Everything about Aragonese totally explained
Aragonese (in English, ), 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 (literally, "speech").
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 wasn't 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 Castilian.
Phonology
Some historical traits of Aragonese language:
- As in Spanish, open O,E from Romance result systematically into diphthongs [we], [je], for example VET'LA > ("old woman", Sp., Cat. )
- Loss of final unstressed -E, for example GRANDE > ("big")
- Unlike Spanish, Romance initial F- is preserved, for example FILIU > ("son", Sp., Cat. )
- Romance yod (GE-,GI-,I-) results in voiceless palatal affricate ch [ʧ], for example IUVEN > ("young man"), GELARE > ("to freeze", Sp., Cat. )
- Like in Occitan and Galician/Portuguese, Romance groups -ULT-, -CT- result in [jt], for example FACTU > ("done", Sp., Cat., Gal./Port. ), MULTU > ("many"/"much", Sp., Cat., Gal., Port. ).
- Romance groups -X-, -PS-, SCj- result into voiceless palatal fricative ix [ʃ], for example COXU > ("crippled", Sp., Cat. )
- Unlike Spanish, Romance groups -Lj-, -C'L-, -T'L- result into palatal lateral ll [ʎ], for example MULIERE > ("woman", Sp., Cat. )), ACUT'LA > ("needle", Sp., Cat. )
- Unlike Spanish, Latin -B- is maintained in past imperfect endings of verbs of the second and third conjugations: ("he had", Sp., Cat. ), ("he was sleeping", Sp., Cat. )
- Aragonese is, along with dialects of Gascon, the only Western Romance language to have preserved many of the voiceless stop consonants between vowels, for example CLETA > ("sheep hurdle", Cat., Fr. ), CUCULLIATA > cocullata ("crested lark", Sp., Cat. )
Grammar
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'.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Aragonese'.
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