Different words in Spanish and Portuguese
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Spanish de donde, from where, twice added de?
When I learnt Portuguese onde
for "where",
I already knew Spanish donde
(and ¿dónde?) with the same meaning.
This is confusing, because Portuguese
also has a word donde, but it means
"from where" ("whence" in older
kinds of English), and corresponds to
Spanish de donde
(or ¿de dónde?, if used interrogatively).
Because Portuguese is known for
losing consonants (cf. cielo, céu; buena, boa; sonar, soar;
lleno, cheio) I assumed
the original form must have been donde,
and Portuguese lost the initial d.
But it is not so: Portuguese onde comes from Latin unde! That word did not mean "where", but "whence". Where is ubi in Latin (cognate with French où, Italian ove, and Old-Occitan, Old-Spanish and Old-Portuguese o). So we have:
| English | Spanish | Portuguese | Romanian | Latin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| where | donde | onde | unde | ubi |
| whence | de donde | de onde, donde | de unde | unde |
So it seems that first the notion that Latin
unde semantically
included the idea of "from" got lost. This must
have happened early, because Romanian has it too.
Then de was added in
Spanish, incorporated into
the word, and its meaning forgotten again.
Then to express "from where",
de was added
a second time!
The alternative possibility, that the d of
Spanish donde
was added to make the word easier to pronounce,
seems unlikely because "wave" is
onda in both Spanish
and Portuguese, from Latin
unda.
Copyright © 2003 by
R. Harmsen.
Different words in Spanish and Portuguese
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