The Galician, a Romance language which sprang from the same root as the Portuguese, is nearly allied to the Castilian. But it is not so rich in guttural sounds, from which we may be correct in surmising that it has less of the Teutonic in its composition than the sister tongue. Like Portuguese, it possesses an abundance of hissing sounds, and a nasal pronunciation not unlike the French, which was in all probability introduced by the early establishment of a Burgundian dynasty upon the throne. But Galician influence upon Castilian literature ceased at an early period, although the reverse was by no means the case. The Rise of Castilian The evolution of Castilian from the original Latin spoken by the Roman colonists in Spain was complicated by many local circumstances. Thus in contracting the vocables of the Roman tongue it did not omit the same syllables as the Italian, nor did it give such brevity to them as Provençal or Galician. Probably because of the greater admixture of Gothic blood among those who spoke it, it is rich in aspirates, and has a stronger framework than almost any of the Romance tongues. Thus the Latin f is in Castilian frequently altered to h, as hablar = fabulari, 'to speak.' The letter j, which is strongly aspirated, is frequently substituted for the liquid l, so that filius, 'a son,' becomes hijo. Liquid ll in its turn takes the place of Latin pl, and we find Latin planus, 'smooth,' appearing in Castilian as llano (pron. lyáh-no). The Spanish ch supplies the place of the Latin ct, as facto = hecho, dictu = dicho, and so on. Other proofs of Teutonic association are not lacking. Thus the g before c and i, which in Gothic and German is a guttural, has the same character in Castilian. The Spanish conversion of o into ue also resembles the similar change in German, if, for example, we compare Castilian cuerpo and pueblo with the German Körper and Pöbel. Southward Spread of Castilian The rise of Castilian as a colloquial and literary tongue was achieved by the ceaseless struggle of the hardy race who spoke it against the Saracen occupation of their native land. As the Castilian warriors by generations of hard fighting gradually regained city after city and district by district rather than province by province, their language encroached by degrees upon the area of that of their Arab enemies, [9] until at length the last stronghold of the Moors fell and left them not a foothold in the Peninsula. "It was indeed a rude training which our forefathers, mighty and hardy, had as a prelude to so many glories and to the conquest of the world," says Martinez in his novel Isabel de Solis. [10] "Weighed down by their harness and with sword in hand, they slept at ease no single night for eight centuries."