A comparison of Romances in Hispania

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citadel said:

Another old form of "Spanish" is the Ladino of Sephardic Jews. Many words that include a silent h in Castillian still have the f phoneme.

I once got to read some texts and magazines in Ladino that a Jewess gave me. For what I can remember, it had pretty much the structure of the Castilian language of the 15th Century.

It stroke me her attitude, which I like to call "neo-judaizante", trying to find a crypto-jew in every Spaniard.

I remember my great-grandfather used the word ladino with a different meaning, as an adjective for a person who cannot be trusted, as an insult. Let's see what the dictionary of the Royal Academy has to say about it...
buscon.rae.es/diccionario/drae.htm:

ladino, na.
(Del lat. lat «nus, latino).
1. adj. Astuto, sagaz, taimado.
2. adj. Se decía del romance o castellano antiguo.
3. adj. Se decía de quien habla con facilidad alguna o algunas lenguas
además de la propia.
4. adj. Am. Cen. mestizo.
5. adj. Am. Cen. Mestizo que sólo habla español.
6. m. Ling. Lengua hablada en la antigua Retia.
7. m. Ling. Lengua religiosa de los sefardíes. Es calco de la sintaxis y del vocabulario de los textos bíblicos hebreos y se escribe con letras latinas o con caracteres rasíes.
8. m. Ling. Variedad del castellano que, en época medieval, hablaban los judíos en España, y que, en la actualidad, hablan los judeoespañoles en Oriente.

esclavo ladino.
1. m. El que llevaba más de un año de esclavitud.

(I assume the 'h' in Spanish once represented the sound it does now in English or German).

I don't think so. It retains the same sound as it has in Latin or any Romance language.

The "aspired h", the sound of /h/ in Germanic languages, is roughly the same as the sound of /j/ as pronounced in most areas of Andalucía.

Also, the characteristical sound of the 'g' and 'j' consonants in Castilian can be found in many Celtic languages (and also Dutch). From here we can safely assume that it was an old sound by influence of the Cantabrians, who were of Celtic origins.

This was likely before the shift of 'x' from the "sh' to the 'h'-like sound of modern Castillian.

I don't think Castilians ever got to pronounce 'x' like /sh/. Try to keep in mind what we've been saying about the origins of Castilla and the Castilian language: Cantabrians and Basques. A people to whom sounds like /sh/ or fricativeness was alien.

I remember reading long ago a book on the origins of the Castilian language by Ramón Menéndez Pidal (he was, and is still considered, the most knowledgable person in this field). According to him, the language spoken by Castilians, sounded extremely harsh, and even rude, in the Court of the Kingdom of Leon at the time when Castilians were feudataries of the Crown of Leon.

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citadel said:

Do any of the archaic Mexican dialects retain any f or even 'h' sound? (I assume the 'h' in Spanish once represented the sound it does now in English or German). This was likely before the shift of 'x' from the "sh' to the 'h'-like sound of modern Castillian.

I was wrong about the old /h/ sound. I asked somewhere else for the origins of the Castilian word joder ( 'to f*ck' ). I thought the origin could be the same than Catalan gaudir or Italian godere ( 'to enjoy' ... makes sense, doesn't it?). But I was also dubious as joder translates into foder in Portuguese and fotre in Catalan.

Well, the answer I was given is that joder derives from Latin fotuere. It seems that as the majority of words in Castilian which started with an initial 'F', it lost it and changed to 'H' instead, so at one time there was a hoder verb.

But this word did change again later to adopt the 'J' instead, as it seems that at a time 'H' was pronounced as an aspired /h/ in Castilian.

Sorry... and "enhoy" while you can

[urbanra5cal]

Joder "to f*ck"....do you think there's any connection to Hebrew "choder/khoder" (pronounced the same way) which means "to penetrate"?

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I think that the explanation they gave me is very consistent, even when it is an exception to a rule. So I would think it is right. But the similarity of the Hebrew word, the similarity in pronounciation, and the fact that it expresses the same concept is striking and cannot be just casual.

Do you know if it has been a Hebrew word since ancient times? It might be that it passed from Castilian to Ladino (very likely), and then from Ladino to Hebrew? Think that the ending suffix is typical of the infinitive of verbs in most Romance languages.

[Melnorme]

It's probably just a coincidence. The word 'hoder'/'penetrate' in Hebrew is not a word with strictly sexual connotations. You're welcome to surprise me, though.

BTW, 'f*ck' in Hebrew = 'lezayen', from the root 'zein' = 'penis'.

[Springa]

The portuguese word "nem" would be "ni" in Spanish, not "no".
The first verse would be "Ni dejarán mis versos olvidados".