Phonetic change "f → h" in Spanish
An example of this phenomenon is the Latin word FARĪNA, which evolved to /aˈrina/ in Spanish (with the
The labiodental realization of /f/, which appears in languages such as French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian, may have emerged through analogy with the change [β] > [v].
[4] The phoneme /f/ can be realized as a bilabial fricative [ɸ], which exhibits variability in its phonetic realization based on surrounding sounds.
The change may have been predominantly observed among lower social strata, while the educated and more conservative classes may have continued to pronounce [f] or [ɸ] in all positions.
However, definitive conclusions about the extent of this phonetic evolution cannot be drawn until it is consistently reflected in written records, especially since aspiration was often represented by the grapheme "f-" for many centuries.
This phenomenon is exemplified in works such as the Cantar de mio Cid, where the Arabic-deriver preposition hasta (from Arabic ḥatta) appears as fasta.
Alarcos Llorach (1951) posits that:[7] In the speaker's sentiment, the substitution of h for f did not entail any change of meaning; phonologically, they would be variants of a single phoneme.
This can be observed in the following examples: Prefixed words have also undergone similar phonetic changes once they were recognized as such: In other contexts, intervocalic -F- typically evolved into a [β], represented by v or b in writing, following the analogy of the evolution of original voiceless stops: However, instances of complete loss also occur.
One widely accepted explanation for the phonetic change from /f/ to [h] in certain Romance languages, particularly Castilian and Gascon, is attributed to the influence of the Basque substratum.
This theory, articulated by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, suggests that the Basques, along with the Cantabri and possibly the Iberians—whose languages did not include the sound [f]—substituted it with [h], which they perceived as acoustically similar.
[8] Another argument against the influence of a Basque substratum is the preservation of initial /f/ in the Romance dialects of Navarre, an area with a significant Basque-speaking population.
[9] If the presence of Basque speakers was a critical factor in the phonetic shift, one might expect to see similar changes in the Navarrese dialect.
For example, Malmberg proposed that the shift represents the loss of the articulatory feature of labiality in regions isolated from other Western Romance dialects, indicating that intrinsic linguistic factors alone could have initiated the change.
According to Salvador, the primary cause of this phenomenon was the loss of teeth among early Spanish speakers, attributed to a deficiency of fluorine in the waters of Castile and León.
He pointed out that if the teeth of early Castilians were adversely affected by the water's composition, one would expect similar outcomes for the inhabitants of Alto Aragón.
Maruri concluded that Salvador's hypothesis contained a significant flaw, highlighting inconsistencies in the argument:[11] The existing theories regarding the phonetic shift from /f/ to [h] in Spanish have often oversimplified the issue.
Some researchers who argue that similar changes occurred elsewhere in Latin Europe fail to recognize that identical phonetic evolutions can arise from different causes in various contexts.
