Trying to think of an eye-catching blog title for the evolution of NN towards Ñ, I had to weigh up two options: either the lovey-dovey cliché ‘when two become one’, or the African mythology approach: ‘how the (elephant) got its (trunk)’. I found the latter more appealing, since I judged that the Spice Girls might not engender as much interest as a cheeky arachnid. Think African mythology, think Anansi the Spider, Anansi la Araña… tedious much??
Moving swiftly on, our alfonsine histories provide a perfect example of the on-going evolution of the Spanish language, from Vulgar Latin to a “national” language. Folio 93r of the E-II recension of the Estoria have some fine examples of the Latinate ‘NN’ (anno – in yellow) spelling in full. Yet hardly a stone’s throw away we see the scribe has opted for space-saving techniques and written the same word with the ‘Ñ’ (año – in purple). This short section reveals that the scribe responsible for this passage clearly has a preference for the expanded version of ‘NN’ in the late 13th Century. Beyond ‘anno’, we see a bounty of other example: ‘tamanno’, ‘linnage’ and ‘sennor’.
To put that all cases of ‘NN’ would eventually become ‘Ñ’ is untrue. Whilst ‘anno’, ‘tamanno’ and ‘sennor’ clearly follow the pattern (año, tamaño and señor), linnage is a case apart. The modern Castilian is now linaje, void of any palatalised ‘N’ as in today’s Ñ phoneme; Portuguese ‘linhagem’ and French ‘lignée/lignage’ have retained it, however.
This blog could end up becoming extremely long, were we to pick apart these examples, questioning early and late Latin etymologies, medieval to modern Castilian, palatals, standardisation etc. So I will leave it there, and hope that this fine section of the Estoria highlights the wealth of linguistic analysis that we hope to offer with our edition. To know the full tale of the etymology, phonology and orthography of the NN/Ñ, well that’s a long story for another day, around a campfire perhaps. Where’s Anansi when you need him…