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Mirandese language
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The Mirandese language (autonym: Lhéngua Mirandesa; Portuguese: Língua Mirandesa) is a Romance language sparsely spoken in a small area of northeastern Portugal, in Miranda do Douro municipality. The Portuguese Parliament granted it co-official recognition (along with Portuguese language) for local matters on 17 September, 1998 with the law 7/99 of 29 January, 1999.
Mirandese has a distinct phonology, morphology and syntax, and has been distinct at least since the formation of Portugal (12th century). It has its roots in the spoken Latin of the north of the Iberian Peninsula (Portuguese developed in the northwest). It is a descendant of the ancient Leonese language of northern Iberia, the last remnant of the ancient language of the Kingdom of León, and closely related to modern Leonese and Asturian. However, these amalgamations in the Spanish territory did not affect Mirandese, which preserves distinct linguistic differences in relation to both Portuguese and Spanish. It shares a great deal of lexicon with regional Portuguese dialects.
In the
19th century,
José Leite de Vasconcelos, described it as "the language of the farms, of work, home, and love between the Mirandese". Since 1986/1987 the language is taught to students between the age of 10 and 11, and the language is recovering.
Today Mirandese retains fewer than 5,000 speakers (but the number can be up to 15,000 if counting second language speakers) in the villages of the Municipality of Miranda do Douro and in some eastern villages (i.e. Vilar Seco & Angueira; in Caçarelhos, it is considered recently extinct) of the Municipality of Vimioso, and some linguistic influence can be observed at other villages of the municipality of Vimioso and the municipalities of Mogadouro, Macedo de Cavaleiros and Bragança.
Three variants of the Mirandese language exist: "Border Mirandese", "Central Mirandese" and "Sendinês Mirandese". Most speakers of Mirandese also speak Portuguese; some of these speak Spanish as well. Picote (Picuote in Mirandese) is the only village that is basically monolingual in Mirandese and, due to this, several news reports have been made about this village as it became a curiosity in a country that is monolingual in Portuguese.
The main differences between Mirandese in Portugal and Asturian or Leonese in Spain are caused by the dominant languages in each region. Mirandese has been influenced phonetically and in lexicon by Portuguese and Asturian and Leonese by Spanish. The three also have distinctive orthography that phonetically reflects the respective main national languages. Another difference is that Mirandese and Leonese remain very conservative, while Asturian has changed. The languages are recognized as closely-related (specially Leonese and Mirandese, called also "co-languages"), and in the past they were undoubtedly the same language.
See also
