rate of change

[Rick Mc Callister]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>> But before 1500, Spanish & Portuguese were farther apart than they are now.

>Surely not in terms of basic vocabulary.

	In some cases, yes.
Both modern Spanish & Portuguese have <familia> /familya/
which SHOULD have evolved as
	*hameja /amexa/ in Spanish
	*famia /famia/ in Portuguese

	Latinate relexification did affect a fair share of basic words. The
development of literary standards affected lexical choice, with the
Latinate words or words from Ibero-Romance literary standards often winning
out. In certain domains, one language became dominant. Spanish borrowed a
large percentage of sailing terms from Portuguese, etc.
	Most basic vocabulary is pretty much the same as it was but a fair
share of it has spilled from one language to the other --especially in
regional dialects, which with mass communication have become generally
known.
	So Mexican giz [from Portuguese], instead of standard tiza "chalk"
is understood. Argentine Spanish shares a lot of terms for food, plants and
animals [as well as slang] with Brazilian Portuguese --and these are known
to any school kid who has read Borges & Quiroga.
	In some cases, the words have acquired limited meanings
	Spanish mun~eca /muN~eka/ "doll, pretty girl" [also wrist,
originally from a word for "bump, lump"] is cognate with
	Portuguese boneca /bunek@/ "doll, pretty girl"
	BUT since in Rio, this word is applied to transvestites who have a
beauty contest and "escola de samba" at Carnaval, in Latin American slang
it means "transvestite, transexual"
	Thanx to TV, movies, radio, cassettes/CDs and immigration, even
more vocabulary is flowing between the languages and some words get
relexified
	In Brazil, the linguistic center has shifted to the South, and now
is moving from Rio to Sa~o Paulo, which has a large --if not huge-- Spanish
speaking population.
	Argentina, Cuba & Puerto Rico have large Galician populations.
Buenos Aires is the largest Galician city in the world. Although Galician
is a separate language, it is much closer to Portuguese than Spanish. Given
that it is essentially a series of rural dialects, western Galician would
be [or would have been] closer to Old Portuguese.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
MUW
Columbus MS 39701
rmccalli at sunmuw1.muw.edu