Language of Mozarabs. New Reading of the sources

Abstract

Traditionally, it has been widely accepted that little or nothing can be known about the language spoken among the Mozarabs even if, on the other hand, it is known that since the VI century, Latin was no longer the mother tongue spoken anywhere in the Iberian Peninsula, but something to be learnt at the numerous schools belonging to a bishopric, a monastery or even a parish church. As no direct testimonies of the spoken language may be gathered, the reality of the spoken language can only be approached in an indirect manner, and it will always be through a forced search into what has been left in written texts: scrutinizing into details, picking vulgarisms here and there which slipped into the written language due to the pressure exerted by the spoken language. We will put to try some sort of reading between the lines, tracking down language elements preserved in texts that might bring us closer to the linguistic reality of that broad sector of the population of Cordoba that became under growing pressure by the emergence of Arabic in the splendour of the Umayyad caliphate.