position by about 1400 and in all other environments by the mid-late 16th century at the latest.

At an archaic stage, the realizations of (from Latin ) would have been approximately as follows:

* before or
* before or
* or before By early Old Spanish, had been replaced with before all vowels and possibly before as well.

In later Old Spanish, surviving and / were modified to in urban speech, likely due to the influx of numerous French and Occitan