Category Archives: Andalucian

by | November 19, 2016 · 2:57 PM

Western Europe: What Native Languages Are Spoken in Spain?

Montleek:  Robert, is it possible that in Western Europe, the regional lects have been preserved better, while in eastern Europe are preserved worse? There was communism/socialism in Eastern Europe, therefore more tendency not to continue speaking with regional lect. Robert, is it possible that in western Europe, the regional lects have been preserved better, while in eastern Europe are preserved worse? There was communism/socialism in eastern Europe, therefore more tendency not to continue speaking with regional lect .

In Spain, there is are several major languages such as Asturian-Leonese, Extremaduran-Cantabrian, Eonavian/Berciano, Basque, Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquesque, Galician and some odd forms of Portuguese. Murcian, Andalucian, Churro and Manchengo are very marginal cases, but are probably better seen as divergent dialects of Castillian.

With Catalan and Asturian-Leonese, you are absolutely in a situation of a different lect in every town or even village.

Eonavian is absolutely a separate language though it is not recognized. Berciano is the southern part of the Eonavian language.

There is definitely more than one language in Galician.

Cantabrian is actually a language and not a Spanish dialect. In fact, it is a part of the recognized language called Extremaduran.

There may be 3-4 languages inside Basque; surely there are at least two.

Benasquesque is actually a separate language between Catalan and Aragonese.

Occitan is only spoken as Aranese, but is probably a separate language.

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Filed under Andalucian, Aragonese, Asturian, Basque, Catalan, Europe, Galician, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Isolates, Italic, Italo-Celtic, Italo-Celtic-Tocharian, Leonese, Occitan, Portuguese, Regional, Romance, Spain

by | October 22, 2014 · 11:16 PM

Intelligibility Figures for Romance Languages

Here is some new work I did on mutual intelligibility in the Romance family. If you speak any of these languages, feel free to chime in. The one figure I am worried about is 0% of Italian understanding of Romanian. One informant said that, but I have a feeling it is higher than that.

Intelligibility Figures for Romance Languages

Intelligibility for Spanish speakers, oral: 80% of Asturian, Aragonese and and Extremaduran, 78% of Galician, 62% of Catalan, 50% of Portuguese, 25% of Italian, 6% of Romanian, 1% of French, and 0% of Sicilian.

Spanish has 95% written intelligibility of Ladino, 93% of Galician, 87% of Catalan, 78% of Portuguese, 50% of Italian and Romanian, and 16% of French.

Catalan has 94% oral intelligibility of Valencian, 63% intelligibility of Belearic, 27% of Italian, 5% of French.

Catalan has 27% written intelligibility of Italian.

Asturian has 82% oral intelligibility of Mirandese and 71% of Portuguese.

Mirandese has 82% oral intelligibility of Asturian and 71% of Portuguese.

Portuguese has 95% oral intelligibility of Almedilha dialect, 86% of Galician, 71% of Mirandese and Asturian, 58% of Spanish, 40% of Hermisende dialect, 55% of Catalan, 25% of Leonese and Italian, 17% of French, and 5% of Romanian.

Portuguese has 90% written intelligibility of Italian.

Galician has 58% intelligibility of Catalan, and 0% of Extremaduran and Andalucian Spanish.

French has 30% oral intelligibility of Catalan, 27% of Portuguese, 16% of Italian, 13% of Spanish, 7% intelligibility of Romanian, and 0% of Sicilian.

French has 90% written intelligibility of Catalan and 70% of Portuguese.

Romanian has 70% oral intelligibility of Istroromanian, 40% of Italian, 25% of Spanish, and 15% of French and Portuguese.

Romanian has 60% written intelligibility of French, 45% of Galician and Piedmontese and 33% of Italian.

Italian has 40% oral intelligibility of Catalan, 16% of Portuguese, 11% of French, and 0% of Romanian, Arpitan and Sicilian.

Italian has 75% written intelligibility of French and Spanish, 25% of Portuguese, and 20% of Catalan.

Piedmontese has 0% intelligibility of Arpitan.

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Filed under Andalucian, Applied, Aragonese, Asturian, Catalan, French, Galician, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Italian, Italic, Italo-Celtic, Italo-Celtic-Tocharian, Language Families, Leonese, Linguistics, Multilingualism, Portuguese, Romance, Spanish

by | October 18, 2014 · 7:26 AM

Is Romance Mutual Intelligibility Overrated?

Paul S. writes:

I can speak Spanish decently, though I read it better, and that wasn’t a tough read. That being said, I can read Portuguese pretty well too and can’t understand it spoken much at all.

Well try doing research in Portuguese then. I can speak a bit of Portuguese, and I have been trying to read it for some time now. Lately I am doing a lot of research, and much of it is in Spanish. I use translators a lot, but even then I have to go back to the original Spanish. I can do research ok in Spanish, but it is not real easy.

I also run across a lot of Portuguese, Galician and Asturian. Research is quite hard in all of these. I am having an extremely hard time reading Portuguese, and previously I thought I could read it fairly well. Also I have a friend in Brazil, and she used to send me mails all the time in Portuguese, and honestly, I was pretty lost reading that stuff. I think Spanish-Portuguese written intelligibility is overrated.

I cannot understand much spoken Portuguese either. I watched a clip on Youtube the other day about some city council meeting in a town on the Spanish-Portuguese border, and I could not understand a word they said.

I have a feeling that the oral intelligibility of Romance is also overrated. You hear a lot of anecdotes. Eonavians said that Western Asturians could not understand one word of Eonavian, which is a Western Asturian-Eastern Galician transitional dialect!

Castillian speakers who went to Valencia to live said that after seven years, they still could not understand one word of Valencian and Catalan spoken at normal speed. However, they could understand TV announcers in those lects very well because the announcers used Castillian intonation as opposed to Catalan/Valencian intonation.

Some people from the north of Spain say that they cannot understand a single word of the hard Andalucian spoken on the streets of the big cities.

Commenter James Schipper lived in Brazil for years and is fluid in Portuguese. However, he only understood 40% of the strange lect spoken in Hermisende, Zamora, in Spain. Linguists say that this is a Galician dialect with heavy Portuguese influence and significant Leonese influences. On some linguistic maps, it is colored as a Portuguese dialect.

He was also able to understand only 25% of Alistano Leonese.

And we haven’t even left the Iberian Peninsula yet!

A while back, in a large city in northern Italy, an old woman had become lost. They took her into the police station and she was chattering away for a few hours. They kept asking her questions but she did not understand them as she didn’t speak Standard Italian. People had all sorts of theories on where she was from. Some thought Greece, and there were many other guesses. Finally a worker came in who was familiar with the strange Western Lombard dialect from the high northern Italian mountains that she spoke. The old lady and the cops all spoke a Northern Italian dialect, and none of them could understand the old lady.

On the border of France and Italy in and around the city of Menton near Nice, a lect called Mentonasque is spoken. It is close to the old language of Nizzard spoken in Nice. This is an Occitan-Ligurian transitional dialect, a halfway between Maritime Provencal Occitan spoken in France and Ligurian spoken in Italy. Nevertheless, Mentonasque speakers say that they cannot understand a word of the Ligurian spoken in Italy. And linguists now see Mentonasque as a Ligurian dialect!

One would think that if these languages were that close, one could learn one or another of them pretty easily. To some extent this is true, but not to the extent of dialects of a single tongue or very closely related languages where you can adjust fairly easy over a period of 1 hour-3 weeks.

For instance, in Asturias, there are many Castillian speakers who have been living there for some time who simply state that they cannot understand Asturian. If they were really so close, one would think they would have picked it up easily over the years.

Down in the Bierzo zone transitional between the Leonese and Galician languages, there are Castillian speakers who have been living there for years who cannot understand Leonese, Galician or Berciano. With languages like that being spoken around them all the time, one would think they would have picked up them easily over the years.

The truth is that these languages are not as close as they seem, and much has to do with intonation as the example of the Castillian speaker living in Valencia indicates. In addition, one way to tell that you are dealing with a separate language and not a dialect of a single tongue is that the other language doesn’t necessarily get easier to understand the more you hear it. The factor of motivation cannot be ruled out. The Castillian speakers above who cannot understand Galician, Leonese, Berciano, Asturian, Valencian, Catalan or Andalucian have obviously never taken the time to try to learn the language. They simply cannot be bothered. If people do not want to try to learn a language, even a very closely related one spoken around them all the time, they simply will not learn it.

It is said that after 2-3 months of close contact, a Castillian speaker can pick up Aragonese, Catalan, Asturian, Leonese or Galician. But that is if one is sufficiently motivated. The powerful variable of motivation in language learning cannot be underestimated.

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by | January 11, 2013 · 1:55 PM

Are Spanish and Portuguese One Language?

Janie writes:

And Robert, your comment about ”There should be a link to the Spanish-Portuguese study. The rest is just native speakers guessing”, sounds like a weak and unfair attempt on your part to discredit the opinions of others. Just because you have an MA in Linguistics doesn’t make you an infallible expert on language matters. If anything, a person with a PhD in Linguistics would certainly seem more credible to me.

As a previous writer correctly pointed out, sometimes the ‘real’ labs are, as he put it, ‘the streets’. Much of my graduate sociology graduate research was conducted ‘on-the-streets’. When you mingle with the speakers of languages, in this case Portuguese and Spanish, you gain a very different perspective, certainly different than what your academic labs statistics show. For the record, I am a native Spanish speaker from Spain. In Europe, Portuguese and Spaniards have no trouble at all communicating with one another – we consider ourselves brothers, historically, culturally and linguistically. This is fact.

Additionally, I actually studied in New Jersey where there are tons of Spanish and Portuguese speakers. I have many friends who speak these two languages, and I have heard them conversing rather effortlessly with one another all my life. What are you going to tell me, that I’m imagining things? Please. You might be tempted not to post this, but please do the right thing and do post it. Judging from some of the earlier posts, I can assure you that there will be many future responders who will agree with many of the things I have said.

Yes, and many Spanish speakers around me told me flat out that “they can’t understand Portuguese.” On the Net, when I write in Spanish to my Brazilian friends who speak Portuguese, *they can’t really understand me.* I asked them if they speak Spanish, and they said, “Not really.” And in the article the commenter commented on, there are many reports of Spanish and Portuguese speakers not understanding each other very well.

That’s right, I do not believe that it is the typical experience of Spanish and Portuguese speakers in Europe to communicate effortlessly.

I understand that Spanish speakers can’t even understand Fala, and that’s Galician (Portuguese with heavy Spanish influence) with heavy Castillian influence on top of that. Spanish speakers say they “can’t understand a word” of Fala.

On a recent program on Galician TV, a variety of odd forms of Galician or Portuguese spoken in Spain were highlighted. All of these odd forms received subtitles on Galician TV. Brazilian Portuguese speakers told me that they often have a hard time understanding and especially reading European Portuguese. Speakers of the Portuguese dialect closest to Galician report that attempts to speak with Galician speakers on the border with Spain are so difficult that both parties resort to Castillian to be understood. And Ethnologue says that is one language. Portuguese speakers report that they can’t understand Barranquenho, an archaic form of Portuguese full of Castillian spoken on the border with Spain.

My understanding is that even on the border of Spain and Portugal, border villages can’t exactly communicate with each other.

Spaniards can’t even understand other forms of so-called Castillian which are said to be one language.

Spaniards cannot understand either Asturian or hard Extremaduran. In fact, Extremaduran speakers can’t understand Asturian, and some say that that is one language. The Castillian spoken by old Galician women is so odd and full of Galician that most Spaniards cannot understand it. Spaniards can’t even understand Aragonese very well. In fact, on opposite ends of Aragonese, Aragonese speakers can’t even understand each other. Spaniards, especially from the north around the Basque country, can’t understand a word of hard Andalucian. Some Manchengo speakers even say that they are not understand by speakers of Standard Castillian.

Asturian speakers can’t understand Galician, and both are almost Portuguese. Younger speakers of West Asturian Eonavian can’t even understand Galician, and Eonavian is the closest Asturian to Galician.

If Spaniards can’t even understand other forms of so-called Castillian, how the Hell can they understand Portuguese?

When people speaking different languages talk to each other, they can often negotiate a certain meaning by speaking more slowly, adjusting their speech, etc. That doesn’t mean that they are speaking the same language. I meet Italian speakers around here, tourists who are confounded by English. I speak Spanish to them, and we negotiate some sort of a meaning where they can figure out what to order or whatever. So Spanish and Italians are the same language? No.

The intelligibility test for Spanish and Portuguese was very good. The results came back 54% intelligibility. The truth is that with 54% intelligibility in a face to face encounter, you may be able to negotiate some sort of a meaning via the mechanisms I described above. Intelligibility studies produce proper and correct results.

If what you say is true, that Spanish and Portuguese speakers communicate “effortlessly” everywhere they go, then guess what? Spanish and Portuguese are the same language! You believe that?

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Filed under Andalucian, Applied, Aragonese, Asturian, Europe, Galician, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Italic, Italo-Celtic, Italo-Celtic-Tocharian, Language Families, Linguistics, Multilingualism, Portugal, Portuguese, Regional, Romance, Spain, Spanish

by | May 27, 2012 · 7:43 AM

Check Out Isleno Spanish

It will take some time for me to describe the history of this language. The Wikipedia article here is a good start.

The Islenos apparently arrived in from the Canary Islands to Louisiana and eastern Texas in the 1700’s. Over time, they were augmented by other Spanish immigrants from many other parts of Spain speaking a variety of languages including Catalan, Andalusian and Galician. In addition, over time there was a lot of interaction with the French speakers of Louisiana, so many French words went into the language. Somehow some Portuguese also went in. A huge amount of English vocabulary and even grammar has gone into the language, especially with the last generation of speakers. The Islenos retained their archaic Canarian Spanish from the 18th Century, speaking it as a first language up until the 1940’s due to the isolation of its main speech community on St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans. However, roads were built to the parish and in 1915, schools arrived. Repeated hurricanes caused Islenos to flee to New Orleans. A number of them served in World War 2 and Vietnam. The present generation of Isleno first language speakers are all over 60 years old. A few Islenos under 50 speak the language, and more can understand it but not speak it.

Islenos originally started out ranching cattle, but then they moved into planting sugar cane and growing a variety of crops for the New Orleans market. In the last century, many Islenos made their living by fishing, shrimping, crabbing, etc.

A group of them moved to San Antonio, Texas, where they fought in the Alamo and took part in other battles in the Texan War of Independence. Isleno Spanish died in San Antonio around 1950, but Islenos still maintain the culture there in other ways.

They still play songs called decimas and they continue to fix traditional Canarian dishes.

There is another dialect spoken by Islenos in Valenzuela, Louisiana called Brulis. However, this is mostly an Acadian French dialect. Another group of Islenos in Galveztown speak a dialect that is basically Mexican Indian Nahuatl of all things.

It is said that this accent is quite similar to Puerto Rican and Cuban Spanish. Many Cubans and Puerto Ricans also came from the Canary Islands around the same time, and Cuban and Louisiana Canarians used to trade with each other a long time ago.

If any of my readers can understand Spanish, I would be curious if you can understand this interesting rustic Spanish lect. I can understand Spanish fairly well, but I had a hard time with a lot of this speech, though some of it did sound something like Cuban Spanish. If you speak Spanish, let us know if you can understand these guys.

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by | February 16, 2010 · 7:16 PM

Yet More Romance Intelligibility Figures

From here.

I happen to agree with these figures. The figures involve the intelligibility of various Romance languages, spoken and written, for speakers of Spanish.

Intelligibility for Spanish speakers, oral: 77% of Galician, 55% of Catalan, 54% of Portuguese, 25% of Italian, 1-5% of French and many Italian dialects.

Written: 93% of Galician, 90% of Catalan, 85% of Portuguese, 50% of Italian, 16% of French.

As you can see, the figures are much higher for written than spoken language. This makes a lot of sense. With my fluent Spanish and some knowledge of Portuguese, French and Italian, I can pick up a fair amount of the written text of any Romance language.

Orally though, I’m typically pretty lost. The best ones are those that are closest to Spanish, such as Andalucian dialect, Aragonese, Asturian and Galician. Leonese is a lot different, heading towards Portuguese. You get to Catalan and Occitan and I start having lots of problems. Portuguese is way harder than you might think, even with my rudimentary Portuguese. Standard Italian as spoken slowly by say a documentary narrator is a bit better.  Street Italian is nearly useless to me, as is Spoken French, Romansch, Romanian, Italian dialects and hard Andalucian.

It’s very interesting that Spanish speakers can understand Galician better than they can Portuguese, but it makes sense. After all, Galicia split off from Portugal long ago and came under the influence of Castillian. I am not sure which Galician they are referring to here. There is a soft Galician that is used on Galician TV which has very heavy Castillian influence. Even I can pick it up pretty well. But there is a hard Galician of the street and the rural areas that is much harder to understand.

The figure for Catalan is much lower than for Galician because Catalan has so much French influence. Look at the dismal figure for spoken French and you can see why Spanish speakers have a hard time with it.

25% intelligibility of Italian sounds about right to me. Spanish speakers can understand Italian much worse than they can understand Portuguese. The figure for French is shockingly low, but it makes sense, as previous studies have shown that nobody can understand the French.

I would agree that Standard Italian, especially spoken slowly by a professional speaker, is much easier to understand than many Italian dialects, which are actually spoken languages. I’ve seen them on Youtube and I can’t make out a single word.

With my Spanish, my figures for written intelligibility of Romance are not as high as those above, but I’m not really fluent as far as reading Spanish goes. I’m a lot better at speaking it and hearing it. Others have given much lower figures than the one above for Spanish speakers reading Galician, but it probably improves very quickly in a short period of time.

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Filed under Andalucian, Asturian, Catalan, French, Galician, Italian, Italic, Language Families, Leonese, Linguistics, Occitan, Portuguese, Romance, Romansch, Sociolinguistics, Spanish

by | June 19, 2009 · 1:46 AM

Check Out Andalucian

Contrary to popular belief, Andalucian is not a dialect of Spanish, but his is very confusing. There is something called Andalusian Spanish. This is what the announcer in this video is speaking.

I can understand Spanish pretty well, but this guy is almost incomprehensible, and this is just a mere dialect. I showed it to two friends who have some Spanish comprehension as most White native Californians do. One thought it was Romanian and the other thought it was Italian. If you understand Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese or any Romance language, see how much of this Andalucian you can get.

However, there is more to the story. In the vignettes in this video, you will see people speaking something altogether different, not a dialect of Spanish, but a full-blown separate language altogether, Andalucian. True, it is not recognized by Ethnologue yet, but it ought to be. Part of the problem is Spanish fascist nationalism that will not tolerate any more languages in Spain.

So far, Catalan, Basque, Occitan and Galician are recognized, but many others, such as Extremaduran, Asturian, Asturian, Fala, Portuguese, Aragonese and Leonese are not. Andalucian is another one, in this case not even recognized as a language by the ISO yet.

Andalucian has a heavy Arabic influence and in particular an influence for Mozarabic, which is an extinct form of heavily Arabized Spanish.

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