Cinco, quince, cincuenta, quinientos

[billrow]

I am studying Spanish via the Pimsleur Hear-Speak method and I use Language Now V.9 for reading and pronunciation practice.

But I have a question regarding the changes in the number 5 as it goes up the ladder in size. cinco, quince, cincuenta, quinientos

Usually there's a logical or historical reason for such a sound and spelling shifts. Can anyone explain the background or reason for this?

[Julvenzor]

I'm not a expert in etimology (), but I think it's simply an issue of language pronunciation evolution:

Spanish => Latin

Cinco => quinque
Quince => quindĕcim
Cincuenta => quinquaginta
Quinientos => quingenti

Cheers!

[billrow]

Thanks for the reply, but in your example the Latin stem stayed the same and only the suffix changed. This is a much less drastic change in pronunciation that 5 undergoes in its promotion up the scale of size in Spanish.

[wrholt]

There are linguists who study how Spanish developed from Latin, and you might be able to find papers or books on the subject. While I've read some material on the topic, I'm no expert. Your best bet is to find a paper or book about how Latin evolved into Spanish, or perhaps studies of how the pronunciation of the specific words you're interested changed over time.

These four words show how the shift of /k/ before /e/ and /i/ to the modern pronunciations of the letter 'c' affected many words in many Iberian languages. However, the pronunciation shift may have happened at different times in different languages. There are a number of other sound changes that affected one or another of these words.

Some words of Latin origin don't show predicted changes for a variety of reasons. One possibility is that the modern word was borrowed from classical Latin at some point after a key sound change finished in Castilian. Another possibility is that a word now used in Castilian was borrowed from a different language that had not experienced the sound change sometime after the sound change finished in Castilian.

[billrow]

Thanks for your response and added information. I'll just have to accept: It is what it is. Not an unusual outcome when studying a language.

Since I am not studying Spanish under classroom conditions, I had hoped that this strange shift in pronunciation of 5, 15, 50, 500 was covered in class at some point.

[pjt33]

It probably goes back a long way, because French does something similar: cinq, quinze, cinquante.

[wrholt]

Originally Posted by billrow

Thanks for your response and added information. I'll just have to accept: It is what it is. Not an unusual outcome when studying a language.

Since I am not studying Spanish under classroom conditions, I had hoped that this strange shift in pronunciation of 5, 15, 50, 500 was covered in class at some point.

The only classes that I've ever heard of that cover these questions are linguistics classes on the subject of how languages evolve over time.

In my experience, second/foreign language classes typically don't cover why related words that have different pronunciations of their roots came to have those different pronunciations. When a second/foreigin language class teaches something about pronunciation, it mostly focuses on how to produce a more native-like pronunciation of a particular sound, word or phrase or a more native-like set of intonation habits.

[billrow]

Thanks again for your reply. I did way back when read a book on linguistics, where sound shifts where a common feature in a root words when they crossed a linguistic divide. The example I remember was the word "work" in its shift between German (Arbeit) and Russian (rabota). In this case the "ar" change to "ra".