The manly character (and other related qualities) of the Castilian Spanish: phonetic foundations of an ancient stereotype

Abstract

The golden stereotype of the male-oriented character of Castilian has an ancient tradition in Spain, dating back to the contrast between the Latin of Rome and that of Hispania. Observations that combine the concepts of martialism and manliness — and other closely related distinctive features — constitute a chain that spans throughout the history of linguistic ideas. The aim of our work is to propose some reflections, based on ancient testimonies, on what would be called, in sociolinguistic terms, an affective attitude — which manifests itself through recurrent adjectives — and then compare these reflections with modern phonetic descriptions. Although the sources offer explicit references to specific phonetic features in only a few cases, it is nevertheless possible to isolate some of them. These are evident elements, such as the multiple vibrant consonants denoting expressiveness and force as one of the oldest characteristics of the language. This illustrates the active role of pre-Roman languages (specifically Basque) in the vibrant sounds of Spanish.