Level C1 · Part One, Chapter 8
Archaic Spanish: non fuyades, and why it is a joke
When don Quixote charges the windmills he does not shout in the Spanish of 1605. He shouts in the Spanish of two centuries earlier, and that is the whole joke. This unit covers the archaic forms he puts on when he speaks as a knight, and the enclitic pronoun that Cervantes uses when he narrates.
The passage, exactly as Cervantes wrote it
Miguel de Cervantes, Part One, Chapter 8. Public domain, and not adapted, shortened or modernised in any way.
iba diciendo en voces altas: — Non fuyades, cobardes y viles criaturas, que un solo caballero es el que os acomete. Levantóse en esto un poco de viento y las grandes aspas comenzaron a moverse, lo cual visto por don Quijote, dijo: — Pues, aunque mováis más brazos que los del gigante Briareo, me lo habéis de pagar.
he went on shouting at the top of his voice: Do not flee, cowardly and vile creatures, for it is a single knight who attacks you. Just then a little wind got up and the great sails began to move, seeing which don Quixote said: Then although you wave more arms than the giant Briareus, you shall pay me for it.
The same thing in Spanish as it is written today
Read the two side by side. What has changed between them is the syllabus of this level.
iba diciendo en voz alta: No huyáis, cobardes y viles criaturas, que os ataca un solo caballero. Se levantó entonces un poco de viento y las grandes aspas empezaron a moverse. Al verlo, don Quijote dijo: Pues aunque mováis más brazos que el gigante Briareo, me lo vais a pagar.
What changed, form by form
| In the text | Today | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| non | no | The Latin form. It was already dead in 1605 and survives only in books of chivalry. |
| fuyades | huyáis | Old f- where modern Spanish has h-, plus the -ades ending for -áis. |
| Levantóse | Se levantó | The pronoun hooked on the end of a finite verb. Standard then, literary now. |
| lo cual visto por don Quijote | al ver esto don Quijote | A participle doing the work of a whole clause. |
| habéis de pagar | vais a pagar | Haber de for obligation and for the future. Today it sounds formal or regional. |
| en voces altas | en voz alta | Plural where today the singular is fixed. |
The syntax
Two things happen in three lines. In speech, the archaic forms cluster on the verbs: non, fuyades, mováis, habéis de. In the narration, Cervantes uses Levantóse with the pronoun stuck on the end, which is what you meet on every page of the book at the start of a sentence and almost never inside one.
What a Spanish reader hears
A Spanish reader in 1605 heard non fuyades the way an English reader today hears thee and thou: not old, but pretending. Don Quixote is quoting the language of books written long before he was born, and the giants he is addressing are windmills. Take the archaism out in translation and the sentence stops being funny.
Where the course prepares you for this
- The regular preteriteLesson 21The morning of the windmills