[gothic-l] Re: the word "the" as in "the house" or "the car"

[Francisc Czobor]

Vladimir is definitely right: the Spanish definite article, like in 
all Romanic languages, comes from Latin. The form "el" compared to 
Italian "il" is explainable by the phonetic evolution of Spanish  
(opening of short Latin i to e), rather than the influence of the 
Arabic aerticle al- (pronounced in Modern Arabic dialects rather like 
el-, sometimes il-).
On the other hand, the Spanish definite article changes with gender 
and number (el, la, los, las), like in all Romanic languages, whereas 
the Arabic definite article has the unique form al-, regardless 
gender and number.
Moreover, in Spanish borrowings from Arabic, the Arabic article 
appears as "al-" (prefixed), not as "el", like in Alhambra etc.
So, no connection between Spanish el/la/los/las and Arabic al-.

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, åÇÏÒÏ× ÷ÌÁÄÉÍÉÒ <vegorov at i...> wrote:
> ********************
> Hi Peter!
> 
> Gothic had definite articles, i.e. analogues to English <the>, 
> but, leaving this item to more competent members of the Gothic-L, 
> I'd like to note that Spanish <el> is NOT an Arabic word. 
> Otherwise we should accept Italian <il> and French <le> also 
> as loan words from Arabic, which seems unbelievable. 
> More probable (and widely accepted) is derivation 
> of the definite articles in all Romance languages from Latin 
> <illus, illum, illa> 'this, that' for various genders. 
> Thus origination of the Romance article is the same as for 
> Germanic one (cf. English <the> from <this> or High German 
> <der, das, die> from <dieser, dieses, diese> etc.). 
> Though the change of <i> in Italian <il> to <e> in Spanish 
> <el> may reflect some Moorish influence. 
> By the way, the idea itself to put an article before all nouns 
> may penetrate late Latin just from the Gothic, Langobardic 
> or other Germanic languages.
> 
> Vladimir
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com [mailto:gothic-l at yahoogroups.com]On
> Behalf Of Peter Gutierrez
> Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 9:42 AM
> To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [gothic-l] the word "the" as in "the house" or "the car"
> 
> 
> Hi fellow lovers of the written language,
> 
> Does anybody know what the visigoths might have used
> for the word "the."   Spain uses an arabic word for
> "the" which is the word "EL."  What the [edit] did the
> visigoths used prior to the moorish invasions?  I
> imagine that they used something from their old gothic
> language. Perhaps something akin to ostrogothic or
> even something before they split up to become the east
> and west goths. 
> 
> Peter  
> 
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