In the USA we are not tought much about how and where languages were formed so does anyone here have any insights into what other words in Spanish are actually Vulgar Latin or a closel derivative ?
To me it seems pretty obvious that "Santiago" is a contraction of San (Saint) + Tiago. Tiago, if you pronounce it like they do in Chile or the Ecuadorian highlands (Something like Chiago) sounds quite similar to the English word Jacob, which is a transliteration from the original Hebrew name, Ya'qob.
Even today in Portuguese, another Romance language, it's just "Tiago", not "San-tiago".
Hi, Bob.
Yes, as we were taugh in school, Spanish comes from Vulgar Latin.
This article in Wikipedia https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9xico_del_espa%C3%B1ol says that Spanish words come from:
70 % Latin
10 % Greek
8 % Arab (in fact, Arabs were in Iberian Peninsula during seven centuries)
3 % Gothic
9 % other languages (Basque, Celtic Languages, and others)
Other authors give different percentages, but when you study Latin or other Latin-derivated languages (Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan), you notice inmediately how similar they are, although their differences.
In English the only latin remnants I can think of are in medicine and law.
I also learned that Catalan and Gallego are not derivatives of Spanish but evolved along with Castillano from "Vulgar" or spoken latin on the Iberian peninsula . Vasco has somewhat different roots as does English.
True?
