Asturian language

Asturian (Asturianu, or bable^[2]) is a Romance language of the West Iberian group, Astur-Leonese Subgroup, spoken in the Spanish Region of Asturias by the Asturian people. In Asturias, even though it is not an official language,^[3] it is protected under the Autonomous Statute legislation and is an optional language at schools.^[4]

History

The language developed from Vulgar Latin with contributions from the pre-Roman languages which were spoken in the territory of the Astures, an ancient tribe of the Iberian peninsula. Castilian Spanish came to the area later, in the 14th century, when the central administration sent emissaries and functionaries to occupy political and ecclesiastical offices. Nowadays, Asturian codification of Astur-Leonese spoken in the Asturian Autonomous Community has become a modern language, after the birth of "Academy of the Asturian Language" in 1980. Mirandese is very close to Asturian.

Status

Much effort has been made since 1974 to protect and promote Asturian.^[5] In 1994, there were 100,000 first-language speakers, and 450,000 second-language speakers able to speak or understand Asturian.^[6] However, the situation of Asturian is critical, with a large decline in the number of speakers in the last 100 years.

At the end of the 20th century, the Academia de la Llingua Asturiana made efforts to provide the language with most of the tools needed by a language to ensure its survival: a grammar, a dictionary, and periodicals. A new generation of Asturian writers have also championed the language. These developments give the Asturian language a greater hope of survival.

Internet

Many internet pages use the Asturian language; the council's pages, music groups' pages and more. In this area, Ubuntu has the Asturian language as a normal language in their programs for computers.^[7]

Education

Although Spanish (Castellano) is the official language used in all schools in Asturias, children are required to take Asturian Language classes from age 6 to 16. Optional classes are offered from age 16 to 19. Also, with the new Bologna process people will be able to study Asturian Philology in the same way as Spanish Philology [3], and school-teachers will be able to do a speciality in the Asturian language. But these two possibilities can only be studied in the University of Oviedo (Asturias).

Grammar

The grammar of Asturian resembles that of other Romance languages. Nouns have two genders (masculine and feminine), two numbers (singular and plural), and no cases. Adjectives can have a third gender (neuter), a grammatical phenomenon widely studied in the Asturian continuum and known as "matter-neutrality".^[8] Verbs agree with their subjects in person (first, second, or third) and number, and additionally are conjugated to indicate mood (indicative, subjunctive, conditional, or imperative), tense (often present or past; different moods allow different possible tenses), and aspect (perfective or imperfective).^[9]

Orthography

Asturian also has several digraphs, some of which have their own names.

Furthermore, the letter h and the digraph ll can have their sound changed to represent dialectal pronunciation by underdotting the letters:

See also

• Astur Leonese
• List of Asturian language authors
• Cantabrian dialect
• Extremaduran language
• Mirandese language
• Ramón Menéndez Pidal

References

Bibliography

External links

• Academia de la Llingua Asturiana – the official Asturian language academy
• Dirección Xeneral de Política Llingüística del Gobiernu del Principáu d'Asturies – Bureau of Asturian Linguistic Politics (Government of the Principality of Asturias)
• Ethnologue report for Asturian
• Asturian grammar in English
• Asturian–English dictionary
• Xunta pola Defensa de la Llingua Asturiana
• Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos – Royal Institute of Asturian Studies (RIDEA or IDEA), founded 1945.
• A short Asturian–English–Japanese phrasebook incl. sound file