Mozarabic language Information & Mozarabic language Links at HealthHaven.com

Mozarabic
موزارابيك Latinus/Latino
Spoken in	Iberia
Language extinction	by the Late Middle Ages
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Pyrenean-Mozarabic Mozarabic; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	roa
ISO 639-3	mxi
	Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Ethnic-Linguistic map of southwestern Europe

Mozarabic (موزارابيك) was a continuum of closely related Romance dialects spoken in Muslim dominated areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the Romance languages' development in Iberia. Mozarabic descends from Late Latin and early Romance dialects spoken in the Iberian Peninsula from 5^th to 8^th centuries (Hispania was the name of a group of three provinces of the Peninsula and the name more commonly used at Roman and Visigothic times). This set of dialects came to be known as the Mozarabic language, though there was never a common standard. (Mozarab comes from the Arabic word مستعرب - musta'rab, i.e. "Arabized").

[edit] Native name

Although the name Mozarabic is today used for this Romance language, the native name (autonym or endonym) of the language was not "muzarab" or "mozarab" but latinus or Latino. Mozarabs themselves never called their own language "mozarabic" but by the name that meant "Latin" (i.e. Romance language). They did not call themselves by the name "mozarabs".

At times Christian communities prospered in Muslim Spain; these Christians are now usually referred to as Mozárabes, although the term was not in use at the time (Hitchcock 1978)

It was only in the 19^th century that Spanish historians started to use the words "mozarabs" and "mozarabic" to refer to those Christians who lived under Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages and their language. Another very common Arab exonym for this language was al-ajamiya ("stranger/foreign") that had the meaning of Romance language in Al-Andalus. So the words "mozarabic" or "ajamiya" are exonyms and not an autonym of the language.

Roger Wright, in his book about the evolution of early Romance languages in France and in the Iberian Peninsula Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France, page 156, states that:

The Early Romance of Moslem Spain was known to its users as latinus. This word can lead to confusion; the Visigothic scholars used it to contrast with Greek or Hebrew, and Simonet (1888: XXIII-IV, XXXV-VII) established that in Moslem Spain it was used to refer to the non-Arabic vernacular (as was Arabic Al-Lathinī)

Also in the same book, page 158, the author states that:

The use of latinus to mean Latin-Romance, as opposed to Arabic, is also found north of the religious border

This means that the word latinus or Latino had the meaning of spoken romance language and it was only contrasted with classical Latin (lingua Latina) a few centuries later. To contemporary romance speakers of the Iberian Peninsula of that time their vernacular spoken language was seen as "Latin". This happens because classical Latin was seen as an educated speech not as a different language.

Another important issue referring to this old Romance language is the name that Sephardic Jews gave to their spoken Romance language in Iberia - ladino and also the name that an Alpine romance speaking people, the Ladins, give to their language - ladin.

In the Iberian Peninsula:

The word Ladino (<LATINUM) survived with the specific linguistic meaning of "Spanish written by Jews" (Roger Wright 1982, p. 158)

This is one of the main reasons why Iberian Jews (Sephardim) from central and southern regions called their everyday language ladino, because this word had the sense of spoken Romance language (Ladino is today a Romance language more closely related to Spanish, mainly to Old Spanish, spoken by some Jews of Sephardic ancestry).

In the Alps: For the same reason, speakers of ladin, another Romance language (spoken in eastern Switzerland in two valleys in Graubünden and northern Italy in the Trentino Alto-Ádige/Südtirol and Veneto regions), call their own language ladin i.e. "Latin".

This word had the sense of spoken Romance language not only in Iberian Peninsula but also in other Romance language regions in early Middle Ages.

[edit] Scripts

Because Mozarabic was not a language of high culture, it had no official script. Unlike most Romance languages, Mozarabic was primarily written in the Arabic alphabet rather than the Latin alphabet, though it was also written in the Latin alphabet and less so in the Hebrew alphabet. Most documents were in the Arabic alphabet. Mozarab scholars wrote words of the Romance vernacular in alternative scripts in the margins or in the subtitles of Latin language texts (glosses).

The two languages of culture in Medieval Iberia were Latin in the north (although it was also used in the south by Mozarab scholars) and Arabic in the south (which was the principal literary language of Mozarab scholars). These are the languages that constitute the great majority of written documents of the Peninsula at that time.

Mozarabic is first documented in writing in the Peninsula as choruses (kharjas) (9th century) in Arabic lyrics called muwashshahs. As these were written in the Arabic alphabet, the vowels had to be reconstructed when transliterating it into Latin script.

[edit] Morphology and phonetics

In some aspects, it is more archaic than the other Romance languages. Based on the written documents that are identified as Mozarabic, some examples of these more archaic features are the preservation of the Latin consonant clusters CL, FL, PL, and intervocalic P, T and C (K) as voiceless, as in the Mozarabic words lopa (she-wolf), toto (all) and formica (ant).

The morphology of some words is closer to Latin than other Iberian Romance or Romance languages in general. This Romance variety had a significant impact in the formation of Portuguese, Spanish and especially Andalusian Spanish, which explains why these languages have several words of Andalusi Arabic origin (Mozarabic was, understandably, quite influenced by Arabic and vice versa). In Portugal, the local Mozarabic dialects are known today as Lusitanian Mozarabic (Portuguese: Lusitano-moçárabe).

It was spoken by Mozarabs (Christians living as dhimmis), Muladis (the native Iberian population converted to Islam) and some layers of the ruling Arabs and Berbers. The cultural language of Mozarabs continued to be Latin, but as time passed, young Mozarabs studied and even excelled at Arabic. Due to the Northwards migration of Mozarabs, we can find Arabic placenames in areas where Islamic rule did not last long. With the deepening of Islamization and the advance of the Reconquista, Mozarabic was substituted either by Arabic or by Northern Romance varieties, depending on the area and century.

[edit] Documents in Mozarabic (Old Southern Iberian Romance)

Some texts found in manuscripts of poetry in Muslim Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus), although mainly written in Arabic, have however some stanzas in mozarabic (Latino) or in what seems to be Mozarabic. These are important texts because there are few examples of written Mozarabic language.

In Late Latin and Early romance Roger Wright also makes an analysis of these poetry texts known as kharjas:

Moslem Spain has acquired philological interest for a further reason: the kharjas. These are apparently bilingual (Arabic-Romance) or macaronic final stanzas of some verses in the Hispano-Arabic muwashshaha form discovered in some Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts (...). Analyses of these have been hampered in the past by the belief that we know too little about mozárabe Romance to discuss the "Romance" element on a sound basis; but this is not entirely true. (...) The detailed investigations by Galmés de Fuentes (e.g. 1977, 1980) on later documents and toponyms have established the main features of mozárabe phonology, and many features of its morphology (...). The conclusion seems to be that mozárabe Romance is not particularly different from that of other parts of Iberia.

[edit] Sample text (11th century)

Mozarabic:	Spanish:	Catalan:	Portuguese:	Latin:	Standard Arabic	Arabic transliteration	English:
Mio sîdî ïbrâhîm yâ tú, uemme dolge! Fente mib de nohte. In non, si non keris, irey-me tib, gari-me a ob legar-te.	Mi señor Ibrahim, ¡oh tú, hombre dulce! Ven a mí de noche. Si no, si no quieres, yo me iré contigo, dime donde encontrarte.	El meu senyor Ibrahim, oh tu, home dolç! Vine't a mi de nit. Si no, si no vols, aniré'm a tu, digues-me a on trobar-te.	Meu senhor Ibrahim, ó tu, homem doce! Vem a mim de noite. Se não, se não quiseres, ir-me-ei a ti, diz-me onde encontrar-te.	O domine mi Ibrahim, o tu, homo dulcis! Veni mihi nocte. Si non, si non vis, ibo tibi, dic mihi ubi te inveniam.	سيدي إبراهيم، يا رجلاً حلواً. تعال اليََّ باليل. وإن كنت لا تريد، سأذهب أنا إليك. قل لي أين أجدك.	Sīdi ibrāhīm yā rajulan ħulwan! ta^cāla ilayya bil-lail in kunta lā turīd saðhabu ana ilayka qul-li ayna l-ajidak	My lord Ibrahim, oh you, sweet man! Come to me at night. If not, if you don't want to, I will go to you, tell me where to find you.

[edit] See also

Aljamiado, the practice of writing a Romance language with the Arabic script.
Aragonese, a related Iberian language
Mozarab, the Christian population under Islamic rule.
Mozarabic art
Mozarabic Rite, the Christian liturgy preserved by the Mozarabs.
Muwashshah, an Arabic poetic form.
Kharja, a part of the muwashshah.
Ladino language, the Spanish language spoken by Sephardic Jews.

[edit] References

Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. (2005). Historia de la Lengua Española (2 Vols.). Madrid: Fundación Ramón Menendez Pidal. ISBN 84-89934-11-8
Wright, Roger. (1982). Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool: University of Liverpool (Francis Cairns, Robin Seager). ISBN 0-905205-12-X

[edit] External links

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