El estudio y comprensión del léxico de la medicina a la luz de su devenir histórico

From the appearance of the first Spanish-language medical texts in the late Middle Ages to the present, Spanish medical vocabulary has gone through several changes. Its makeup has been influenced by languages such as Arabic, Latin, French, German, and English. But above all, beginning in the 16th century and increasing in importance up to the present, Greek is the largest provider of word parts for creating new medical terms. This has led to a high percentage of these words becoming remote from common language, both in Spanish and in other languages. English and German are especially notorious for this since their origins are so distant from the classical languages. However, the type of artificial language created in this way facilitates communication among healthcare providers from different countries. This article will recognize all these factors and will ask to what extent specialized languages can be considered part of another language, Spanish in our case. We will also point out some of the significant approaches for analyzing the relationship between the terms that make up this specialized language and words from common language.