We know that the consolidation of European national languages, especially those of a Latin matrix (that is, derived from Latin), occurred in the passage of low middle age to the Modern age, that is, between the 12th and 16th centuries. However, the history of the formation of each of these languages must take into account the mixture of elements of the languages. barbarians with Latin, given the wide contact that many barbarian peoples of northern Europe had, for centuries, with O Roman Empire (in which the Latin language guards). THE origin of the portuguese language is an example of this blend.
The region that gave rise to the modern Portuguese state was located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, around the river Minho. It was in the extensions of land on both banks of the Minho River that what would later come to be defined as Galician-Portuguese, or Galician-Portuguese language. Researcher Amini Boainain Huay divides the origin of the Portuguese language into three main phases, one prehistoric, one protohistoric and one, effectively, historic.
The prehistoric phase does not refer, of course, to the prehistoric age archaeologically speaking, but to a “prehistory” in the sense of a phase in which our language was still rudimentary. This period comprises the centuries prior to the 10th, period in which Portugal was restricted to the region of the river mentioned above, which became known as Portucalense County. This region was ceded by Spain to the first nobles of Portugal during the first wars against the Muslims for the reconquest of the Peninsula. As Huay says: “The prehistoric period is the period of evolution of the Latin spoken in Galicia and Luzitania, from the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula to the formation of the novels in the 5th century, culminating with the definition of the Galician-Portuguese novel as a language spoken on both banks of the river Minho.” [1]
The “novels” mentioned by the researcher Huay are the first European languages whose basic structure derives from Vulgar Latin (or Romance). However, the Portuguese language was formed, in addition to the elements of Latin, also by Celtic and Arabic elements. The Celts colonized the Iberian Peninsula many centuries before the Roman entry, which only took place in 218 BC. C., so that there they left deep cultural roots that would be important for the formation of the Portuguese language. The word “car”, for example, is of Celtic origin.
Already in protohistoric times, Hauy says that: “documents written in barbarian Latin already attest to words and expressions from the Galician-Portuguese novel: strata (road, lat. via), conelio (rabbit, lat. cuniculum), article (article, lat. articulum), ovelia (sheep, lat. Ovicula) […]”. [2] At that time, in the 11th and 13th centuries, it was already possible, therefore, to perceive more clearly the organization of the language around Galician-Portuguese, which would be the main basis for the definitive Portuguese.
From the 13th century, we have the historical phase, that is, Portuguese began to be registered in written form – a procedure that was performed until then only in Latin. This registration was done in an eminently phonetic way, without even lexical concerns. However, the rare 13th-century Portuguese records, especially in chronicles (prose), may have been altered by scribes from later centuries. The fact is that, from then on, Portuguese was already an effective and living language and in constant improvement. In the 14th century, the most elaborated prose texts began to appear, as well as those in poetic forms, such as troubadour songs. These texts also helped to shape the way in which words are pronounced (stressed vowels, accentuation, etc.).
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese began to impose itself in the world as one of the great modern languages, alongside Spanish, French, Italian, etc. Names like Sa de Miranda and Luís de Camões (with his epic poem “Os Lusíadas”) definitively consolidated the Portuguese language.
GRADES
[1] HAUY, Amini Boainain. “Centuries XII, XIII and XIV”. In: SPINA, Segismundo. (org.) History of the Portuguese Language. Cotia, SP: Editorial Ateliê, 2008. P. 35.
[2]Idem. P. 36.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/origem-lingua-portuguesa.htm