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    A Brief History of the Spanish Language: Second Edition
    Unavailable
    A Brief History of the Spanish Language: Second Edition
    Unavailable
    A Brief History of the Spanish Language: Second Edition
    Ebook459 pages4 hours

    A Brief History of the Spanish Language: Second Edition

    By David A. Pharies

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Since its publication in 2007, A Brief History of the Spanish Language has become the leading introduction to the history of one of the world’s most widely spoken languages. Moving from the language’s Latin roots to its present-day forms, this concise book offers readers insights into the origin and evolution of Spanish, the historical and cultural changes that shaped it, and its spread around the world.

    A Brief History of the Spanish Language focuses on the most important aspects of the development of the Spanish language, eschewing technical jargon in favor of straightforward explanations. Along the way, it answers many of the common questions that puzzle native speakers and non-native speakers alike, such as: Why do some regions use tú while others use vos? How did the th sound develop in Castilian? And why is it la mesa but el agua?

    David A. Pharies, a world-renowned expert on the history and development of Spanish, has updated this edition with new research on all aspects of the evolution of Spanish and current demographic information. This book is perfect for anyone with a basic understanding of Spanish and a desire to further explore its roots. It also provides an ideal foundation for further study in any area of historical Spanish linguistics and early Spanish literature.

    A Brief History of the Spanish Language is a grand journey of discovery, revealing in a beautifully compact format the fascinating story of the language in both Spain and Spanish America.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateNov 12, 2015
    ISBN9780226134130
    Unavailable
    A Brief History of the Spanish Language: Second Edition

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    • 3/5
      Anyone who speaks a language understands that they have a history. Words, phrases, and pronunciations have changed over time, bringing with them new constructions, new ideas, and new ways of expressing ourselves. David A. Pharies’s Brief History of the Spanish Language sets out to show how all that happened for a single language: Spanish. Starting with a refresher on the concepts of sociolinguistics, phonology, and morphology, he takes the reader through the last two millennia, from Latin to Castilian to Modern Spanish. He stops along the way to take a look a few pieces of the language in more depth, such as the noticeably lisped sounds in Castilian Spanish and the way that modern Spanish is taking on a decidedly more English air. While the individual pieces of information are interesting to encounter, it’s still a textbook at heart, with questions at the each chapter and everything. Of the books I’ve now read on linguistic history now, this one is better and more interesting than Antonsen’s Elements of German but not as good as Ostler’s Ad Infinitum. A more robust speaker of Spanish will gain a fair deal of insight from this text and may even find ways to shape their fluency, but in the end, it was only ho-hum for me.

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