Asturleonese language

Asturleonese
Asturlleonés, Asturllionés, Sturlhionés
Geographic
distribution		Spain (Asturias, northwestern Castile and León)
Northeastern Portugal (Tierra de Miranda)
Some authors include Cantabria and parts of Extremadura
Linguistic classificationIndo-European
Subdivisions
Language codes
ISO 639-2 / 5ast, mwl, ext
ISO 639-3ast, mwl, ext
Glottologastu1244  (Asturo-Leonese)
astu1245  (Asturian-Leonese-Cantabrian)
extr1243  (Extremaduran)
mira1251  (Mirandese)
The current extent of the Asturleonese varieties

Asturleonese is classified as Definitely Endangered by the
UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Asturleonese[1] is a Romance language or language family spoken in northwestern Spain and northeastern Portugal, namely in the historical regions and Spain's modern-day autonomous communities of Asturias, northwestern Castile and León, Cantabria and Extremadura, and in Riudenore and Tierra de Miranda in Portugal. The name of the language is largely uncommon among its native speakers, as it forms a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties and therefore it is primarily referred to by various regional glossonyms like Leonese, Cantabrian, Asturian or Mirandese (in Portugal).[2] Extremaduran is sometimes included as well. Asturleonese has been classified by UNESCO as an endangered language, as the varieties are being increasingly replaced by Spanish and Portuguese.[3]

Phylogenetically, Asturleonese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages that gradually developed from Vulgar Latin in the old Kingdom of León. The Asturleonese group is typically subdivided into three linguistic areas (Western, Central and Eastern)[4] that form the vertical Asturleonese region, from Asturias, through León, to the north of Portugal and Extremadura. The Cantabrian Montañes in the East and Extremaduran in the South have transitional traits with Spanish (northern Spanish for Cantabrian, southern Spanish for Extremaduran). There are differing degrees of vitality of the language for each region in the area: Asturias and Miranda do Douro have historically been the regions in which Asturleonese has been the best preserved.[5][6]

Leonese (used interchangeably with Asturleonese) was once regarded as an informal dialect (basilect) that developed from Castilian Spanish, but in 1906, Ramón Menéndez Pidal showed it developed from Latin independently, coming into its earliest distinguishable form in the old Kingdom of León.[7][8][9] As is noted by the Spanish scholar Inés Fernández Ordóñez, Menéndez Pidal always maintained that the Spanish language (or the common Spanish language, la lengua común española, as he sometimes called it) evolved from a Castilian base which would have absorbed, or merged with, Leonese and Aragonese.[10] In his works Historia de la Lengua Española ('History of the Spanish language') and especially El español en sus primeros tiempos ('Spanish in its early times'), Menéndez Pidal explains the stages of this process, taking into account the influence Leonese and Aragonese had on the beginnings of modern Spanish.

  1. ^ (Astur-Leonese; Asturian: Asturlleonés; Spanish: Asturleonés; Portuguese: Asturo-leonês; Mirandese: Asturlhionés)
  2. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (2006). El dialecto leonés (Ed. commemorativa ed.). [León]: El Búho viajero. ISBN 84-933781-6-X. OCLC 85532738.
  3. ^ Muñiz-Cachón, Carmen (2019-12-31). "Prosody: A feature of languages or a feature of speakers?: Asturian and Castilian in the center of Asturias". Spanish in Context. 16 (3): 462–474. doi:10.1075/sic.00047.mun. ISSN 1571-0718. S2CID 214477928.
  4. ^ Alenza García, José Francisco (2010-12-29). "1.16. Legislació ambiental Navarra (Segon semestre 2010)". Revista Catalana de Dret Ambiental. 1 (2). doi:10.17345/1108 ISSN 2014-038X.
  5. ^ Torres Queiruga, Andrés (2009), "O lugar da filoloxía no pensamento de Amor Ruibal", Amor Ruibal Filólogo. Actas do Simposio Internacional sobre a Obra Filolóxico -Lingüística de Angel Amor Ruibal, Consello da Cultura Galega, doi:10.17075/arf.2009.001, ISBN 9788496530942
  6. ^ Hernanz, Alfonso (2021-05-01). "ASTURLEONÉS MEDIEVAL; UNA APROXIMACIÓN SINCRÓNICA Y DIACRÓNICA A SUS RASGOS FONÉTICOS DIFERENCIALES Y SU DOMINIO LINGÜÍSTICO". Doctoral Dissertations.
  7. ^ Menéndez Pidal 1906:128–141
  8. ^ UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Archived 28 August 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Ethnologue report for Spain Archived 30 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine.
  10. ^ Fernández Ordóñez, "Menéndez Pidal and the beginnings of Ibero-Romance dialectology: a critical survey one century later". In: Ramón Menéndez Pidal after Forty Years: A Reassessment / ed. Juan Carlos Conde, 2010, pp. 113–145, 11–41