The Letter H in Spanish

Abstract

Modern Spanish writing employs the letter h as an indicator of a pre-existing h, f, or g, as a device to separate vowels in a potential diphthong, as in rehusar, and to avoid the use of an initial semiconsonant, as in huevo. This note traces the development of the letter h from Classical Latin into Spanish up to the publication of the first Diccionario of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1726. Long ago, in the early history of Classical Latin, medial h in words like VEHEMENS and REPREHENS had disappeared, rendering spellings like VEMENS and REPRENS. In Cicero's time (106-43 B. C.) and in the early Empire, inscriptions reveal the frequent omission of h (Grandgent 1907: 106-07). Between the time of Cicero and that of Quintilian (35-95 A.D.), the disappearance of h had become so complete that Latin grammarians felt an urgent need to discuss in detail whether or not a particular word should or should not be written with an h. It is therefore clear that Classical Latin h did not survive even into early Spanish. It is almost certain that the alternation off and h in Old Spanish is of Basque origin. Theories that its origin was Classical Latin, French, German, or Arabic have all been convincingly refuted by James English in his dissertation published as The Alternation ofF and H in Old Spanish (18-25). Basque had no labiodental fricative either voiced (as in /v/) or voiceless (as in /f/). The Basque sounds closest to those were bilabial fricatives: articulations in which the lower and upper lips were tensed and the escaping air produced the speech sound. This voiceless bilabial /f/ was almost imperceptible to people outside the Cantabrian (Basque substratum) area. Those inside the area produced and understood h's from at least three sources: Germanic h (as in Old Spanish honta hijo, and its spread as an early development that took place after the Roman occupation of Cantabria. He states that it was limited to that r gion until the thirteenth century, when it b gan to spread southward. The spread of the h region coincided, given a slight delay factor, with the chronology of the reconquest by the Christians over the Moorish population on the peninsula. The spread southward began in the thirteenth century and included Segovia, Soria, Toledo, Madrid, Guadalajara, and Salamanca by the fourteenth century. By the end of the fifteenth century, h for f was widespread in Spain (English 75-8). The end of the fifteenth century was a pivotal period in the history of the Spanish language. In the final generation of the century, the printing press was introduced into Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Moors from Granada, and the language was to be spread to all parts of the globe on the ships of Spanish explorers, conquerors, and colonizers. Toward the end of the fifteenth century and into the early sixteenth, Spanish authors and diplomats, not to mention Charles V himself, engaged in extensive travel, primarily to Italy, where great emphasis was being placed on the classical languages, Greek and especially Latin, as models to be venerated and imitated. It was this almost obsessive interest in re-establishing as much of Latin usage as possible that led to the preservation of h fromfand the consistent use of etymological h for Classical Latin h. The h fromfhad a relatively short life span as a speech sound in Spanish, but an extraordinary resiliency as an etymological spelling. The loss of aspirated h from f is difficult to document because of the spread of literacy, the greater availability of books printed in different cities and countries, and generally improved communications. But evidence shows that just as h had first replaced fin the north of Spain, it was lost first in the north, in Old Castile. In a poem written during the reign of the Reyes Cat61icos (1487-1516), this is