How would you go about creating a Germanic conlang that is Spanish like?

[Ælfwine]

Something feels strange here ...

A germlang that looks like Spanish s like something that has been attempted before, probably derived from Gothic.

Shimo's Visigothic fits the bill

Ah, I knew it was by someone on this board.

Oh, yeah… that. It was essentially my attempt at using the Brithenig-style/"bogolang" approach to create a descendant of Gothic spoken in Spain, back in the summer of 2016. No disrespect to anyone who likes doing things that way, but I eventually realized I'd never be personally satisfied with the results. I've actually been considering trying to redo it in a way that makes some sense - I might have used it for Lexember 2020 if I'd given myself more time to "prepare" - but it's not currently a top priority for me.

Personally, I liked the aesthetic look of your Visigothic, it had an Iberian feel yet it was still very much a Germanic language. However, a Gothic descendant in Spain is a pretty hard sell anyway.

[zyma]

Something feels strange here ...

A germlang that looks like Spanish s like something that has been attempted before, probably derived from Gothic.

Shimo's Visigothic fits the bill

Ah, I knew it was by someone on this board.

Oh, yeah… that. It was essentially my attempt at using the Brithenig-style/"bogolang" approach to create a descendant of Gothic spoken in Spain, back in the summer of 2016. No disrespect to anyone who likes doing things that way, but I eventually realized I'd never be personally satisfied with the results. I've actually been considering trying to redo it in a way that makes some sense - I might have used it for Lexember 2020 if I'd given myself more time to "prepare" - but it's not currently a top priority for me.

Personally, I liked the aesthetic look of your Visigothic, it had an Iberian feel yet it was still very much a Germanic language. However, a Gothic descendant in Spain is a pretty hard sell anyway.

Well, thank you! It wasn't really the aesthetic that bothered me, just the idea of Vulgar Latin and Gothic somehow undergoing almost exactly the same set of sound changes. I personally have a much easier time hand-waving the implausibility of the basic historical premise, honestly, which I assume is because I'm a linguist, not a historian.

[Omzinesý]

Of course, the contact-introduced changes because of Basque:

Spanish lost /f/ => h => Ø (and later borrowed it)
At some point Spanish had these laminal and apical sibilants.

[RuthMurray]

Something feels strange here ...

A germlang that looks like Spanish s like something that has been attempted before, probably derived from Gothic.

Shimo's Visigothic fits the bill

Ah, I knew it was by someone on this board.

Oh, yeah… that. It was essentially my attempt at using the Brithenig-style/"bogolang" approach to create a descendant of Gothic spoken in Spain, back in the summer of 2016. No disrespect to anyone who likes doing things that way, but I eventually realized I'd never be personally satisfied with the results. I've actually been considering trying to redo it in a way that makes some sense - I might have used it for Lexember 2020 if I'd given myself more time to "prepare" - but it's not currently a top priority for me.

And in vain, a very interesting idea. I think you would have done well!

[Salmoneus]

Of course, the contact-introduced changes because of Basque:

Spanish lost /f/ => h => Ø (and later borrowed it)
At some point Spanish had these laminal and apical sibilants.

On the first: yes, that seems like it could be Basque influence.

On the second: I'm skeptical. /k/ developed into a laminal sibilant as far afield as Galician-Portuguese. And what's more, it did so in all the other Frankish-influenced romance languages as well (other than in the far north of France); it's just that everywhere else the apical sibilant merged with it sooner than in some parts of Spain. Moreover, it's not clear when the apical-laminal distinction occured in Spanish, because there's some evidence that it was still at least sometimes an allophone as late as the 16th century (Spaniards used it to transcribe a Nahuatl affricate, for instance). Which would mean both that the distinction was far later than could be ascribed to Basque influence, and also that the distinction itself only fully existed for a very brief period of time (between de-affrication and interdentalisation).

[Omzinesý]

[...] Which would mean both that the distinction was far later than could be ascribed to Basque influence, [...]

Why can't there be Basque influence at any time period, even today in Northern Spain?

[Salmoneus]

Well, in theory that's true. But we ought to consider the relative probability of each scenario.

Scenario 1: a small number of Romance speakers in northeast spain, in or near Basque territory, pick up features from Basque, and this influence moves along the north coast, along with the Gallic features with also spread along this coastline. Those features are then exported across the whole of Spain by the well-recorded replacement of Mozarabic by North Iberian languages during the reconquista.

Scenario 2: the Kingdom of Aragon violently conquers Navarre, and encounters the Basque language. The Aragonese are so impressed by the Basque habit of using a laminal fricative instead of an affricate that not only do they adopt this feature themselves, but they persuade not only the Castillians, but even the distant Portuguese to likewise adopt this feature.

The problem is, Scenario 1, while not exactly compelling, is fairly plausible, while Scenario 2, while not exactly impossible, is not very plausible. So if Scenario 1 is ruled out, then the entire idea that this feature is due to Basque becomes far less appealing. Particularly when there's a much more appealing scenario just sitting there: the small minority language, Basque, borrowed this feature from the dominant language around it.



The case of f > h is more attractive, because a) there's no particular reason why this would happen in Romance, and doesn't happen widely in Romance; and b) the only romance languages it happens in - Spanish and Gascon - happen to be adjacent to Basque. This suggests that the change is at least an areal change including Basque, if not actually a change that began in Basque. The same is true of the intervocalic lenition of /n/ (in Portuguese, Basque and Gascon; we may easily imagine this also happening allophonically in Spanish, but the /n/ being restored from the surrounding nasalisation, similar to but more extensive than the restoration of a palatal nasal in Portuguse between certain vowels).