions of borrowings as well as changes that have taken place over time in the Latin sub-stratum of the vocabulary. There is a final part on semantics, and the author himself suggests that it may be weakest section: any discussion of the semantic development of a language is "is inevitably incomplete and is likely to be at least partially inaccurate." But here the fault is not the author's. Actually, he does and excellent job of telling what there is of the semantics story.

Delivers as promised

This book delivers exactly what it promises--a thorough, well-written account of the development of modern Spanish. I espcially like the connections it makes with Latin and Arabic roots.