{"id":294,"date":"2014-03-14T16:37:20","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T16:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/estoria.bham.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=294"},"modified":"2019-05-09T15:09:36","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T14:09:36","slug":"how-castilian-got-its-n","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/2014\/03\/14\/how-castilian-got-its-n\/","title":{"rendered":"How Castilian got its \u00f1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Source:<\/a>
Source: silverfoxfilms.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trying to think of an eye-catching blog title for the evolution of NN towards \u00d1, I had to weigh up two options: either the lovey-dovey clich\u00e9 \u2018when two become one\u2019, or the African mythology approach: \u2018how the (elephant) got its (trunk)\u2019. 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 Ara\u00f1a\u2026 tedious much??<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Folio<\/a>
Folio 93r, top to bottom: tamanno, linnage, annos, a\u00f1o, anno, sennor, anno.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Moving swiftly on, our alfonsine histories provide a perfect example of the on-going evolution of the Spanish language, from Vulgar Latin to a \u201cnational\u201d language. Folio 93r of the E-II recension of the Estoria have some fine examples of the Latinate \u2018NN\u2019 (anno \u2013 in yellow) spelling in full. Yet hardly a stone\u2019s throw away we see the scribe has opted for space-saving techniques and written the same word with the \u2018\u00d1\u2019 (a\u00f1o \u2013 in purple). This short section reveals that the scribe responsible for this passage clearly has a preference for the expanded version of \u2018NN\u2019 in the late 13th<\/sup> Century. Beyond \u2018anno\u2019, we see a bounty of other example: \u2018tamanno\u2019, \u2018linnage\u2019 and \u2018sennor\u2019.<\/p>\n

To put that all cases of \u2018NN\u2019 would eventually become \u2018\u00d1\u2019 is untrue. Whilst \u2018anno\u2019, \u2018tamanno\u2019 and \u2018sennor\u2019 clearly follow the pattern (a\u00f1o, tama\u00f1o and se\u00f1or), linnage is a case apart. The modern Castilian is now linaje, void of any palatalised \u2018N\u2019 as in today\u2019s \u00d1 phoneme; Portuguese \u2018linhagem\u2019 and French \u2018lign\u00e9e\/lignage\u2019 have retained it, however.<\/p>\n

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\/\u00d1, well that\u2019s a long story for another day, around a campfire perhaps. Where\u2019s Anansi when you need him\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trying to think of an eye-catching blog title for the evolution of NN towards \u00d1, I had to weigh up two options: either the lovey-dovey clich\u00e9 \u2018when two become one\u2019, or the African mythology approach: \u2018how the (elephant) got its (trunk)\u2019. I found the latter more appealing, since I judged that the Spice Girls might … Continue reading “How Castilian got its \u00f1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1855,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/1855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/estoriadigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}