Talk:Andalusi Romance

Latin translation

I think that a Latin translation would make more sense than a Spanish one. Here is my attempt, probably with lots of errors (Romanes eunt domus) --Error 23:58, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Meus domine Abraham
O tu homo dulcis
veni mihi
nocturniter
Si non, si nolis
irabo tibi
di mihi ubi
locare te.

I heartily agree--for the sake of seeking the resemblances. However, we might want to "Romancize" or "Vulgarize" the Latin, instead of leaving it too classical, to reflect historical usage. Dpr 08:03, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• The word in English would be popularize. The term Vulgar has a different meaning than the one it has today. I think it would be diffult to writte that in Vulgar Latin, almost noone wrote in that language(s), besides Spanish and Portuguese are the vulgar latin(s). The best that could be done would be using old castillian/Portuguese (it would be more factual). So I hardily disagree with both of you. -Pedro 11:21, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• Before trying to put Classic Latin and Romance side to side,
  

one has to keep in mind that Classic Latin was never an actual
living tongue but a litterary construction, probably based (to
some extent) on the Latin of the 2º century BCE. So, even in the
days of Cicero and Caesar the actual spoken language already
differed considerably from the written litterary form. And there's
almost 1000 years between the vernacular of the 1st century BCE
and Romance - almost a millenium of continuous change and evolution.
One can still (!) see the resemblances, but they are only obvious to
those who know both Latin and a Romance language well enough.
IOW, they're not necessarily obvious.
Anyway, I've corrected (I think!) some mistakes in the Latin
translation:

Mi domine Abraham
O tu homo dulcis
veni ad me
noctu
si non, si non vis
ibo ad te
dic mihi ubi
tibi occurram.

You've just further Classicized it, which I think is the opposite of what they wanted. "Mi" was the correct vocative in Classical Latin, but Ecclesiastical (and I believe Vulgar Latin) used "Meus." Viz. the "Domine meus, et Deus meus" of Doubting Thomas; in Classical, it would have been "Domine mi, atque Dee mi."--Jpbrenna 02:05, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we could also translate mozarabic as mauretan's arabic or even muor's arabic because that is essentially what it was. Can you tell me what a Moz is? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.210.114.164 (talk) 07:04, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Valencian version

Perhaps a Valencian version would be also interesting. --Error 03:24, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I've showed in a version in Valencian - I've tried to translate well and keep to Valencian norms, but I don't think that the differences between Valencian and Barcelona Catalan are due to Mozarabic influences, so anyone complaining about the choice of Valencian over Catalan would be well within their rights. Wee Jimmy 21:00, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Valencia was conquered by the King James I The Conqueror in 1238. How can the article talk about the valencian from the 11th century? On the other hand, the decision of the question about if valencian is catalan or not should be solved by the linguists, and they think that both are the same language. Triticumman

Native name

What is the transliteration of that Arabic-script "native name"? Where does it come from? Is it documented? --Error 03:24, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

The origin of the word mozarab is arabic: must'rab (arabized). I imagine the same word is used nowadays in the arab world. So the transcription given (muzarab) should be corrected in both its latin and arabic form.--Guzman ramirez 16:50, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Mozarabic language#Sample text (11th century)

Can someone get the samples to lign up properly??? Peter Horn 16:34, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

-Agreed, we need this. Because it sounds quite funny in Arabic (i.e. doesn't make a whole sense for an 11th century text) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.106.13.237 (talk) 00:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Ajam?

Ajamia does not mean barbarian. In its root form, it means something similar to "illiterate", and later on it came to mean "Non-arab", and often "Persian". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.239.178.165 (talk) 16:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Source of sample text

It would be great, if someone could add a source for the 11th century sample text. Gugganij (talk) 21:48, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Sources for the "Old Spanish" and "Old Portuguese" translations are also required. They look very unconvincing to me Acasson (talk) 13:46, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Arabic alphabet

After all this talk of alphabets isn't it crazy to have the "standard Arabic" of the sample in Latin script? I'll put it in Arabic script. My Arabic isn't perfect; if anyone knows better feel free to edit mine. I don't feel confident trying to recreate the Mozarabic in Arabic script, though it should be.--Zachbe (talk) 14:55, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

-I modified the Arabic script a bit, to make it clearer and fixed some grammer. Being a native speaker I think it's good now. I used the english version as a refrence tough. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.106.13.237 (talk) 00:25, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Title of Article

I am confused about the title of this article. Although "Mozarbic" is often used colloquially when discussing this transitional period of Latin to Spanish, my understanding is that the preferred scholarly classification among is "Andalusi Romance." It seems that at least mentioning that in the article would help avoid a lot of confusion. TheCormac (talk) 19:58, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Phonetic reconstruction?

Can anyone say why the texts -- and/or which texts -- of the Lord's Prayer are labeled Phonetic reconstruction? As it stands, the section label is bewildering. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 19:49, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

The main source for reconstructing Mozarabic are unvocalized texts in Arabic script. I doubt there is any instance of the Lord's Prayer. So, yes, the section might be labelled OR, though of course whoever wrote it could have other arguments. --Jotamar (talk) 14:23, 18 September 2021 (UTCare)

The label itself is odd. Perhaps "phonetic reconstructions" is meant as phonological reconstruction, but even then, as section label, that can be taken to apply to all the texts. Even odder is that not only the Latin is tweaked (which it shouldn't be) vis-à-vis the ill-identified source, but other texts also don't match the source given. And what's the source of the non-Iberian versions? In sum, more than a bit of a mess. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 21:21, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Mozarabic not supplanted by Arabic

Here is some Academic info that contradicts the fact that Arabic replaced Mozarabic. It was Castillian, Portuguese and Catalan-Valencian who cause the extinction of Mozarabic in the southern half of the Penninsula, not Arabic who was a language of prestige (Widely spoken but not the main one).

file:///C:/Users/Victus/Downloads/Dialnet-ElRomanceAndalusiYLosTrasvasesDemograficosYCultura-5717316.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alejojojo6 (talk • contribs) 21:27, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

The path to a file on your own hard drive is of no use for this purpose. Largoplazo (talk) 21:48, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

The thesis of the article by Anne Cenname (apparently a poetess), El romance andalusí y los trasvases demográficos y culturales en la Iberia medieval, seems to be that modern Spanish might derive from the local Romance in Toledo rather than from the Castilian of the north. It just happens that I wholeheartedly agree with that! However that is not incompatible at all with what this page states: that Mozarabic was replaced by (colloquial) Arabic in several areas. That is almost sure for Eastern Andalusia, and very likely too for Western Andalusia, Murcia and Valencia. In fact that is the standard vision: that Mozarabic survived in some areas, most crucially in the Toledo region, while it disappeared in other areas. Therefore, user:Alejojojo6's editions are not supported by that particular article, and I dare say, because I have read quite a lot about the subject, that they're not supported either by any more or less serious research. --Jotamar (talk) 23:31, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Firstly, Anne Cenname works in the University of Almería as a Philologist, specialized in Medieval Poetry. She is not a poetess. She published this article endorse by the University. Secondly, her study shows that neither Arabic nor Mozarabic were wiped out till the Reconquista was fully achieved (And not even then). Arabic was the predominant language only in some areas as you said, while Mozarabic was the language of other areas indicating a non-homogeneous language spoken all over Muslim Iberia. For that I disagree with the sentences that "Arabic replaced Mozarabic" when this study says that Mozarabic was replaced by the Christian Kingdoms main languages. Mozarabic and Arabic were predominant in different regions of iberia (spoken by Christians and Muslims), On top of that, Mozarabic or Andalusi Romance was the main language for most of the early middle ages. Neither Castilla-la-Mancha, Extremadura, Aragon, large pockets in Valencia and Andalucía spoke Arabic. The sentence you state "Modern Spanish might derive from the local Romance in Toledo rather than from the Castilian of the north" is comppletely false. It makes no sense historically, linguistically and archeologically. She states that many of the features in modern spanish were borrowed from Mozarabic specially in the Spanish spoken in the south brought by settlers who moved North to South mixing their Castillian (Or Valencian-Catalan) with the local Mozarabic and Arabic languages. Alejojojo6 (talk) 09:38, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/El-romance-andalus%C3%AD-y-los-trasvases-demogr%C3%A1ficos-y-Cenname/326b73afa412518a9efe7e80489cef0902a84978 Abstract: "Lapesa (1981: 189) proposes that the “Mozarabic” dialects disappeared as the Christian kingdoms “reconquered” the southern regions of the Iberian Peninsula" Alejojojo6 (talk) 09:41, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Lets see:

• You say that Neither Castilla-la-Mancha, Extremadura, Aragon, large pockets in Valencia and Andalucía spoke Mozarabic. What is going on?
• Apparently you now admit that Arabic replaced Mozarabic in some areas, however you insist in recovering your own edition that says otherwise.
• On a second, more thorough reading, miss Cenname's paper is complete rubbish. What she seems to say is that since the traditional view of this as taught in high schools is flawed, then the exact opposite must be the truth. It is unbelievable that someone teaching in a university can say in a publication that Por lo que sepamos, nadie ha mostrado cómo o cuándo desapareció el romance andalusí (near the end of the paper). Well if she had any idea about Sociology of Language, she'd know that the how is by a normal language shift process, and if she had bothered to read virtually anything about the conquest of Granada and its aftermath, she'd know that the when was before the Christian troops arrived.
• As a general comment, I find user:Alejojojo6 writing tone quite bothersome, speaking with remarkable security and confidence about facts that he or she seems to know only through a single source written by a non-specialist. --Jotamar (talk) 21:14, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

• Neither spoke Arabic*; It's a typo that I am editing now.
• I never denied that arabic was predominant in few areas. Just because I was defending that Arabic did not replaced Mozarabic I wasnt saying arabic was not spoken in some areas. Thats an assumption you made. I was denying your assumption that Arabic replaced Mozarabic as a whole, which is what you stated and thus untrue. Even the title of this entry shows what I tried to change. The fact that Mozarabic was predominant in a lot of Muslim controlled areas until the fall under christian control, means that the sentence "Arabic replaced Mozarabic" as an untrue assumption that you should not state in this article.
• Her paper is not rubbish, you are trying to make it look like rubbish because it doesnt fit on your own views. Her statement is perfectly valid and true. No one has shown how or when exaclty Andalusi Romance disappeared because it was a gradual process. This paper defends the fact that Mozarabic was integrated with the Romance languages from the Northen Christian Kingdoms to form the particular speech of southern spain. Also the conquest of Granada doesnt mean an end to Andalusi Romance at all, as Andalusi Romance disappeared by the replacement of the Romance languages brought by the Christian Kingdoms, thus after the Christian troops arrived. The fact that Miss Cenname's paper is endorse and published by the University of Almería is proof enough that it should prevail over Jotamar's own opinions.
• Calling a Philologist and Medieval Language expert a non-specialist is very bold. I am compromising myself to find other sources that endorse Miss Cenname paper.
• I find the user of this page: @Jotamar to be very stubborn on his ideas to even acknoledge changing information on this page that is false on two accounts: One that Arabic replaced Mozarabic all over Muslim Iberia, and that Mozarabic was already extinct by the time the Christian Kingdoms conquered muslim iberia. Both statements being false. Also the language addressed to me is rude calling me "Nationalistic" and using agressive language, which is unprofessional. Alejojojo6 (talk) 13:30, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

  I have no position one way or the other re the discussion you're engaged in, but I must say that you do yourself no favors by posting nonsense such as this, which seems to reveal no understanding of the process of academic publication: "The fact that Miss Cenname's paper is endorse and published by the University of Almería is proof enough that it should prevail over Jotamar's own opinions." Normas is published by the University of Valencia, not Almería. In the normal process of publication, no university -- very much including Valencia and Almería -- endorses what is published in their journals or by their faculty. Nor should it ever be assumed that the editor or the editorial committee of a journal necessarily agrees with the conclusions reached in articles they accept for publication. The publication of an article proves nothing except that it has passed the minimum criteria for publication in the specific journal, as established by the editorial board. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:28, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

• Mozarabic was lost to assimilation by both Arabic, on the one hand, and other Romance varieties on the other (Portuguese, Leonese, Castilian, Aragonese, and Catalan), depending on the time and place. That is not controversial whatsoever.
• The Reconquista was of course a piecemeal affair. Already by c. 900 CE the area from the Cantabrian mountains to the Duero river had been conquered by the Kingdom of Asturias. The Arab occupation was far too short for local Romance, i.e. Mozarabic, to have gone extinct throughout this zone.
• On the other hand, it took the Christian kingdoms six more centuries to capture the last Arab-controlled parts of the Iberian peninsula. By the time Granada was taken, local Mozarabic was clearly extinct, having been assimilated by Arabic.
• When exactly Mozarabic went extinct in the area between the Duero river and the future Emirate of Granada (and hence which language assimilated its final remnants) is less obvious. But in the end, it doesn't matter for the purposes of this article. The first sentence of this comment makes for a suitable summary. Nicodene (talk) 02:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

It's clearly stated on the front page as "University of Almeria", not Valencia. Miss Cennane works in that university and resides there. Also the fact that it has been published is more than any subjective non-supported idea, because it guarantees a minimum of accuracy. On the other hand, the editor or the editorial committee of a journal doesnt need to agree or not with the result and conclusion from the authors who publish as they might not be experts in every field of expertise that the journal published about. If they disagree they simply dont admit it for publication. This has passed a filter from collegues and the university before even beeing able to be admisive for publication, thus endorsing the article. So we can say that Miss Cennane work is a very valid conclusion even if not of the likes of everyone. Those who disagree are free to do other articles dismissing the statements of this one from 2016.

Other than that I am satisfied with the current wording of the page. Alejojojo6 (talk) 22:06, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Before this discussion becomes stalled, I'll be bold and edit the page again:

• First, the following paragraph is in contradiction to everything said so far: "It was the dominant language of the common population till the reconquistas was finally finished in 1492, in which Spanish and other iberian languages displaced the Andalusi-Romance varieties". So I'm just deleting it.
• Second, I'll rewrite the original wording stating that Mozarabic was gradually submerged by Arabic in the south to make it clear that only for one area, the Emirate of Granada, there is consensus among specialists that Mozarabic vanished altogether. (By the way, a specialist in Medieval poetry is not a specialist in the history of languages in the Iberian peninsula). --Jotamar (talk) 21:16, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Question on issue of intervocalic /p, t, k/ (or lack thereof), relationship to general question of voicing in all Romance

I am wondering about the status on whether Mozarabic conserved intervocalic /p, t, k/ as in Italo-Dalmatian Romance or underwent voicing as in other Western Romance varieties. The English language article cites Craddock (2002) stating that this feature "is a matter of debate", but this is not in agreement with the Mozarabic language article in almost every other language, which all state that /p, t, k/ was retained. The Spanish language page has an entire list of Arabic transcriptions as supposed evidence (e.g. 'lopo', 'primat', 'toto'), although I can't find the reference. Where do we stand on this as of now?

• Also, if indeed Mozarabic was the standard Romance variety throughout central and south Iberia pre-Reconquista, assuming that all surviving modern Ibero-Romance languages represent far-north varieties, and if indeed Mozarabic lacked lenition of /p, t, k/, does this upend the traditional Italo/Eastern vs. Western Romance distinction along the La Spezia-Rimini Line for this development (minus de-gemination, since Mozarabic clearly has this feature, like the rest of Western Romance)? Is it possible there was another boundary like the La Spezia-Rimini Line in northern Iberia for voicing of /p, t, k/? Then perhaps voicing was mainly a northern feature limited to Gallo-, Gallo-Italic and extreme north Ibero-Romance.

Iotacist (talk) 01:20, 5 July 2022 (UTC) Iotacist

Do the non-English wiki articles you have in mind cite a reliable source for that statement? Craddock is one of the leading figures in the study of Mozarabic.

The La Spezia-Rimini line is already severely undermined by Pyrenean dialects of Aragonese and Gascon, which did not experience lenition of intervocalic /p t k/. Belsetán is one relatively famous example. Nicodene (talk) 07:28, 5 July 2022 (UTC

The 'muddled nature of the outcomes in [Pyrenean] Gascon' is due to lexical infiltration from outside, isn't it? That was the case with Belsetán, at least, as reported by Badía. I'll have to read what Mott has to say about Chistabino.

Hard to say, re lexical intrusions. I haven't studied the area in detail, just checked some ALF maps. To justify penetrations from elsewhere, one would need to come up with good non-circular explanations for why items as basic as 'chain', 'bee', 'fig (tree)', 'wheel', 'ripe', CACARE or 'needle' aren't historically local. Or -- slightly different story -- why the ALF reflexes of APOT(H)ECA in the SW have both [k] and [g], with [g] dominant. After checking just a few ALF maps, lexical diffusion begins to look like a convenient rug under which to sweep something that's probably more interesting, sort of like northern borrowing to excuse ago, luogo etc. below La Spezia - Rimini. But that's okay; either position can be a useful heuristic device.

As for the geminate plosives, one is still left to contend with Dalmatian and Balkan Romance.

Sure. East/West wasn't the ideal labeling.

With all due respect to Von Wartburg, the poor L-S line, valid enough on a local level, was never up to the task of dividing Romance as a whole into East and West. None of the isoglosses works out that way without generous squinting or handwaving of problematic dialects. Nicodene (talk) 20:30, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

I'll not make a point of disagreeing, just say that I've found that it works pretty well, with the caveats that it's confined to Romania more-or-less-continua, it leaks quite a bit down the Italian Adriatic coast, and von Wartburg didn't appreciate the power of geminates, a common weak point among those who haven't spent a lot of time worrying over things Italian. Oh, and the obvious: read 'line' as 'zone'. -- You might find Vitali's volumes worth exploring, especially vol. 4, the bits where he analyzes how /ptk/ > /bdg/ may have come about and summarizes the line. But also other volumes, where he literally trips over the line doing field work. (I'm thinking any more on this should be on the La Spezia-Rimini article's talk page. It's pretty much irrelevant here.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 22:16, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Per Rohlfs (Le Gascon, §447), the non-leniting area is 'la region au sud et au sud-ouest d'Oloron'. While the ALF does cover Oloron itself (point 692), it covers nothing at all to the south or southwest, hence the impossibility of finding in it the dozens of non-lenited forms that Rohlfs provides, such as apélho, sequì, and bechica.

The distribution, however, of lexical relics with conserved /-p t k-/ in other Gascon varieties, as also in Aragonese, shows that there had been a larger non-leniting zone in the past (§445), which has shrunk due to 'l'invasion linguistique de la Plaine', with smaller-scale lexical intrusion affecting the modern non-leniting area (§447). (The alternate explanation that you have offered is conceivable as well.)

Badía (p. 77) points out a comparable intrusion of Castilianisms into core Belsetán vocabulary (viejo, pecho, mejor, hoja), which have eradicated the native equivalents (viello, peito, millor, fuella). Granted, in that case the donor was the national language.

Speaking of which, the reflexes of apotheca across Occitan in general appear to reflect the intrusion of French boutique from the north. Rohlfs does not indicate any archaic /-k-/ form in the Pyrenees, but I do not think his list was meant to be comprehensive.

----------------

If we are excluding Romanian and such, then we are no longer 'dividing Romance as a whole into East and West', which is the part that I was objecting to. The LS-R/M-S line does work in the way that you have described.

I'll take a look at Vitali 2020. It sounds as if it may be in the same vein as Cravens 2002 (Comparative historical dialectology), which makes a convincing case for degemination leading to the phonematicization of hitherto-allophonic voicing of /-p t k-/.

Quite right that none of this is strictly relevant to Mozarabic, so perhaps it is best to take this to a personal talk page or to stop here. Nicodene (talk) 08:25, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

All summed up, I don't think we really disagree on much. Even the different perspectives on the /k/ of apotheca can be useful, as it can't be totally discounted that a very local [k] in the shrinking non-voicing conservative areas might have been replaced (or in the generational process of being replaced) by [g] as a slightly outward-looking norm, and/but voilà, along comes French [k] to, depending on attitudes, either (re-)sanction [k] or reinforce [g] as then (proudly) marked local. -- Wild speculation aside, I don't see back-of-beyond relic areas as very troublesome for von Wartburg's identification of the line; for me, his observations provide focus and stimulus. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:33, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Hello Nicodene, thank you for the reply! Unfortunately, in the Spanish language article there do seem to be a lot of issues. There are a lot of citation request flags, and the section on preservation of /p, t, k/ does not have a citation. Although with such a large list of terms, I'd think that it had to have come from somewhere. The main thing is that I just want to make sure that there's no need to change the article on this matter in English, and that the page in each language is in agreement.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioma_moz%C3%A1rabe#cite_note-24

Regarding La Spezia-Rimini/Massa-Senigallia Line, (also to Barefoot through the chollas) although outliers exist like in Gascon, does the split not still broadly stand (e.g, that the vast majority of varieties south/east of it do not undergo lenition, degemination, and vice versa for north of it)? Nowhere is there lenition in Italy as far south as say, Lazio, right? Sardinian and the hypothetical 'Southern Romance' group (including African Romance) of course remains the exception, since we know nothing about the status of /p, t, k/ in Africa and Sardinian (at least Campidanesu/Lugodoresu) have lenition but no degemination. Iotacist (talk) 19:58, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Iotacist, yes, La Spezia - Rimini stands for degemination or lack thereof, and for regular phonological (phonemic) lenition or not of /ptk/ (allophonic lenition is very common south of La Spezia - Rimini and in Corsica and Sardinia). IMO the fact of the line holding well makes it useful as a diagnostic device for apparently exceptional areas. The best rundown now is in especially (but not only) vol. 4 of Daniele Vitali's recent (2020) work:

https://federicopani.com/2021/12/24/dialetti-toscani-e-dialetti-emiliani-lintervista-a-daniele-vitali/

A taste of Central Italian allophonic lenition:

In Umbria, well below La Spezia - Rimini: "Spoleto, così come ci si aspetterebbe, ha una pronuncia sonorizzante tipica del centro Italia e del romanesco: la gasa (la casa), li gani (i cani), le vere (le pere)" [The same words pronounced without a vowel preceding start with [k], [k], [p].]

https://federicopani.com/2022/03/08/i-conti-col-toscano-lintervista-a-luciano-giannelli/ Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:47, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

So back to Mozarabic, has there been any meaningful resolution on the status of /p, t, k/? If the non-English wiki pages are incorrect that preservation of /p, t, k/ was an unquestioned feature, and that it is still uncertain, should we notify the editors of those pages? Iotacist (talk) 21:36, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Not that this article isn't itself in need of an overhaul as well. Nicodene (talk) 16:57, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

So, you mean yes to notifying the editors of the other pages, right? Just clarifying that you mean that the English article is the correct one, that the status of /p, t, k/ is still debated. Iotacist (talk) 17:49, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, yes, that remains unsettled. Hanlon provides a useful overview (1997, Lenition in the Mozarabic dialects: a reappraisal). Nicodene (talk) 20:30, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. So do you recommend contacting other editors in their languages' talk pages? Iotacist (talk) 20:50, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

One general comment about the starting message: Mozarabic was not a language, it is just a convenient label for a number of Romance varieties about which we know very very little. Whenever an author says about Mozarabic it was this way and another author says it's not clear, you can bet that the second one is more reliable. (Unfortunately that is also true for so many other past things). The main source we have about Mozarabic are the Kharjas, small poems written in Arabic unvocalized script, and reconstructing the original Romance text from them requires a lot of guesswork. In fact, there are some kharjas for which it is not clear whether they transcribe a Romance or a colloquial Arabic text! And there's hardly any security about from which particular regional Mozarabic they are. By the way, the usual assumption about the modern Peninsular Romances being born in the far north is not accepted by all authors, and I personally find it very difficult to believe. --Jotamar (talk) 22:28, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

" By the way, the usual assumption about the modern Peninsular Romances being born in the far north is not accepted by all authors, and I personally find it very difficult to believe."

Oh, interesting. So there are actually alternative theories that modern Ibero-Romance languages derive from varieties further south as they were slowly being reconquered? At least one person has said to me that the language of Toledo influenced Castillian; is anything known about that? Iotacist (talk) 03:29, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if it can be called a theory, but Criado de Val bluntly rejects Ramón Menéndez Pidal's thesis about Castilian having been born in Burgos and then transplanted to Toledo, where the first written standard of Spanish was born (notice that this last point is uncontroversial). I've also read somewhere that after the Christian conquest of Toledo, there were 2 communities in the city, one Castillian-speaking and one Mozarabic-speaking. That such a thing can happen in a city that has never been very large, and with 2 Romance dialects that at the time (1085) couldn't be very different from each other, that's what I find very hard to believe. I find it far more likely that the Castilian of the first written documents and Toledo Mozarabic were... just the same thing. --Jotamar (talk) 19:27, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

So based on your idea that Castilian is based on the dialect of Toledo, and therefore contained the distinctive features of Western Romance––both de-gemination and lenition of voiceless stops––would you suggest that the argument around those sound changes in other varieties of Mozarabic leans in favor of lenition?

Also, as I asked Nicodene, do you think it is necessary to contact editors of the pages in other languages encouraging the removal of sections stating that Mozarabic undoubtedly lacked lenition of /p, t, k/? Iotacist (talk) 18:42, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, so long as you indicate the sources that say otherwise. Nicodene (talk) 18:55, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

About this question: ... would you suggest that the argument around those sound changes in other varieties of Mozarabic leans in favor of lenition? No, what I'm saying is that there's too little data to arrive to sound conclusions about even one particular regional variety of Mozarabic, let alone about all of them. If Spanish phonology is just a regular continuation of Toledo Mozarabic, then at least one variety of Mozarabic would include lenition and degemination, but I don't know that for sure, and I don't think anybody knows that for sure. --Jotamar (talk) 15:33, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I'm not a native Spanish speaker so I don't know if I should contact the editors of the Spanish language page (the main one which the others seem to be based on.) Iotacist (talk) 21:29, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Just gonna offer any sources I have about this. Ralph (2000), Variation and change in Spanish, page 224 says in a footnote that the retention of Latin -p, t, k- in Mozarabic is disputed, and he mentions another source. That other source, Galmés (1983) Dialectología Mozárabe, from page 91 (table of contents is in the back), presents a pretty strong case for voicing of Latin intervocalic /p t k/ based on the Arabic letters used to represent their reflexes. It also mentions Ramón Menéndez Pidal showing evidence of voicing before the Muslim conquest. Also, the Spanish article es:Aljamiado andalusí brought me to another source (in Spanish) whose second and third pages mention voicing of Latin /p t k/.

Also I agree with Jotamar in that you really can't characterize Mozarabic as a single variety. Erinius (talk) 21:44, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Left a message on the Spanish version's talk page. I didn't change the article myself. Erinius (talk) 18:37, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 8 February 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Consensus to move, with varying levels of support from editors, but no actual opposition. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 22:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

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Mozarabic language → Andalusi Romance – Scholarship considers "Mozarabic language" ambiguous and imprecise. The main issues, as identified by Consuelo López-Morillas and others, are that "Mozarabic" gives the idea that it was only spoken by Christian Mozarabs (which is incorrect) and that it is an Arabic language (which, apart from loanwords, is also incorrect). "Mozarabic language" also gives the impression that the topic is a singular language, which is not the case. The article should be moved to "Andalusi Romance" to reflect WP:Reliable sources and current scholarship.
Addendum: Google Scholar favors "Andalusi Romance" by a ratio of 3:1 — 151 hits against 52 for "Mozarabic language" إيان (talk) 07:22, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
إيان (talk) 07:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm inclined to support this, but I have some questions. Do you know if "Andalusi Romance" is becoming the more commonly used term in scholarship? I'm asking that because I've seen "Mozarabic" more often, and it seems to me like there are plenty of sources which just use "Mozarabic", but I'm also just not that familiar with the scholarship on Mozarabic. Maybe authors in different fields lean towards different terms? Also, do you have references to any of the papers or book chapters where López-Morillas or others talk about the issues with "Mozarabic"? Erinius (talk) 09:16, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Update: found a paragraph where López-Morillas criticizes the term "Mozarabic" - from The Literature of Al-Andalus, Chapter Two "Language".

The time-honored name for the form of Hispano-Romance spoken in Muslim-held territory, “Mozarabic,” now provokes dissatisfaction among some scholars. Since the Christians of those lands are also called Mozarabs (from Arabic mustarib ‘one who adopts the manners of the Arabs’), it has been objected that the term straddles ambiguously the realms of religion and language, and further implies, erroneously, that the dialect was spoken only by Christians. The very form of the word suggests (again a false perception) that it denotes a language somehow related to Arabic. Spanish scholars increasingly now call it romance andalusí. This can be rendered into English as “Andalusi Romance” in a neat parallel to “Andalusi Arabic,” but with two caveats: first, it should not be confused with “Andalusian” (the adjective of the southern region of Spain, Andalusia, and the name of a distinctive dialect of modern Castilian), and second, it must not be assumed that Andalusi Romance was significantly different from the varieties of Romance vernacular spoken in most of the Christian north – at least in structure, though it would have had a larger proportion of Arabic loanwords.

Erinius (talk) 10:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Erinius, thanks for chasing this down. I don't see why the English version should drop indication of stress (seems as unhelpful as e.g. the unfortunate habit of rendering omertà as omerta, thus encouraging spurious pronunciation), but that aside, does López-Morillas cite overtly other major Hispanists who not only use the replacement term, but explain why? Mozarabic can, indeed, be misleading, always has been. But it's also true that it's time-honored, and change inevitably encounters resistance. The more heavy hitters such as López-Morillas who can be cited as favoring the shift in terms, the stronger the case is for doing so. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a need to import the í used in Spanish to approximate the Arabic أَنْدَلُسِيّ. Andalusi is already a word used in English as an adjective and demonym for al-Andalus just as it is, and it's the form López-Morillas proposes for English in the above source.

As for his citations, he refers to his 1977 work with Richard Hitchcock— The Kharjas: A Critical Bibliography. إيان (talk) 17:49, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Erinius, for an indication that Andalusi Romance is becoming more commonly used in scholarship, when the Google Scholar results for "Andalusi Romance" and "Mozarabic language" are filtered for publications since 2019, the ratio goes from about 3:1 to about 7:1. إيان (talk) 17:58, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the count by Google Scholar has a built-in structural flaw. Discussions of Mozarabic language will inevitably include a majority of mentions of Mozarabic without the clarification language immediately following syntactically once the subject matter of the article/book is made clear. Usages such as "The kharadjāt (Arabic plural of khardja) are the final verses in Mozarabic, an early Ibero-Romance language", "Gerard of Cremona used Mozarabic, a Romance dialect", "language of the Mozarabic community", "the Mozarabic text", etc. etc. etc. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 19:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I was just using the article titles in this move discussion. It’s a fair observation, but couldn’t the same could also be said of instances of “Romance” in which the understanding through context is that it’s referring to the variety or varieties in Al-Andalus? إيان (talk) 21:04, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that she proposes Andalusi, stress on final /i/ not indicated. I was -- and remain -- questioning the wisdom of that, as it misrepresents the more common Spanish term and implicitly approves prosodic restructuring of it for no reason given. I don't doubt that her book with Hitchcock is a fine one. What I was searching for was citations of "other major Hispanists who not only use the replacement term, but explain why." I should clarify that by Hispanist I mean scholar specialized in Hispanic Linguistics and/or Philology. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:40, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

How the word is pronounced in Spanish could and should be clarified in the article, but to me it seems unnecessary to use the Spanish orthography in the title for English—especially against the reliable source.

I provided that title because I would assume such citations are in that critical bibliography. I don’t have access to it at the moment, but perhaps someone else might.

PS sorry about misgendering Consuelo López-Morillas—got thrown off by the O. Obviously I’m familiar with her work and had even seen her face before but just had a foggy moment. إيان (talk) 21:18, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Ian, not to worry -- fog hits anyone and everyone from time to time. Your move suggestion is appreciated, and your informed contribution to discussion of the motivations for the move (re-titling, actually) is both appreciated and essential. I'm guessing it will be possible to come to a satisfactory conclusion if discussion isn't closed arbitrarily too soon. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 19:59, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

• Comment The arguments that are given off-Wikipedia in support of naming the language something other than "Mozarabic" in scholarly works have no bearing on what we call the language here, since for our purposes we're concerned with what names are actually being used in pertinent sources and in what proportions. Suppose a few scholars were debating referring to the English language by another name because "English" falsely implies that most of its speakers are English. Until the day when it could be shown that, as a consequence of those debates, a name other than "English" had come to be used in a preponderance of pertinent materials, those debates would be of no consequence to the naming of the English language on Wikipedia. Largoplazo (talk) 23:55, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  That's the central point under discussion here: to what extent has Anadalusi/sí Romance replaced Mozarabic (language) amongst the most pertinent sources, i.e. publications of leading scholars in the field. (The paragraph cited from López-Morillas' work is obviously welcome, as it is helpful in understanding that the motivations for the shift are well-founded.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 01:39, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

  You say it's obviously welcome, but if the shift has occurred to the extent that "Andalusi Romance" is now the predominating usage, then that's all that's required to change this article's title. Understanding the motivation for that shift may be interesting, even fascinating, but it's irrelevant to the purpose at hand, which makes it a digression. I'm not complaining that the digression occurred, but it needs to be clear that it was a digression. Largoplazo (talk) 02:39, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

  "If the shift has occurred to the extent that "Andalusi Romance" is now the predominating usage, then that's all that's required to change this article's title" Agreed. That in no way entails that understanding the fundamentals of the motivation for the shift is a digression. It seems clear that chacun à son goût with regard to that, which is okay. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 05:24, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

  It has nothing to do with one's goût. This discussion is about whether to change the title of the article. The motivation of which we speak has no bearing on the outcome. Therefore, veering into discussion of that motivation is, by definition, a digression. Largoplazo (talk) 10:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. The problem with the GScholar evidence provided is that the terms are not parallel. "Andalusi Romance" corresponds to "Mozarabic", but the latter is too ambiguous to easily search. The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages and Routledge's The Romance Languages all use "Mozarabic", but I'm not sure they ever have cause to say "Mozarabic language". None uses "Andalusi Romance" that I could find. Srnec (talk) 01:48, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
• Comment. @Barefoot through the chollas: López-Morillas doesn't cite anyone in that chapter, but José Ignacio Hualde uses "Andalusi Romance" in one of his own writings and cites Federico Corriente as a reason why that name is more appropriate. Corriente, in the cited source, "El idiolecto romance andalusí reflejado por las xarajāt", says "Andalusi Romance" is a good parallel to "Andalusi Arabic" and that it was spoken by Andalusis of all religions. In another article (http://doi.org/10.1163/008523709X12470367869986), Corriente states in a footnote that the term Mozarabic "stems from a biased nationalistic-Catholic perception of Spanish history and culture, aimed at distorting facts in a sectarian way".

@Srnec: I agree with you when it comes to Google Scholar. I'll make a (partial!) list of authors/sources I've found that use Andalusi Romance, or other terms that could be relevant for this discussion. Of course, a bunch of other sources (like all/most of the ones this page cites) use Mozarabic. Anyway, here's my list:

• Federico Corriente
  • Corriente, F. (13 November 2013). "El idiolecto romance andalusí reflejado por las xarajāt". Revista de Filología Española (in Spanish). 75 (1/2): 5–33. doi:10.3989/rfe.1995.v75.i1/2.399.
  • Corriente, Federico (2009). "On a Hopeless Last Stand for the Hypothesis of a Romance Origin of Andalusi Stanzaic Poetry: Homosexuality and Prostitution in the Kharjas". Journal of Arabic Literature. 40 (2): 170–181. doi:10.1163/008523709X12470367869986.
  • Corriente, F. (2008). Romania arábica: tres cuestiones básicas : arabismos, "mozárabe" y "jarchas" (in Spanish). Madrid: Editorial Trotta. ISBN 9788481649994. - I don't have access to this book, presumably he at least talks about the name of the language
• José Ignacio Hualde
  • Hualde, José Ignacio (27 October 2020). "Ibero-Romance II: Astur-Leonese, Spanish, Navarro-Aragonese". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.718. - "These Romance varieties are traditionally referred to as Mozarabic, from an Arabic word meaning ‘assimilated to the Arabs’. A more appropriate term, however, is Andalusi Romance—as opposed to Andalusi Arabic—as Al-Andalus was the Arabic name of the part of the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic rule (Corriente, 1995)."
• Roger Wright - in the sources of his I've been able to read, he uses "Romance", "Latin" and "Ladino", but neither "Mozarabic" nor "Andalusi Romance" specifically
  • "Late and Vulgar Latin in Muslim Spain: the African connection". Actes du IXe colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif.
  • Wright, Roger (2019). "The End of Written Ladino in Al-Andalus". The formation of al-Andalus. Part 2, Language, religion, culture, and the sciences (First ed.). ISBN 9781315239613. - I don't have access to this one, but in the abstract he refers to the language spoken in the Iberian Peninsula in the year 700 and immediately after the Muslim conquest as "Ladino"
• Consuelo López-Morillas, previously cited
  • Morillas, Consuelo (2000). "Language". The literature of Al-Andalus. New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521471596.004. ISBN 9781139177870.
• Múrcia, Carles (2022). "Amazigh toponymy of Šarq al-Andalus: methodology and preliminary remarks". ISSN 1540-5877. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Wacks, David A. (2020). "Review of Calderwood, Eric. Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture". doi:10.17613/wtpf-g609. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Edit: Found another source, in Spanish, which calls Mozarabic biased: Romance andalusí y mozárabe: dos términos no sinónimos

Erinius (talk) 00:06, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. Before I comment: Thanks, Erinius, for your work in digging out those sources, absolutely essential to this case. Comment: I don't see a strong case for or against re-titling the article. It seems clear that the traditional label Mozarabic for the language is falling out of use (and rightly so), but it doesn't seem clear that the replacement Andalusí (or inexplicably distorted orthographically/phonologically for English as Andalusi) romance has quite yet effectively won its place. That may be in part because, as López-Morillas sort of warns, it's easy to confuse/conflate with (Modern) Andalusian, and equally easy to assume that it sets the language apart more than makes empirical linguistic sense from adjacent Romance (Wright's lesson in a nutshell). It does seem that the replacement process is further along in this case than for the unfortunate label Vulgar Latin (see Wright and many others), though, or for untangling Venetian and Venetan. The best verdict I can come up with is non liquet, and/but I would hope that the article under either label would contain condensed elucidation of the terminological issue. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:53, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, I agree the question of what term is preferred in scholarship isn't settled. Given that, I support a move because of the issues that the term Mozarabic has as a language name, but I don't think we have consensus on that and the article can work with either title. Erinius (talk) 12:49, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Comment/still leaning somewhat towards a bold move. To add onto all that I've already said, the main thing we've been discussing so far has been the extent to which one term or the other is preferred in English-language reliable sources, but there are other factors to consider, as mentioned on WP:TITLE. Considering the five main CRITERIA, both titles are recognizable and natural - Mozarabic may be more natural, or more widely used by readers, regardless of which term is preferred in current scholarship. Both terms are concise. Andalusi Romance is perhaps more precise, especially to the unfamiliar reader, and it is certainly more consistent with Andalusi Arabic. And Mozarabic is at least somewhat non-neutral in an ethno-religious way - though its prevalence may override such considerations. Erinius (talk) 13:40, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Comment This will probably be my last comment here, but, @Deisenbe: @Jotamar: I'm interested to see if either of you have anything to say about this. Erinius (talk) 08:01, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't have much to say. My main concern about this page is just that it shouldn't deceive readers into thinking that we know a lot about these linguistic varieties, we know very little for sure about them. The name change might be positive, but I don't consider it a priority. --Jotamar (talk) 21:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Map

As far as I'm aware, Mozarabic was extinguished in Al Andalus by the 12th century, the region being totally arabized. Should this be included in the article and perhaps the visual map be updated since it implies that Mozarabic was still spoken in Almohad Spain (it was not). Guzzpacho (talk) 14:29, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but safer to say 13th century, as it was the Almohad conquest that caused the migration of Andalusi Christians to the North, leaving a mostly homogenous Muslim Arabophone population in the succeeding Nasrid Emirate.

• Bennison, Amira K. (2016). The Almoravid and Almohad Empires. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748646821.
• Bulliet, Richard W. (1979-12-31). "Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period". De Gruyter. doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674732810. ISBN 9780674732803.

With regard to the map, Consuelo López Morillas criticizes this exact representation of the linguistic landscape in medieval Iberia for conflating language with political borders, which was not the case. إيان (talk) 14:49, 5 June 2023 (UTC)