Extremaduran language

Extremaduran
estremeñu
Spoken in	Spain
Region	Autonomous community of Extremadura
Native speakers	200,000  (date missing)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Gallo-Iberian Ibero-Romance West Iberian Astur-Leonese Extremaduran
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ext

Extremaduran (autonym: estremeñu, IPA: [estɾeˈmeɲu]) is a Romance language, spoken by several hundred thousand people in Spain, in an area covering the north-western part of the autonomous community of Extremadura and adjoining areas in the province of Salamanca. It should not be confused with the Spanish dialects spoken in most of Extremadura, though it is difficult to establish the boundary between the two languages. Most common people in Spain are not aware of its existence and consider it just a dialect of Spanish.^{[citation needed]}

Dialects

The linguistic varieties of Extremadura are usually classified in three main branches: Northern or "High" (artu estremeñu), Central or "Middle" (meyu estremeñu), and Southern or "Low" (baju estremeñu). The northern one is usually considered to be the language proper, and is spoken in the north-west of the autonomous region of Extremadura, and the south-west of Salamanca, a province of the autonomous region of Castile and León. The central and southern ones are spoken in the rest of Extremadura, and are not different enough from standard Spanish to be considered anything but dialects of it, since at least the 18th century.

Northern Extremaduran is also spoken in a few villages of southern Salamanca, being known there as the "palra d'El Rebollal", which is now almost extinct.

History

After the union of the kingdoms of León and Castile (into the "Crown of Castile and León"), the Castilian language slowly replaced Latin as the official language of the institutions, thus relegating Old Leonese to a sign of poverty and ignorance of those who spoke it. Only in Asturias, where the language was born, people were conscious of speaking a language different from Castilian;^{[citation needed]} but even there only some authors used it in their writings.

Probably the cultural upheaval of Spanish-speaking Salamanca's University was the cause of the quick Castilianisation of the eastern parts of this province, so dividing the Astur-Leonese domain between Asturian, Leonese and the Extremaduran in the south of the old Leonese kingdom.^{[citation needed]}

The late 19th century saw the first serious attempt to write in Extremaduran, up to then an oral language, with the poet José María Gabriel y Galán. Born in Salamanca, he lived most of his life in the north of Cáceres, Extremadura. He wrote in a local variant of Extremaduran, full with dialectal remains, but always with an eye on Spanish usage.

After that, localismes are the pattern in the attempts to defend the Extremaduran language, to the extent that today only a few people try to revive the language and make northern Extremadura a bilingual region, whereas the government and official institutions think the best solution is for the northwestern Extremadurans to speak a Castilian dialect without any kind of protection. There are also attempts to transform the southern Castilian dialects ("castúo", as some people named them using the word which appeared in Luis Chamizo's poems) into a language, which makes even harder to defend the High Extremaduran, considered more frequently as a "real" language, and makes it easier for the administration to reject co-officiality and normalisation of Extremaduran. It is in serious danger of extinction, with only the oldest people speaking it at present, while most of the Extremaduran population ignores the language, since the majority of Extremadurans, and even own speakers regard it a poorly spoken Spanish.

Phonological characteristics

In High Extremaduran

• Features related to Astur-Leonese:
  • Substitution of the o, in post-tonical position, for u. Ex: oru.
  • Substitution of the e, in post-tonical position, for i. Ex: calli
  • Conservation of e, from Latin, in final position. Ex: redi
  • Some cases of palatization of n in initial position. Ex: ñíu
  • Conservation of the consonantic group mb, in intermediate position. Ex: lambel
  • Frequent conservation of the spiration of [h], in initial position, coming from a Latin f-. This feature is lost in most Spanish varieties, but is common with much of Andalusia. Ex: higu [ˈhiɣu]
  • Occasional conservation of f, in initial position. Ex: fogarera

• Features related to southern peninsular Spanish:
  • General loss of intervocalic d. Ex: mieu.
  • Debuccalization of post-vocalic /s/ into [h] (S-aspiration).

• Other features:
  • Infinitives in -l. Ex: dil.
  • Vocalic change from a, into e. Ex: trebajal
  • Occasional maintenance of spirations lost in Spanish, in initial position. Ex: gelmanu
  • Metathesis from the consonantic group rl, into lr. Ex: chalral
  • Occasional replacement of the consonants l/r or r/l. Ex: craru
  • Preservation of old voiced sounds, such as some [ð] sounds where there is [θ] in Spanish, or a [z] sound where there is a [s] sound in Spanish. This feature could be an archaism preserved from Old Spanish or Old Asturleonese, as it only happens when it could be expected from etymology. When that feature is well preserved, its appearance coincides with the presence of voiced sibilants in languages such as Catalan or Portuguese: Extremaduran tristeza [triʰˈteða] (Portuguese "tristeza"), Spanish tristeza [trisˈteθa], but Extremaduran cabeça [kaˈbeθa] or [kaˈβeθa] (Portuguese "cabeça"), Spanish cabeza [kaˈβeθa] (the same as in Extremaduran). This feature is dying out quite fast, but it is found all over the High Extremaduran speaking area.

Grammar characteristics

In High Extremaduran

• Anteposition of the article before the possessive pronoun, as in Old Spanish or in many Romance languages such as Leonese, Portuguese, Catalan or Italian.
• Anteposition of the particle lu (or lo), in some interrogative sentences.
• Use of diminutives inu and ina, as heritage from Leonese (as in Portuguese).
• Occasional formation of gerund, derived from a form of the verb in past tense.
• Usage of a vocative-exclamative case. When nouns are in the vocative, the closing of post-tonic vowels (e into i and o into u) disappears and those vowels open. El Ramiru quíi venil (Ramiro wants to come), but Ramiro, ven pacá (Ramiro, come here!). Sé quién lo vidu, Pepi (I know who saw it, Pepe did), but Sé quién lo vidu, Pepe (I know who saw it, Pepe). This is a charasteristic shared with the Fala language. Extremaduran and the Fala language are actually the only western Romance languages with a distinct form of vocative case for nouns formed with a change in the ending.
• Usage of the preposition a with the verbs andal and estal indicating static temporal location, contrasting with the usage of en. Está a Caçris "He's in Cáceres (for a few days), está en Caçris "He's in Cáceres", Está pa Caçris "He's around Cáceres".
• A very frequent usage of deictic forms to which enclitic pronouns can be added at the end. They can be used in the middle of a sentence: Velaquí la mi casa (Here is my house), velallilu (there he is), Paquí se curtivan velaquí lechugas, millu... (Look, lettuce, corn and so on is grown here).
• Usage of reduplicated forms of plural pronouns with a reciprocal sense (ellus y ellus, vujotrus y vujotrus...): Estaban brucheandu ellus y ellus: They were wrestling with each other.

Lexical characteristics

In High Extremaduran

• Usage of terms considered in Spanish as archaisms. Ex: ludia (Spanish levadura, "yeast").

• Presence of terms, used commonly, that are derived from Andalusian Arabic. Ex: zagal (from Andalusian Arabic zaḡál, "boy").

Comparative tables

Latin	Italian	French	Spanish	Portuguese	Extremaduran	English
altum	alto	haut	alto	alto	artu	high
quasi	quasi	presque	casi	quase	cuasi, abati	almost
dicere	dire	dire	decir [de'θir]	dizer	izil [i'ðil]	to say
facere	fare	faire	hacer [a'θer]	fazer	hazel [ha'ðel]	to do
focum	fuoco	feu	fuego	fogo	hueu	fire
flammam	fiamma	flamme	llama	chama	flama	flame
legere	leggere	lire	leer	ler	leel	to read
linguam	lingua	langue	lengua	língua	luenga/léngua	language
lumbum	lombo	lombe	lomo	lombo	lombu	loin
matrem	madre	mère	madre	mãe	mairi	mother
mirulum	merlo	merle	mirlo	melro	mielru	blackbird
monstrare	mostrare	montrer	mostrar	mostrar	muestral	to show
nostrum	nostro	notre	nuestro	nosso	muestru/nuestru	ours
tussem	tosse	toux	tos	tosse	tossi	cough

* The words in this table refer only to High Extremaduran

** Extremaduran words in this table are spelled according to Ismael Carmona García's orthography

Organizations and media

There exists a regional organization in Extremadura, APLEx, which tries to defend the Extremaduran language (and also the Spanish dialects of Extremadura), one journal (Belsana) and one cultural newspaper, Iventia, written in the new unified Extremaduran and the old dialect "palra d'El Rebollal".

Textual example

Extremaduran	Spanish	English
El estremeñu es una luenga palrá nel noroesti de la comuniá autónoma d'Estremaúra.	El extremeño es una lengua hablada en el noroeste de la comunidad autónoma de Extremadura.	Extremaduran is a language spoken in the northwest of the autonomous community of Extremadura.

See also

• Extremaduran people
• Astur-Leonese Group
• Serradillian
• Fala language
• Chinato
• Ramón Menéndez Pidal

External links

• Ethnologue report for Extremaduran
• Languages of Spain and map (Spanish)
• Virtual Library Extremaduran Language (Spanish)
• APLEx Extremadura Cultural Society
• Iventia.com — A cultural news site in Extremaduran
• Linguistic cartography of Extremadura, which offers 418 linguistic and ethnographic maps on rural lexicon (Spanish)