Aragonese language

"Aragonese" redirects here. For other uses, see Aragonese (disambiguation). Aragonese
aragonés Spoken in: Spain Region: AragonTotal speakers: 10,000 (30,000 total) Language family: Indo-European
Italic
  Romance
   Italo-Western
    Aragonese Official status Official language in: none Regulated by: Academia de l'AragonésLanguage codes ISO 639-1: an ISO 639-2: arg ISO 639-3: arg Languages distribution in Aragon (Aragonese in red). Spanish is spoken in the whole area, but in the yellow-green part Aragon is monolingual Spanish-speaking Note: This page may contain IPAphonetic symbols in Unicode.

Aragonese (pronounced /ˌærəɡɒˈniːz/ in English, aragonés), is a Romance language now spoken by between 10,000 and 30,000 people over the valleys of the Aragón River, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in Aragon, Spain. It is also colloquially known as fabla (literally, "speech").

1 History
2 Modern Aragonese
3 Phonology
4 Grammar
- 4.1 Pronouns
5 External links

History

Aragonese originated around the eighth century as one of many Latin dialects developed in the Pyrenees on top of a strong Basque-like substratum. The original Kingdom of Aragon (formed by the counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza) was progressively expanded from the mountain ranges towards the South, pushing the Moors further south in the Reconquista and spreading the Aragonese language.

The dynastic union of the Catalan Counties and the Kingdom of Aragon—which formed the Aragonese Crown in the twelfth century—did not result in a merging of the language forms of the two territories into a single form; Catalan continued to be spoken in the east, and Aragonese in the west. The Aragonese reconquista to the south ended in the kingdom of Murcia, that was ceded by James I of Aragon to the Kingdom of Castile as a dowry for an Aragonese princess.

The spread of Castilian, now also known as Spanish, together with the protective effect from it that Aragonese played for the Catalan language, the Castilian origin of the Trastamara dynasty and a strong similarity between Castilian and Aragonese, meant that further recession was to follow. One of the key moments in the history of Aragonese was when a king of Castilian origin was appointed in the fifteenth century: Ferdinand I of Aragon, also known as Ferdinand of Antequera.

The mutual union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile and the progressive suspension of all capacity of self-rule from the sixteenth century meant that Aragonese, while still widely spoken, was limited to a rural and colloquial use, as the nobility chose Spanish as their symbol of power. The suppression of Aragonese reached its most dramatic point during the rule of Francisco Franco in the twentieth century. Pupils were punished in schools for using it, and language politics in Francoist Spain forbade the teaching of any language that was not Spanish.

The constitutional democracy voted by the people in 1978 meant an increase in the literary works and studies conducted in and about the Aragonese language.

Modern Aragonese

Today, Aragonese is still spoken natively within its core area, the Aragonese mountain ranges of the Pyrenees, in the comarcas of Somontano, Sobrarbe, and Ribagorza. These are the major cities and towns where Aragonese speakers can still be found: Huesca, Graus, Monzón, Barbastro, Fonz, Echo, Estadilla, Benasque, Campo, Sabiñánigo, Jaca, Plan, Ansó, Ayerbe, Broto, and El Grado.

Aragonese is also learnt as a second language by other inhabitants of the country in areas like Huesca, Zaragoza, Ejea de los Caballeros, and Teruel. According to recent polls, altogether they only make up around 10,000 active speakers and about 30,000 passive speakers.

There are about 25-30 dialectal variants of Aragonese, the majority of which are in the province of Huesca, due to its mountainous terrain where natural isoglosses have developed around valley enclaves, and where, not surprisingly, the highest incidence of spoken Aragonese is found. Ribagorçan, is one such variant: an eastern Aragonese dialect, which is transitional to Gascon, Occitan, Catalan, and Spanish.

Phonology

Some historical traits of Aragonese language:

As in Spanish, open O,E from Romance result systematically into diphthongs [we], [je], e.g. VET'LA > biella ("old woman", Sp. vieja, Cat. vella)
Loss of final unstressed -E, e.g. GRANDE > gran ("big")
Unlike Spanish, Romance initial F- is preserved, e.g. FILIU > fillo ("son", Sp. hijo, Cat. fill)
Romance yod (GE-,GI-,I-) results in voiceless palatal affricate ch [ʧ], e.g. IUVEN > choben ("young man"), GELARE > chelar ("to freeze", Sp. helar, Cat. gelar)
Like in Occitan and Galician/Portuguese, Romance groups -ULT-, -CT- result in [jt], e.g. FACTU > feito ("done", Sp. hecho, Cat. fet, Gal./Port. feito), MULTU > muito ("many"/"much", Sp. mucho, Cat. molt, Gal. moito, Port. muito).
Romance groups -X-, -PS-, SCj- result into voiceless palatal fricative ix [ʃ], e.g. COXU > coixo ("crippled", Sp. cojo, Cat. coix)
Unlike Spanish, Romance groups -Lj-, -C'L-, -T'L- result into palatal lateral ll [ʎ], e.g. MULIERE > muller ("woman", Sp. mujer, Cat. muller)), ACUT'LA > agulla ("needle", Sp. aguja, Cat. agulla)
Unlike Spanish, Latin -B- is maintained in past imperfect endings of verbs of the second and third conjugations: teneba / teniba ("he had", Sp. tenía, Cat. tenia), dormiba ("he was sleeping", Sp. dormía, Cat. dormia)
Aragonese is, along with dialects of Gascon, the only Western Romance language to have preserved many of the voiceless stop consonants between vowels, e.g. CLETA > cleta ("sheep hurdle", Cat. cleda, Fr. claie), CUCULLIATA > cocullata ("crested lark", Sp. cogujada, Cat. cogullada)

Grammar

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Aragonese grammar is similar to the grammar of other Iberian Romance languages, such as Spanish and Catalan.

Pronouns

Aragonese, like many other Romance languages, but unlike other Ibero-Romance languages, preserves the difference between the Latin forms 'ende' and 'ibi'as 'en/ne' and 'bi/i/ie'.