Iberian Romance languages
The Iberian Romance languages or Ibero-Romance languages[1] are the Romance languages that developed on the Iberian Peninsula, an area consisting primarily of Spain, Portugal, and Andorra.
Originating in Iberia, the most widely spoken Iberian Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, Galician and Catalan.[2] These languages also have their own regional and local dialects.
Origins and development
Like all Romance languages,[3] the Iberian Romance languages descend from Vulgar Latin. Vulgar Latin was the nonstandard (in contrast to Classical Latin) form of the Latin language spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire. With the expansion of the empire, Vulgar Latin came to be spoken by inhabitants of the various Roman-controlled territories. Latin and its descendants have been spoken in Iberia since the Punic Wars, when the Romans conquered the territory[4] (see Roman conquest of Hispania).
The modern Iberian Romance languages were formed roughly through the following process:
- The Latinization of the local Iberian population.[5]
- The diversification of Latin spoken in Iberia, with slight differences depending on location.[6]
- Development of Old Spanish, Galician-Portuguese, Astur-Leonese (West Iberian) and early Catalan (East Iberian, classified also as Gallo-Romance/Occitano-Romance) languages from Latin between the eighth and tenth centuries.[7][8][9]
- Further development into modern Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Asturian, Leonese, Mirandese, etc. (see Languages of Iberia: Languages of Spain, Languages of Portugal and Languages of Andorra) between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries.
Statuses
There are five major officially recognized Iberian Romance languages:
- Portuguese, official language in eight countries including Portugal. After Spanish, Portuguese is the second most widely spoken Romance language in the world with over 250 million speakers, currently ranked seventh by number of native speakers.[12] Various Portuguese dialects exist outside of the native standard spoken in Portugal.
- Catalan, official language in Andorra[13] and co-official in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencian Community (where it is known as Valencian), and the Italian city of Alghero. It is also spoken in the French department of Pyrénées Orientales (Northern Catalonia) without official recognition. Catalan is closely related to Occitan,[14][15][16] both languages have been treated as one in studies by Occitanist linguists (such as Pierre Bec, or more recently Domergue Sumien); thus Catalan is also widely classified with the Gallo-Romance languages. It has two main dialectal branches (Eastern and Western Catalan) and several subdialects, being spoken by about 12 million people (ranking the seventy-fifth most spoken language in the world),[17] mostly in five variants: Central Catalan, Northern Catalan, North-Western Catalan, Valencian and Balearic.
- Galician, co-official in Galicia and also spoken in adjacent western parts of Asturias and Castile and León. Closely related to Portuguese, but also Spanish.[18] It shares origins with Portuguese, from the medieval Galician-Portuguese language. Modern Galician is spoken by around 3.2 million people and is ranked 160th by number of speakers.[19]
Additionally, the Asturian language (known also as bable), while not an official language[20] is recognized by the Spanish autonomous community of Asturias.[21]
Family Tree
- Iberian Romance languages
See also
References
- ^ David A. Pharies (2007). A Brief History of the Spanish Language. University of Chicago Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0226666839.
- ^ Ethnologue: Statistical Summaries
- ^ Sarah Thomason (2001). Language Contact. Georgetown University Press. p. 263. ISBN 978-0878408542.
- ^ Keith Brown, Sarah Ogilvie (2008). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Elsevier Science. p. 1020. ISBN 978-0080877747.
- ^ Ralph Penny (2002). A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0521011846.
- ^ Penny, p. 16
- ^ M. Teresa Turell (2001). Multilingualism In Spain: Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Linguistic Minority Groups. Multilingual Matters. p. 591. ISBN 978-1853594915.
- ^ Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza, Anxo Abuín Gonzalez, César Domínguez (2010). A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 3961. ISBN 978-9027234575.
- ^ Rafael Lapesa (1968). Historia de la lengua española (7th ed.). Gredos. p. 124. ISBN 84-249-0072-3, 84-249-0073-1.
- ^ Promotora Española de Lingüística – Lengua Española o Castellana. (Spanish)
- ^ Ethnologue: Table 3. Languages with at least 3 million first-language speakers
- ^ See Ethnologue
- ^ Constitution of Andorra (Article 2.1)
- ^ Pierre BEC (1973), Manuel pratique d’occitan moderne, coll. Connaissance des langues, Paris: Picard
- ^ Domergue SUMIEN (2006), La standardisation pluricentrique de l'occitan: nouvel enjeu sociolinguistique, développement du lexique et de la morphologie, coll. Publications de l'Association Internationale d'Études Occitanes, Turnhout: Brepols
- ^ Carol Myers-Scotton (2005). Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 57. ISBN 978-0631219378.
- ^ Ethnologue
- ^ Rebecca Posner (1996). The Romance Languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0521281393.
- ^ Ethnologue
- ^ [1]
- ^ See: Euromosaic report
External links