Spanish Verbs: The Magic Behind o to ue and e to ie Stem Changes
why are there stem-changing verbs in Spanish? Short answer : Because of the distinction that was already lost in Vulgar Latin between long and short vowels in the evolution from Latin to modern Spanish. Long answer : In Latin, long vowels were additionally naturally tense , while short vowels were additionally more relaxed . This makes sense, since to say a loooooong vowel, the muscles of the mouth have to be more tense than when you say a short vowel. When vowels were reduced from 10 in Latin to 5 in Modern Spanish , "things happened"; and among these, there was a phase where there came to be two vowels that had a closed or open quality ... "o" and "e" like in Portuguese. Coincidence? I think not. Other Romance languages like Galician , Catalan , Italian , and French , in fact, stopped at this stage of evolution during the Vulgar Latin stage, with respect to "o" and "e" and remain today with at least 7 oral vowels , where the