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Languages of Spain

Aragonese

The language Aragonese, also informally known as fabla, was spoken in the Middle Ages in the Kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon and Valencia with the name of Navarre- Aragonese. Currently, the language is spoken in the valleys of the Aragonese Pyrenees and an increase of Castilianization, that extends little more other the south of the city of Huesca. In these areas it can be said that Aragonese is conserved, with more or less vitality. At the end of the 20th century, a remarkable revitalization has been carried out, such as the creation of associations that defend and promote the language, the unification of consensual orthographic rules, and even an attempt at co-officiality in several municipalities of Alto Aragón.

There are several associations that regulate the language, which includes the Academia de l'Aragonés, the Sociedat de Lingüística Aragonesa, and the Consello d'a Fabla Aragonesa that makes up the majority. The language was initially regulated by the Academia d'a Luenga Aragonesa, inaugurated in May 2011, and later by the Aragonese Academy of Language. The Law of Languages of Aragon of 2009 defines that the Aragonese and Catalan languages are "original and historical" of the Autonomous Community of Aragon. Later, the Law of Languages of 2013 modified some aspects of the one of 2009. According to the Law of Aragonese Cultural Patrimony of 1999, the law does not explicitly declare the officiality of these languages. It is estimated that it is spoken by 12,000 people. Its dialectal varieties are:

·      Central Aragonese

·      Eastern Aragonese

·      Southern Aragonese

Astur-Leonese

The astur-leonese is spoken in Asturias, with the name of Asturian or bable (asturianu), in part of the provinces of León and Zamora, with the name of Leonese (llionés); and in the Portuguese region of Miranda do Douro with the name of Mirandese (mirandés). Formerly (19th and early 20th centuries), some authors also included within this linguistic domain the transitional speech from Castilian to Asturian from parts of Cantabria (generally known as Cantabrian or Highlander) and from parts of the province of Salamanca and from Extremadura (generally known as extremeño). Currently these areas are no longer included within the linguistic nuclear domain of Asturias, which its use is regulated by law in Principality of Asturias. Its spelling, lexicon and grammar is regulated by the Asturian Language Academy, which, however, has no binding force for the other areas where it is spoken. In Castile and Leon, the new Statute of Autonomy considers the linguistic patrimony as part of the community. This establishes that it will be protected and promoted by their institutions, while being at the expense of a later legal development. In Miranda, where it has an orthographic standard based on Portuguese phonetics, it is the only place in the entire linguistic domain where astur-leonese is the official language. The astur-leonese counts on diverse dialectal varieties, grouped in three blocks or main dialects: the western one, the central, and the oriental. The western is spoken in Asturias, Leon, Sanabria (Zamora) and Miranda. The central dialect is used in a well populated area of Asturias and has a good foundation in the Asturian law. In the oriental dialect, there is a proposal supported by some civil and political organizations has brought up a debate in Asturias about a possible co-officiality of the Asturian.

According to a study conducted in 2003, the Asturian would be the native language, which is 17.7% of the population in Asturias, 20.1% would have Asturian and Castilian as their native language, while 58.6% of Asturians would have Spanish as their native language.

Other Languages

Other languages spoken by the Spanish population are Caló, a jargon of Spanish roots and Roma influences spoken very rarely by the gypsy community. The Rifeño, spoken in Melilla, and Arabic, spoken both in Melilla and in Ceuta, in its Dariya variant. In Asturias, in addition to the Asturian, Galician-Asturian or Eonaviego is also spoken.

Variants, modalities and enclaves

This section deals with aspects related to linguistic variation, areas of transition and small enclaves of languages in the domain of another language.

Dialectal varieties of Castilian

Some of the main dialectal varieties spoken in Spain:

·     Northern Castilian dialect, includes the set of dialectal forms of Spanish used in the northern half of Spain, in the area that goes from Cantabria in the north to Ávila and Cuenca in the south, limiting the east with the Aragonese and with the Catalan and on the west with the Astur-leonese.

·     Andalusian, spoken in most of Andalusia, and in Ceuta Melilla, with a great diversity of features that overlap throughout the dialect domain. Many of the features of dialects and linguistic varieties of American Spanish come from the western Andalusian, due to the strong predominance of Andalusians (especially from the current provinces of Huelva, Seville and Cádiz), among the European colonizers of Latin Americas, during almost the entire colonial period. Traits such as ceceo / seseo, the aspiration of final eses, the lenition of Ch, the equalization of implosive l and r, etc., that dominate large dialectal areas of American Spanish, are documented for the first time in Andalusia. Within the Andalusian are usually distinguish two large areas: the western and the eastern. The western zone includes the provinces of Huelva, Seville, Cádiz and the western part of the provinces of Córdoba (Guadalquivir Valley), Málaga and Ceuta. The eastern area extends through the provinces of Jaen, Granada, Almería and the eastern part of Córdoba and Málaga, even going into the province of Murcia and Melilla. The extension of the Andalusian dialect subscription to speak from outside of Andalusia (western Andalusia going into the province of Badajoz or eastern Andalusia into Murcia) or certain Andalusian areas depends on the criteria chosen to define the Andalusian dialect.

·     Canary speaking, which took much of the characteristics of the Andalusian in its Sevillian variant (seseo, aspiration of the final eses, exclusive use of you, etc.), due to the predominance of the Andalusians among the first conquerors and peninsular settlers. The linguistic modality spoken in the Canary Islands has Portuguese influences and numerous Anglicism’s.

·     Murcia Dialect is the historical dialect of Spanish that includes the Region of Murcia, southern areas of the province of Alicante and parts of the south and east of the province of Albacete. The features present a great heterogeneity, finding many Latinism, Arabism, Mosaicism, Aragoneseism, Occitanism, Catalanism, Valencianism and archaism of romance. In the regions of the Campo de Cartagena and in the Vega Baja del Segura there is presence of the seseo and in the speech of the irrigated lands of Murcia, called "panocho", numerous cases of lisp. It has characteristics similar to those of western Andalusia (provinces of Almería and Granada). In spite of the existence of a living literature in Murcia that every time bears little fruit, it began to decline sharply since the beginning of the 20th century, with the more traditional languages ​​now almost extinct and very marginalized. The majority of the population currently speaks a transitional modality between the historical dialect and the standard in which the features of one type and another alternate, stand out more than others, have more or less predominance or some are more abundant and frequent than others.

·     Castúo (medioextremeño and bajoextremeño), they speak Castilian with southern features of transit with the leonine (or extremadura), in Extremadura.

·     Riojan Dialect, comes from the influences of Aragonese in the east, Basque in the north and Asturian in the west.

In addition to the previous ones there are some dialects of transition between the previous areas.

Transitional linguistic modalities

As you speak of transition, we know those who have features of two neighboring languages and who do not have sufficient lexical, grammatical or phonetic autonomy regarding them:

·      The Cantabrian (from the Asturian with the Castilian), in Cantabria and in certain places of the extreme east of Asturias and west of Vizcaya.

·      The extremeño or altoextremeño (of the astur-leonese with the Castilian in its meridional variants, that is considered like language by certain organizations, especially international organizations, and in virtue of it owns its own code ISO 639-3-ext in concrete-20), in the northwest and north-center of Caceres and in some towns of the south of the province of Salamanca.

·      The Eonaviego (of the Asturian with the Galician), in the region of Asturias called Eonavian, although it is considered by the Galician Royal Academy as Galician and by the Asturian Language Academy as a transitional language (Galician-Asturian).

·      The Portuguese of Firrera, spoken in Herrera de Alcántara (province of Cáceres), dialectal variety of the old Portuguese with a high degree of Castilianization.

·      The fala of Jálama (sometimes called xalimeg or Galician-Extremadura) spoken in the towns of Eljas, Valverde del Fresno and San Martín de Trevejo (located in the Jálama valley, in the northwest of the province of Cáceres), presenting certain peculiarities in each of these towns. It is a linguistic modality based on the Galician-Portuguese language, with features that are common both with Galician and Portuguese and with a great influence of Castilian and Altoextremeño.

Linguistic enclaves

·      Catalan, in the easternmost regions of Aragon limited to Catalonia. It is a variety of northwestern Catalan and is spoken by about 30,000 people. See also Catalan language in the Franja de Aragón. It should be noted that under this heading is actually collected a wide range of varieties and developments, with different variants depending on the geographical area.

·      of testimonial form, the Valencian in some districts of the mountain range of the Carche, mountain range of the northeast of the Region of Murcia bordering on the Valencian Community. The Valencian was taken by some families of farmers from the adjacent border of Alicante at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, depopulating the area to a great extent during the 1950s and 1960s. The districts in which it is considered that there is a presence of Valencian had 697 inhabitants in 2006 of which a significant part is English speaking, due to the installation of British residents during the years 1990 and 2000.

·      the Galician in some towns of the provinces of León and Zamora adjoining Galicia. In the western part of Asturias, with the name of Eonaviego, there is great controversy about whether what is spoken is Galician or are transitional talks with the astur-leonese as indicated in the previous section.

·      Portuguese, spoken in a minority way in the small town of Cedillo (province of Cáceres), and, in its Oliventine dialect and with more decadence, in the region of Olivenza (province of Badajoz), where it was the most spoken language until the years 1940, especially in its villages and small hamlets, but it is still preserved among certain older people of Olivenza itself. It is also spoken in the small town of La Alamedilla (province of Salamanca).

Non-oral and signed languages

The sign languages of Spain are related and seem to form a group of sign languages related to each other, which the greatest part of specialist’s link to the family of sign languages derived from the old sign languages of France. Although formally the legislation distinguishes three different languages:

·      Spanish sign language

·      Catalan sign language

·      Valencian sign language

It is not clear to what extent they represent clearly different languages and not simply dialects of the same language. On the other hand, the sign language of Portugal is not related to these languages and seems to have a kinship with the sign language used in Sweden and Finland.

The Whistling Language of La Gomera

In addition to the sign languages that are natural languages. Frequently, special means of communication are added, such as the whistling language, traditionally used by La Gomera and now formally included in the education of children and adolescents. It should be noted that the Gomera whistle is not in itself a language but a special procedure to encode the Spanish in whistles.

Non-indigenous languages

Languages originated by migratory processes

Due to the strong immigration that Spain has received since the 1990s, relatively important communities of speakers of other languages have appeared. According to the INE census of 2006, 9.68% of the Spanish population is of foreign nationality. 34.5% of these come from Spanish America, which is why the most widely spoken language among non-nationals living in Spain is Spanish.

The languages most spoken by non-national citizens are, after Spanish, the following:

·      Arabic, mainly Arabic Moroccan, is the majority language among immigrants from the Maghreb. In 2006, 618 332 citizens of Moroccan, Algerian, Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Tunisian and Iraqi nationality were registered in Spain. The Arabs are scattered throughout Spain, although their presence is greater in Ceuta, Catalonia and Andalusia than in other communities.

·      The Romanian, spoken by the large colony of Romanian origin (407 159 registered in 2006, the third largest) and by Moldovans (11 330). They are especially numerous in the Community of Madrid, Castilla la Mancha, Aragón and the Valencian Community.

·      English, spoken mainly in the provinces of Malaga and Alicante by citizens of the United Kingdom. There are 315 122 registered in Spain (INE 2006) of British, Irish, American, Canadian or Australian nationalities. The English constitute more than 30% of the population in numerous municipalities on the Alicante and Malaga coasts, where they own newspapers and their own radio channels. Its presence is also significant in the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Almeria.

·      The German, spoken mainly in the Balearic and Canary archipelagos. There are, in 2006, 173 651 citizens registered in Spain of German, Swiss or Austrian nationalities.

·      The Berber languages, spoken by the Moroccan 563 012 residing in Spain. The Riffian is the most spoken language among immigrants from Melilla.

·      Portuguese, spoken by Portuguese immigrants (mainly in Galicia and León) and Brazilians (spread throughout Spain). The registered in Spain of these two nationalities add 153,076 in the year 2006.

·      The wu, Chinese language spoken by the majority of Chinese immigrants in Spain, mainly from the province of Zhejiang. There are 104 681 citizens of Chinese nationality registered in Spain (2006).

·      The Bulgarian There are 101 617 Bulgarians registered in Spain, and it is the predominant foreign nationality in the provinces of Valladolid and Segovia.

·      The French, present in Spain since the Modern Age through the colonies of French merchants settled in cities such as Cadiz, Seville, Alicante or Barcelona. After the War of Algerian Independence, more than 30,000 pieds noirs (French from Algeria) settled in Spain, mainly in the province of Alicante. In Spain, in 2006 there were 90 021 registered citizens of French nationality, 29,526 of Belgian nationality and 15,385 of Swiss nationality. Likewise, there are many immigrants from African countries who have been French or Belgian colonies and where French remains as an official or important language (Algeria, Morocco, Senegal ...).

·      The Quechua languages, spoken by immigrants from Andean countries settled in Spain.

·      The languages ​​of sub-Saharan Africa, among which the number of speakers is Fula, Wolof, Mandinga and Soninke.

Foreign languages studied as a second language

English is mainly taught as a foreign language. It is followed by French and, to a lesser extent, German and Italian. Until the 1970s, French was the most studied foreign language, but it was later advanced by English. The habitual offer in the majority of the Spanish educational centers is the obligatory study of English from the 8 years of age (advanced to the 6 years of age from the course 2007/2008) and during the secondary education (from 12 to 16 years) and Baccalaureate (from 16 to 18 years old), to which is added the possibility of studying French optionally during secondary education.

However, there is not a high percentage of people who master these languages. According to a survey conducted in 2005, only 27% of Spaniards said they had enough English to maintain a conversation in this language, and 12% had a conversation in French.

According to this same survey, 56% of Spaniards are only able to hold a conversation in their mother tongue (compared to 44% on average in the European Union to 25 members); 44%, in at least one other language than in their mother tongue; and only 17% in at least two languages ​​apart from their mother tongue. Note that for this last item one can also understand, for example, the ability to speak in Galician or Catalan for a person whose mother tongue is Spanish or vice versa.

Missing languages

Languages that were spoken in the current Spanish territory, today dead languages such as Mozarabic, Iberian, Celtiberian, Lusitanian and Tartessian.

Languages spoken in the Ancient Age

The only pre-Roman language that is preserved in our days is Basque. The following languages disappeared with the arrival of Latin:

·      Celtic Galaico

·      Celtiberian, Indo-European language of the Celtic branch. Other languages ​​or dialects of the Celtic branch related to the Celtiberian, but worse documented, were spoken in the center, north and west of the Peninsula.

·      Lusitanian, an Indo-European language of disputed affiliation. The most widespread theory is that the Lusitanian was a language of the Celtic branch, but belonging to a different subgroup of the Celtiberian. Thus, the Lusitanians settled in the Peninsula at a time before the rest of the Celtic peoples, so the language diverged more quickly from the rest of the Celtic languages. The Vettones, neighbors of the Lusitanians, seems that they also spoke an Indo-European language related to the Lusitanian.

·      Tartésico, language of unknown filiation spoken in pre-Roman times in western Andalusia.

·      Aquitano, predecessor language of modern Basque.

·      Íbero, language of filiation not established. A widespread theory but with little evidence in its favor, is that it was related to the ancient Aquitanian (Basque-Basque hypothesis). The Iberian was spoken in pre-Roman times in eastern Spain.

·      Phoenician-Punic, Northwestern Semitic language. It was the pre-Roman language of Ibiza after the establishment of Phoenician colonization around the 8th century BC. C. Later, Phoenician was the language spoken by the Carthaginians who settled in Spain in the third century BC. C.

·      Ancient Greek dialects, varieties related to classical Greek and spoken in different Greek colonies of the Spanish Mediterranean.

·      Latin, Indo-European language of the italic branch. The Romans settled for the first time in Spain in 218 a.c. and were gradually conquering the Peninsula until the effective submission of the last pre-Roman people in 17 a.c. Latin, was expanding in the conquered territories through the Romanization of the native society and the arrival of new Latin settlers. In the final period of the Roman Empire, Latin had displaced all pre-Roman languages, except in Aquitaine, some areas far from the Roman power centers. All languages ​​currently spoken in Spain (except Basque, from Aquitaine) come from the Latin vulgar. Latin is still taught in baccalaureate, preserved in numerous inscriptions and already barely used in liturgical or similar acts.

Languages spoken in the Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, some languages later disappeared due to their last speakers having similarities to the superior language of that territory:

·      Vandal, the Germanic language spoken by the people of the Vandals, was absorbed by the arrival of other Germanic people (and their languages) like the Visigoths (Goths) and the Swabians (West Germanic).

·      Gothic, was the Germanic language spoken by the Visigoths and was lowered to the private fields being progressively abandoned by the Iberian romances.

·      Mozarabic, is the name given to the romantic speakers, which is currently being use among the population of Al-Ándalus. It was basically a set of romantic speech with a large number of linguistics borrowed from Arabic. Finally, they were losing ground before the advance of the Reconquest and its policy of repopulation in favor of the Christian Romance languages ​​and in the Kingdom of Granada, before the Andalusian Arab.

·      Arabic Andalusian, was the variant of the Arabic language spoken in Al-Andalus, during almost eight centuries of the Muslim rulers. It ended up losing most of its speakers after the conquest of Granada and the subsequent expulsion of the Moriscos, eventually disappearing.

·      Guanche, comprises a set of several languages ​​of different Berber origin, spoken in each of the Canary Islands from several centuries before the Castilian conquest of the archipelago.

·      Navarroaragonés, Romanesque language from which the Navarrese romance and the current Aragonese language derived.

Languages spoken in the Modern Age

·      Tabarquino, a Ligurian variant that was spoken in the 18th century and probably early 19th century on an island, about twenty kilometers from the city of Alicante, called Tabarca. The current inhabitants of the island are given surnames of Genoese origin. In a different area of the island Carloforte and the town of Calasetta, which is in the southeast of Sardinia, is an important colony of people who continue to speak the Ligurian variant, Tabarquino.

Languages derived from languages spoken in Spain

The following linguistic varieties are not spoken in Spain, but derive directly from Spanish languages:

·       Judeo-Spanish is a language that is currently in the process of disappearance. It is spoken by Jewish communities who are descendants of those who inhabited the Iberian Peninsula. In 1492, the expulsion of the Jews was caused by the so-called Sephardic Jews.

·      The different creole languages based of the Spanish language.