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Murcian (endonym: murciano) is a variant of Peninsular Spanish, spoken mainly in the autonomous communityofMurcia and the adjacent comarcasofVega Baja del Segura and Alto Vinalopó in the province of Alicante (Valencia), the corridor of Almansa in Albacete (Castile-La Mancha). In a greater extent, it may also include some areas that were part of the former Kingdom of Murcia, such as southeastern Albacete (now part of Castile La Mancha) and parts of Jaén and Almería (now part of Andalusia).
| Murcian Spanish | |
|---|---|
| murciano | |
| Pronunciation | [muɾˈθjano] |
| Native to | Spain |
| Region | Murcia, Andalusia (Almería, partially in Jaén and Granada), Castile-La Mancha (Albacete) and Valencia (Vega Baja, Alicante) |
Early forms | |
| Spanish orthography (Latin script) | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Spain |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | es-u-sd-esmc |
 | |
| This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. | |
The linguistic varieties of Murcian form a dialect continuum with Eastern Andalusian and Manchego Peninsular Spanish.
Murcian is considered a separate language of Spanish by some of its native speakers and by proponents Murcianism, who call it llengua murciana.[1][2] The term panocho is also used to designate the Murcian language, however it mostly refers to the variety spoken in the comarca of the Huerta de Murcia [es].
Murcian emerged from the mixture of several linguistic varieties that joined together after the Kingdom of Murcia was conquered by the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile and populated with principally northeastern settlers between the 13th and 14th centuries.[3] The linguistic varieties were mainly Tudmir's Romance (a type of Andalusi Romance), Arabic, Aragonese, Old Castilian and Occitano-Catalan. In modern times Murcian has also been influenced by French and Caló.
The most notable characteristics of a Murcian accent involve the heavy reduction of syllable-final consonants, as well as the frequent loss of /d/ from the suffixes -ado/ada, -ido/-ida. No non-nasal consonants are permitted in word-final position. As is typical of Spanish, syllable-final nasals are neutralized, and assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. In Murcian, as in many other varieties, the word-final nasal is typically realized as a velar [ŋ] when not followed by a consonant.[4]
Non-liquid, non-nasal postvocalic consonants in the syllable coda assimilate to both the place and the manner of articulation of the following consonant, producing a geminate. For instance, historical /pt/, /kt/ and /st/ all fall together as /tt/, rendering cacto 'cactus', casto 'chaste' and capto 'I understand' homophonous as [ˈkatto]. Historical /kst/ also joins this neutralization, rendering sexta 'sixth' (f.) homophonous with secta 'sect' as [ˈsetta]. Other historical postvocalic clusters affected by this include /sp, sd, sk, sɡ, sm, sn, sl/, in each case producing a geminated second element: [pp, dd, kk, ɡɡ, mm, nn, ll] (with [ðð] being an alternative to [dd]). This produces minimal pairs differentiated by consonant length, such as cisne [ˈθinne] 'swan' vs. cine [ˈθine] 'cinema'. This process also occurs across word boundaries, as in los nenes [lɔnˈnɛnɛ] 'the kids'.[5]
Syllable-final /r/ can assimilate to a following /l/or/n/, while syllable-final /l/ may assimilate to a following /r/ and become a tapped [ɾ] before any other consonant.[4]
In casual speech, syllable- and word-final /s/ is never pronounced as a sibilant [s].[6] It is usually elided entirely or forms part of a geminate, although in areas bordering Andalusia it may be debuccalized, pronounced as an [h].[7]
While the word para is frequently realized as pa' in all Spanish varieties, in Murcian Spanish this is much more widespread, being more common among the upper classes and in more formal situations than in other zones.[8]
In older working-class rural speech, syllable-final /s/ surfaces as [ɾ] before word-initial consonants (particularly the voiced plosives and /n/), as in los vasos [lɔɾ ˈβæsɔ] 'the glasses'. /b, d, ɡ/ are lenited after this allophone. The replacement of [s] with [ɾ] is perceived as a very marked feature of rural Murcian, and it is disapproved of by the local population.[9]
There are linguistic phenomena characteristic of traditional Murcian speech, many of which are or were usual in other linguistic varieties (Aragonese, Mozarabic, Catalan, Andalusian, etc.):
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | e | o | |
| Open-mid | (ɛ) | (ɔ) | |
| Open | (æ) | a | |
The vowel system of Murcian Spanish is essentially the same of Eastern Andalusian.
The open-mid vowels [ɛ, ɔ] as well as the open front [æ] are realizations of /eC, oC, aC/ (where ⟨C⟩ stands for any consonant other than /n/or/d/)[11] in the syllable coda. Due to vowel harmony, the close-mid [e, o] and the open central [ä] (hereafter transcribed without the diacritic) are banned from occurring in any syllable preceding that with [ɛ, ɔ, æ]. This change is sometimes[12] called vowel opening, but this is completely inaccurate for [a], which is not only more back than [æ] but also lower than it. Thus, the contrast between mañanas /maˈɲanas/ and the singular form mañana /maˈɲana/ 'morning' surfaces as a contrast of vowel quality: [mæˈɲænæ, maˈɲana], rather than the presence of terminal [s] in the former word.[10]
The close vowels have no contextual allophones, and they are consistently realized as close [i, u]. Thus, there is no difference between underlying /i, u/ and /is, us/ in most contexts, with both being realized as [i, u], without any trace of the final fricative in the latter case.[10]
The diminutive suffix is -icho, which is likely related to -ico.[3]