Mirandese language
Mirandese is an almost extinct language or variety that is sparsely spoken in a small area of northeastern Portugal in eastern Tierra de Miranda, an ethnocultural region comprising the area around the municipalities of Miranda de l Douro, Mogadouro and Bumioso. It is extinct in Mogadouro and present in Bumioso only in some eastern villages, like Angueira. The Assembly of the Republic granted Mirandese official recognition alongside Portuguese for local matters with Law 7/99 of 29 January 1999. In 2001, Mirandese was officially recognised by the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, which aims to promote the survival of the least-spoken European languages.
Mirandese has a distinct phonology, morphology and syntax. It has its roots in the local Vulgar Latin spoken in the northern Iberian Peninsula.
The language is a descendant of the Asturleonese variety spoken in the Kingdom of León and has both archaisms and innovations that differentiate it from the modern varieties of Asturleonese spoken in Spain. In recognition of these differences, and due to its political isolation from the rest of the Asturleonese-speaking territory, Mirandese has adopted a different written norm to the one used in Spain for Asturleonese.
History
Mirandese is a descendant of the Old Leonese language spoken in the Kingdom of León in medieval Iberia. In the early 16th century, Old Leonese began to split, alongside Galician–Portuguese, into the varieties existing today, one of them being Mirandese.Until 1884, Mirandese was a purely spoken language, but in that year, José Leite de Vasconcelos wrote the book Flores Mirandézas, in which he proposed a writing system for Mirandese. The system included a large number of diacritics which have helped to convey how Mirandese sounded in the 19th century.
Transcribed below is a poem included in Flores Mirandézas as a sample text, italic=no :
| Vasconcelos's orthography | First official orthography | Current orthography | English translation |
Qĭêm dirĭê q'antre 'ls matos èiriçados / Las ourrĭêtas i 'ls ríus d'ésta tĭêrra / Bibĭê, cumo l chaguárço de la ſĭêrra / Ũṅa lhêngua de ſóuns tã bariados? / Mostre-ſe i fále-ſ' éssa lhêngua, filha / D'um póbo qe tĭêm néilha 'l chóro i 'l canto! / Nada pur çĭêrto mus câutíba tânto / Cumo la fórm' am qe l'idéia brilha. | Quiên dirie qu'antre ls matos eiriçados / Las ourriêtas i ls rius desta tiêrra / Bibie, cumo l chaguarço de la siêrra / Ũa lhéngua de sons tan bariados? / Mostre-se i fale-se essa lhéngua, filha / Dun pobo que ten neilha l choro i l canto! / Nada por ciêrto mos cautiba tanto / Cumo la forma an que l'eideia brilha. | Quien dirie qu'antre ls matos eiriçados / Las ourrietas i ls rius desta tierra / Bibie, cumo l chaguarço de la sierra / Ũa lhéngua de sons tan bariados? / Mostre-se i fale-se essa lhéngua, filha / Dun pobo que ten neilha l choro i l canto! / Nada por cierto mos cautiba tanto / Cumo la forma an que l'eideia brilha. | Who would say that amongst the bristle bushes / The valleys and the rivers of this land / There lived, like the plants of the mountain range / A language of such varied sounds? / Let this language be heard and spoken, daughter / Of people that have in it the cry and the song! / Nothing certainly captivates us as much / As the way in which this idea shines. |
In the 19th century, Leite de Vasconcelos described Mirandese as "the language of the farms, of work, home, and love between the Mirandese". Since 1986–87, it has been taught optionally to students at the primary and lower secondary level, and has thus been somewhat recovering. By Law 7/99, Mirandese was given official recognition by the Assembly of the Republic alongside Portuguese. The law provides for its promotion and allows its usage for local matters in Miranda de l Douro.
In 1999, Mirandese gained its first official orthography, which was later tweaked in 2000. Today Mirandese retains speakers in most of the villages of the municipality of Miranda de l Douro and in some villages of Bumioso ; and some linguistic influence can be observed at other villages of the municipality of Bumioso and the municipalities of Mogadouro, Macedo de Cavaleiros and Bragança.
A 2020 survey by the University of Vigo, carried out in Miranda de l Douro, estimated the number of speakers of the language to be around 3,500, with 1,500 of them being regular speakers. The study observed strong decline in the usage of the language in younger people.
Orthography
Mirandese is written using the Latin alphabet, and its orthography is based on that of Portuguese:Variants
Three primary variants of the Mirandese language exist: Border Mirandese, Central Mirandese and Sendinese. Most speakers of Mirandese also speak Portuguese.Despite there being a singular writing system for Mirandese, there is one phoneme that is written differently in different dialects. In the Sendinese dialect, many words that in other dialects are said with , are said with /l/ : examples include alá for alhá ; lado for lhado ; luç for lhuç.
The main orthographical differences between Mirandese in Portugal and the Asturleonese languages in Spain are caused by the dominant languages in each region. And while Mirandese has been influenced phonetically and in lexicon by Portuguese and the Asturleonese languages in Spain by Spanish, they retain more similarities among themselves than to the main languages of each country. Another difference is that Mirandese and Leonese remain very conservative, while Asturian has undergone a greater amount of change.
Phonology
Development
Some historical developments in Mirandese are the following:- Mirandese maintains distinct reflexes of all seven Ibero-Romance sibilants:
- Retention of the initial from Latin, like nearly all dialects of Western Romance but unlike Spanish, which underwent the sound change.
- Development of the Latin initial consonant clusters,, evolve into, as in Leonese and Galician-Portuguese.
- Development of the medial clusters and as, like in Galician-Portuguese.
- The cluster /-mb-/ is kept.
- Development of as, like in Galician-Portuguese: > lume.
- Preservation of the falling diphthongs,.
- Raising of final to, as in Portuguese.
- Retention of voiced sibilants, like Portuguese, but unlike Spanish.
- Retention of intervocalic,, like Spanish, but unlike Portuguese.
- Frequent diphthongization of Western Romance, to,, as in Italian; this happens not only before palatals, as in Aragonese, but also before nasals.
- Word-initial palatalization of, as in other Asturleonese languages and Catalan.
Consonants
- As stated above, the laminal dental sibilants correspond to Portuguese. These are spelled c/''ç and z''. The corresponding alveolar sibilants are apical and are spelled s and s. Furthermore, there is an additional palatal affricate ch that is distinct from the fricative, spelled x. The voiced is spelled j or g, as in Portuguese. Standard Portuguese has reduced all these sounds to just four fricatives:.
- The "hard" or "long" R is an alveolar trill, as in other varieties of Asturleonese and in Spanish. The Portuguese uvular fricative is not found in Mirandese. The "soft" or "short" R is an ordinary alveolar tap commonly found in the Iberian Peninsula. As in other languages spoken in the region, the two contrast only in word-internal position.
- Voiced stops may be lenited as fricatives.
Vowels
MorphologyAs in Portuguese, Mirandese still uses the following synthetic tenses:
Words used in eastern Trás-os-Montes of (likely) Mirandese originLack of protection measuresThere are significant limitations in the protection of the Mirandese language:
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