Mirandese language

In the 19th century, José 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.^[7] 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 do Douro.

Today Mirandese retains fewer than 5,000 speakers (but the number can be up to 15,000 if counting second-language speakers) in the villages of the municipality of Miranda do Douro and in some eastern villages (such as Vilar Seco and Angueira); in Caçarelhos, it is considered recently extinct of the municipality of Vimioso, and some linguistic influence can be observed at other villages of the municipality of Vimioso and the municipalities of Mogadouro, Macedo de Cavaleiros and Bragança.

A 2020 survey by University of Vigo, carried out in Miranda do 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 language in younger people.^[8]

Three variants of the Mirandese language exist: Border Mirandese (Mirandés Raiano), Central Mirandese (Mirandés Central) and Sendinese (Sendinés). Most speakers of Mirandese also speak Portuguese.

Despite there being a singular writing system for mirandese, there is one aspect that is written differently in different dialects. In the Sendinese dialect, many words that in other dialects are said with /ʎ/ ⟨lh⟩, are said with /l/ ⟨l⟩ (alá for alhá 'over there', lado for lhado 'side', luç for lhuç 'light', amongst others)

The main differences between Mirandese in Portugal and the Astur-Leonese languages in Spain are caused by the dominant languages in each region. Mirandese has been influenced phonetically and in lexicon by Portuguese and the Astur-Leonese languages in Spain, by Spanish. All have distinctive orthography that phonetically reflects the respective main national languages. Another difference is that Mirandese and Leonese remain very conservative, while Asturian has undergone a greater amount of change.^[9]

Some historical developments in Mirandese are the following:

• Mirandese maintains distinct reflexes of all seven medieval Ibero-Romance sibilants:

Ibero-Romance	Mirandese	European Portuguese	North/Central Spanish
/t͡ʃ/	/t͡ʃ/ ⟨ch⟩	/ʃ/ ⟨ch⟩	/t͡ʃ/ ⟨ch⟩
/ʃ/	/ʃ/ ⟨x⟩	/ʃ/ ⟨x⟩	/x/ ⟨j⟩
/ʒ/or/d͡ʒ/	/ʒ/ ⟨g⟩ / ⟨j⟩	/ʒ/ ⟨g⟩ / ⟨j⟩	/x/ ⟨g⟩ / ⟨j⟩
/t͡s/ > /s̻/	/s̻/ ⟨c⟩ / ⟨ç⟩	/s̻/ ⟨c⟩ / ⟨ç⟩	/θ/ ⟨c⟩ / ⟨z⟩
/d͡z/ > /z̻/	/z̻/ ⟨z⟩	/z̻/ ⟨z⟩	/θ/ ⟨c⟩ / ⟨z⟩
/s̺/	/s̺/ ⟨s⟩ / ⟨-ss-⟩	/s̻/ ⟨s⟩ / ⟨-ss-⟩	/s̺/ ⟨s⟩
/z̺/	/z̺/ ⟨s⟩	/z̻/ ⟨s⟩	/s̺/ ⟨s⟩

/s̺/ and /z̺/ indicate apico-alveolar sibilants (as in modern Catalan, northern/central peninsular Spanish and coastal northern European Portuguese), while /s̻/ and /z̻/ are dentalized laminal alveolar sibilants (as in most modern Portuguese, French and English). The unrelated Basque language also maintains a distinction between /s̺/ and /s̻/ (Basque has no voiced sibilants), which suggests that the distinction originally was an areal feature across Iberia.

Portuguese spelling still distinguishes all seven and is identical to Mirandese spelling in this respect, but in pronunciation, Portuguese has reduced them to four /s, z, ʃ, ʒ/ except in northern hinterland European Portuguese dialects, including those of the area that Mirandese is spoken. Northern/central Peninsular Spanish has also reduced them to four but in quite a different way: /t͡ʃ, θ, s̺, x/. Western Andalusian Spanish and Latin American Spanish have further reduced them to three: /t͡ʃ, s̻, x/.

• Retention of the initial /f/ from Latin, like nearly all dialects of Western Romance (the major maverick being Spanish, where /f/> /h/ > ∅).
• As in Portuguese, the Latin initial consonant clusters /pl/, /kl/, /fl/ evolve into /ʃ/.
• Proto-Romance medial clusters -ly- and -cl- became medial /ʎ/.
• The cluster /-mb-/ is kept.
• Proto-Romance -mn- becomes /m/: lūm'nem > lume.
• Falling diphthongs /ei/, /ou/ preserved.
• Final -o becomes /u/.
• Voiced sibilants are still maintained.
• Retention of intervocalic /l/, /n/.
• Western Romance /ɛ/, /ɔ/ can diphthongizeto/jɛ/, /wo/ (as in Italian). That happens not only before palatals, as in Aragonese, but also before nasals.
• /l/ is palatalized word-initially (as in other Astur-Leonese languages and in Catalan).

• As stated above, the laminal dental sibilants correspond to Portuguese /s, z/. These are spelled c/ç and z. The corresponding alveolar sibilants are apical and are spelled s(s) and s. Furthermore, there is an additional palatal affricate /tʃ/ ch that is distinct from the fricative /ʃ/, spelled x. The voiced /ʒ/ is spelled jorg, as in Portuguese. Standard Portuguese has reduced all those sounds to just four fricatives: /s, z, ʃ, ʒ/.
• The "hard" or "long" R is an alveolar trill /r/, as in other varieties of Astur-Leonese and Spanish. The Portuguese uvular fricative [ʁ] is not found in Mirandese. The "soft" or "short" R is an ordinary alveolar tap [ɾ] commonly found in the Iberian Peninsula. As in other languages spoken in the region, the two contrast only in the word-internal position.
• Voiced stops /b, d, ɡ/ can be lenited as fricatives [β, ð, ɣ].^[10]

All oral and nasal vowel sounds and allophones are the same from Portuguese, with different allophones:

• /a/ has allophones of [ä, ɐ], /e/ with [ɛ, e, ɨ], and /o/ with [ɔ, o, u] and [ʊ]. And with the addition of nasal vowel sounds [ɨ̃] and [ɛ̃] for /ẽ/.
• Vowels /i, u/ can become glides [j, w] when preceding or following other vowels.^[10]

The main differences between the three mirandese dialects are in the pronunciation of words.

As in Portuguese, Mirandese still uses the following synthetic tenses:

• Synthetic pluperfectin-ra.
• Future subjunctivein-r(e).
• Personal infinitivein-r(e), which has the same endings as the future subjunctive but often differs as the personal infinitive always uses the infinitive stem, whereas the future subjunctive uses the past.

The following measures have been taken to protect and develop Mirandese:

• allow primary teaching staff in the district of Miranda do Douro to teach in Mirandese, since 1986/1987, thanks to the ministerial authorisation published on 9 September 1985;
• publish books in Mirandese and about the Mirandese language, promoted by the Council of Miranda do Douro;
• facilitate annual celebrations in the city as well as a literary competition, promoted by the Council of Miranda do Douro;
• use of Mirandese in town celebrations, official commemorations and, occasionally, on social media;
• publish two volumes of the Asterix comic books;
• translate all the toponymic signs in Miranda do Douro, promoted by the Council of Miranda do Douro in 2006;
• develop studies by research centres in Portugal, such as "Atlas Linguístico de Portugal", by the Centro de Linguística at University of Lisbon, and "Inquérito Linguístico Boléo", by the University of Coimbra;
• create Biquipédia, a Mirandese Wikipedia;
• make sites available in Mirandese, such as Photoblog and WordPress.
• Mirandese music was recorded by Roberto Leal for his albums "Canto da Terra" (2007) and『Raiç/Raíz』(2010).

The following is a sample text of the Mirandese language, written by Amadeu Ferreira, and published in the newspaper Público, on 24 July 2007.

Then a comparison of the previous text in three modern languages of the Asturo-leonese group:

Mirandese, given its status as a recognised language in Portugal after Portuguese, has been the subject in recent years of some publicity and attention in other parts of Portugal. A monthly chronicle in Mirandese, by researcher and writer Amadeu Ferreira, appears in the daily Portuguese national newspaper Público. The first volume of the Adventures of Asterix, named Asterix, L Goulés (Asterix the Gaul), was published in a Mirandese translation by Amadeu Ferreira in 2005, and sold throughout Portugal. Amadeu Ferreira also translated into Mirandese the epic poem by Camões, Os Lusíadas (Ls Lusíadas), under his pseudonym Francisco Niebro and published it in 2009.^[11] In 2011, the four Gospels of the Bible's New Testament were translated into Mirandese, and in 2013 the entire Bible was translated into the language by Domingos Augusto Ferreira.^[12]

• Asturian language
• Extremaduran language
• Leonese language

• Excerpt of The Lusiads in Mirandese
• (in Portuguese) Lei n. 7/99 dre.pt – Piece of legislation which officially recognizes Mirandese as a language of Portugal
• Seth Kugel, "In Portugal, Mirandese spoken here—and only here", The New York Times, January 17, 2012