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As we know, language is changing with time. Could anyone explain it in the historic point?

  1. Why the verbs in Spanish only end in "ar, er, ir"?

  2. Do "-ar, -er, -ir" have special meaning? That is, for example, why a verb ends in "-ar" but not "-er, -ir"?

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solo joker
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From a historic point of view, the Spanish language comes from the Latin language. In Latin there were three possible terminations for verbs: -are, -ere, -ire. These terminations have reached our days, in some cases unchanged as is the case of the Italian language. In Spanish the last e was simply dropped.

Now, where did the Latin verbs come from? I don't know, but in the theoretical common language Proto-Indo-European the verbs were formed by adding a suffix to a root to form the verb, and then adding an ending to form the word. If those suffixes were a reduced set, it would set the origin for every language with common terminations for verbs.

It's not uncommon to have a common termination for every verb in a language. Take the Japanese language, for instance. In that language, every verb ends with a -u syllable (-u, -ku, -su, ...). The English way seems to be more flexible as you can render any word into a verb. To do the same, we have to verbalise the word (as the invented word "googlear", meaning "to search something in Google".

Another example is the German language, a language I consider somewhat close to English, where every verb ends with -n. Thus, "to have" in German is haben. In fact, in Middle English this was the termination for every verb, so "to sing" comes from Middle English singen, and verbs were conjugated (singe, singest, singeþ, singen, singen, singen). Modern English just dropped the termination from the infinitive (but added the initial to) and simplified the conjugation, and the only thing that remains is the -s from the third person singular.

About your second question, the endings -ar, -er, -ir do not have a special meaning, and didn't have it even in Latin. One could think that the ending could depend on the last consonant or consonants of the stem, but in Spanish you have abrir and labrar, with very similar stems (abr- and labr-) but different terminations. You can even have different terminations for the same stem: morar and morir, and you get two completely different verbs.

fedorqui
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Charlie
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  • Strictly speaking, when using a foreign word like google it, we tend to verbalise it but should be written as "googléalo", whereas nobody uses this unless accepted from the DRAE. – Schwale Jul 30 '16 at 17:32
  • Spanish comes from Latin? I thought it comes from Roman. As far as I know the only language that comes from Latin is Romanian. Am I so wrong? – Alonso Urbano Jul 31 '16 at 02:49
  • Thanks for your answer! I speak Chinese and English, both these two languages do not have a common termination for verbs. So, I doubt about your saying "It's not uncommon to have a common termination for every verb in a language." – solo joker Jul 31 '16 at 05:43
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    @solojoker you're quite welcome! What I was trying to say is that the fact that verbs end in Spanish in given terminations is not a unique characteristic of our language, as there are others with that same characteristic. I tried to give an example of a language far apart from Spanish. Italian, French, Portuguese and other languages that come from Latin also have it. I didn't mean that this characteristic is common in the majority of languages, but only that there are others. – Charlie Jul 31 '16 at 07:49
  • @VladimirNu ever wondered why is it called Latin America? It's the territories of America where Romance (or Latin) Languages are spoken. Romance languages are the modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin between the sixth and ninth centuries. Vulgar Latin was derived directly from Latin itself. – Charlie Jul 31 '16 at 07:59
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    Vladimir, The Romans spoke Latin. Many Romance languages are derived, in part, from Latin. The big five are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. – Walter Mitty Jul 31 '16 at 10:49
  • @CarlosAlejo yes I know that, but what I mean is that spanish has no much relation with latin, but has a lot of influence, but other languages as well have that influence, like german. What about declination? If I'm not wrong Latin had six declinations, which spanish does not have, bur Romanian does. – Alonso Urbano Jul 31 '16 at 12:00
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    @VladimirNu Roman isn't a language. The Romans, in the Roman Empire, spoke Latin. – Akiva Weinberger Jul 31 '16 at 13:17
  • Do "-ar, -er, -ir" have special meaning? That is, for example, why a verb ends in "-ar" but not "-er, -ir"? – solo joker Jul 31 '16 at 13:51
  • @solojoker that's a really good question, and by that I mean that I don't have an answer. At least even in Latin the termination did not have any special meaning, and it's very difficult to investigate the previous languages. I would really like to know the answer. – Charlie Jul 31 '16 at 14:27
  • @VladimirNul Spanish does not have "influence" from Latin. It comes from it, therefore being a romance language. English on the other hand is not a romance language but it does have "influence" from latin through french. There is no such a thing as Roman – KansaiRobot Oct 27 '17 at 08:01
  • @Charlie - Maybe Linguistics SE would have some thoughts about that. I've never explored that site so I'm not sure. – aparente001 Oct 27 '17 at 14:38
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    It is interesting to see how (I think) we tend to create new verbs from sustantives mainly using -ar. I guess nobody would think on saying Googler o Goolgleir. We immediately go for Googlear. – DGaleano Oct 27 '17 at 15:37
  • @KansaiRobot I understand that. I just would like to know why spanish grammar has nothing to do with latin grammar (as romanian does). – Alonso Urbano Oct 30 '17 at 15:17
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    Technical point: Latin actually had 4 verb conjugations: -āre (e.g. parāre ‘to prepare’), -ĕre (e.g. sūmĕre ‘to take’), -ēre (e.g. habēre ‘to have’) and -īre (e.g. audīre ‘to hear’). In Ibero-Romance, -ĕre and -ēre merged. Further, although most -ĕre/-ēre verbs became -er in Spanish, and most -īre became -ir, some went vice versa (e.g. erigere > erguir; tussīre > toser) https://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/i.e.mackenzie/hisverb.htm – jacobo May 10 '19 at 20:08