Lorenzo Hervás y la lengua vasca

Abstract

In this paper we study Lorenzo Hervas´s ideas about the influence of the Basque language upon the Spanish language presented in his Escuela española de sordomudos,published in 1795. He singles out two ways by which a language can exercise its influence upon another: the pronounciation and the syntactic idioms. In his 1795 work, Hervás offers an argument that he had not mentioned before. This argument, presented as an empirical observation, is based on the way basque speakers speak Spanish when they first learn it. When a basque speaker speaks Spanish, says Hervás, their way of speaking cannot be distinguished from that of a native Spanish speaker. According to Hervás, that would prove that the Basque language and the Spanish language agree in the accent (articulations of sounds). As the Basque language is older than the Spanish language, Hervas draws the conclusión that the primitive inhabitants of Spain had all the same pronounciation. Furthemore, Hervás claims that the Spanish language maintains some basque idioms in its syntax. Syntactic idioms reflect the different ways nations think and speak. However, the pronounciation and idioms of a language cannot change the grammar of another language. Grammars keep unchanged along the time. This same idea can be found in W.v. Humboldt.