Murcian Spanish
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Murciano, more popularly known as panocho, is a variant of the Spanish language spoken mainly in the Spanish autonomous region of Murcia and adjacent parts of both the Alicante province and the province of Albacete. It is wrong to call it "panocho" because the "panocho" is a dialect of Murcian, and there are 8 dialects[citation needed].
[edit] History
The unique features of Murcian have evolved as a result of the presence of Berber, Catalan/Valencian, Latin, Arabic, Mudejar, Mozarabic and Aragonese-speaking communities at various times in the region's history.
When James I of Aragon conquered the area during the Reconquista, he populated it with large numbers of Aragonese and Catalan speakers; James II of Aragon brought further Catalan-speakers to the region. The Crónica de Ramon Muntaner stresses the Catalan influence, recording:
E com la dita ciutat [de Múrcia] hac presa, poblà-la tota de catalans e així mateix Orihuela, e Elx, e Alacant, e Guardamar, e Cartagènia e los altres llocs: sí siats certs qui tots aquells qui en dita ciutat de Múrcia e en los davant dits llocs són, (són) vers catalans e parlen del bell catalanesc del món
And when the aforementioned city [of Murcia] was taken, it was populated with Catalans, and likewise in Orihuela, Elche, Alicante, Guardamar and Cartagena and other places; certainly all the people that are in this city of Murcia and in the other above-mentioned places, are true Catalans, and speak the most beautiful Catalan in the world.
Other experts, however, have pointed out that this account was written some 69 years later, and that most inhabitants of Murcia must have spoken Aragonese after the Reconquest. Even here there is disagreement, though, as it's not clear which area of Aragon the settlers came from, and some Aragonese would have only spoken standard Castilian Spanish. Finally, as the Kingdom of Murcia became part of the Kingdom of Castile, there was a further influx of Mozarabic settlers; as a vassal of the Kingdom of Castile, there was a significant prestige minority of Castilian-speakers.
Out of this melting-pot, a Murcian lingua franca had developed by the seventeenth century as a distinct dialect of Castilian Spanish. Spanish language standardization brought by the compulsory public education system and the spread of literacy in general by the nineteenth century had the Murcian Spanish dialect labelled by the bourgeoisie as being largely illiterate and uneducated.
[edit] Linguistics
Murcian Spanish may be considered as a dialect showing significant substrata of Aragonese and Catalan; the most prominent substratum is clearly Castilian. There are also evident Arabic influences, especially words related to agriculture.
Eight subvariants of Murcian Spanish exist today,[citation needed] some of them defined solely by administrative borders of the Autonomous Community of the Región de Murcia, as variants of Murcian are also spoken in the regions of Almería, Granada and Jaén.
Among the features of Murcian Spanish is the use of -ico as a diminutive suffix, as opposed to Castilian Spanish -ito. The definite article is sometimes omitted in cases where standard Spanish would include it: ir a escuela instead of ir a la escuela (this is probably under the influence of Aragonese, which does the same thing).
[edit] See also
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