TheIberian Romance,Ibero-Romance[1]or sometimesIberian languages[note 1]are a group ofRomance languagesthat developed on theIberian Peninsula,an area consisting primarily ofSpain,Portugal,Gibraltar,AndorraandFrench Catalonia.They are today more commonly separated intoWest Iberian,East Iberian (Catalan/Valencian) andMozarabiclanguage groups. East Iberian's classification is a subject of ongoing scholarly debate, as some argue that theOccitano-Romance languagescomposed ofOccitanalong with the aforementioned two are better classified asGallo-Romance languages.
| Iberian Romance | |
|---|---|
| Ibero-Romance, Iberian | |
| Geographic distribution | OriginallyIberian PeninsulaandFrench Catalonia;now worldwide |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | sout3183(Shifted Iberian)unsh1234(Aragonese–Mozarabic) |
Evolved from theVulgar Latinof Iberia, the most widely spoken Iberian Romance languages areSpanishandPortuguese,followed byCatalan-Valencian-BalearandGalician.[2]These languages also have their own regional and local varieties. Based onmutual intelligibility,Dalby counts seven "outer" languages, or language groups:Galician-Portuguese,Spanish,Asturleonese,"Wider" -Aragonese,"Wider" -Catalan,Provençal+Lengadocian,and "Wider" -Gascon.[3]
In addition to those languages, there are a number ofPortuguese-based creole languagesandSpanish-based creole languages,for instancePapiamento.
Origins and development
edit
Like all Romance languages,[4]the Iberian Romance languages descend fromVulgar Latin,the nonstandard (in contrast toClassical Latin) form of the Latin language spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire. With theexpansion 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 thePunic Wars,when the Romans conquered the territory[5](seeRoman conquest of Hispania).
The modern Iberian Romance languages were formed roughly through the following process:
- TheRomanizationof the local Iberian population.[6]
- The diversification of Latin spoken in Iberia, with slight differences depending on location.[7]
- The break up of Ibero-Romance into several dialects.[8]
| Ibero‑Romance |
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- Development ofOld Spanish,Galician-Portuguese,Old LeoneseandNavarro-Aragonese(theWest Iberian languages) and earlyCatalan languagefrom Latin between the eighth and tenth centuries. The genetic classification of early Navarro-Aragonese, Catalan, and Occitan is unsettled. Some scholars place them within Ibero-Romance (hence they would beEast Iberian), others place them instead withinGallo-Romance.[9][10][11]Aragonese is further disputed between the East and West Iberian groups.
- Further development into modern Spanish, Portuguese, Aragonese, Asturleonese, Galician, Catalan (seelanguages of Iberia:languages of Spain,languages of Portugalandlanguages of Andorra) between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries.
Common traits between Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan
editThis list points to common traits of these Iberian subsets, especially when compared to the other Romance languages in general. Thus, changes such as Catalanvuit/huitand Portugueseoitovs. Spanishochoare not shown here, as the change -it- > -ch- is exclusive to Spanish among the Iberian Romance languages.
Between Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan
editPhonetic
edit- The length difference between r/rr is preserved through phonetic means as[ɾ]/[r],so that the second consonant in words such ascaroandcarroare not the same in any of the three.
- Latin U remains[u]and is not changed to[y].
Semantic
edit- The Iberian Romance languages all maintain a completeessence-state distinctioninthe copula(the verb "to be" ). The "essence" form (Portuguese and Spanishserand Catalanserandésser) is derived in whole or in part from the Latinsum(the Latin copula), while the "state" form (estarin all three languages) is derived from the Latinstāre( "to stand" ).
Between Spanish and Catalan, but not Portuguese
editPhonetic
edit- The distinction between Latin short-n-,-l-and long-nn-,-ll-was preserved by means of palatalizing-nn-,-ll-to/ɲ,ʎ/,as in Latinannum> Spanishaño,Catalananyvs. Latinmanum> Spanishmano,Old Catalanman(modern Catalanmà). This also affects some initial L in Catalan. However, in most dialects of Spanish, original/ʎ/has become delateralized. Portuguese maintains the distinction, but in a different way; compareanovs.mão.
Between Spanish and Portuguese, but not Catalan
editPhonetic
edit- Initial Latin CL/FL/PL are palatalized further than in Standard Italian, and become indistinguishable (to CH in Portuguese and LL in Spanish).
- Final e/o remains (although its pronunciation changed in Portuguese, and some dialects drop final E).
Grammatical
edit- The synthetic preterite, inherited from earlier stages of Latin, remains the main past tense.
Between Portuguese and Catalan, but not Spanish
editPhonetic
editStatuses
editPolitically (not linguistically), there are four major officially recognised Iberian Romance languages:
- Spanish(seenames given to the Spanish language), is the national andofficial languageof21 countries,including Spain.[12]Spanish is thefourth-most widely spokenlanguage in the world, with over 570 total million speakers, and thesecond-most widely spokennativelanguage.[13]It has a number ofdialects and varieties.
- Portuguese,official language innine countriesincluding Portugal andBrazil.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.[14]VariousPortuguese dialectsexist outside of theEuropean standardspoken in Portugal.
- Catalanis the official language inAndorra[15]and co-official in the Spanish autonomous communities ofCatalonia,Balearic IslandsandValencian Community(where it is known asValencian), and theItaliancity ofAlghero.It is also spoken in the French department ofPyrénées-Orientales(Northern Catalonia) without official recognition. Catalan is closely related toOccitan,[16][17][18]with the two languages having been treated as one in studies by Occitanist linguists (such asPierre Bec,or more recently Domergue Sumien). When not treated as one, the two languages are widely classified together asOccitano-Romance languages,a group which is itself sometimes grouped with theGallo-Romance languages.Catalan has two main dialectal branches (Eastern and Western Catalan) and several subdialects, and is spoken by about 10 million people (ranking the seventy-fifth most spoken language in the world),[19]mostly in five variants:Central Catalan,Northern Catalan,Northwestern Catalan,ValencianandBalearic.
- Galician,co-official inGaliciaand also spoken in adjacent western parts ofAsturiasandCastile and León.Closely related toPortuguese,with Spanish influence.[20]It shares the same origin as Portuguese, from the medievalGalician-Portuguese.Modern Galician is spoken by around 3.2 million people and is ranked 160th by number of speakers.[19]
Additionally,Asturian(dialect of Asturleonese), although not an official language,[21]is recognised by theautonomous communityofAsturias.It is one of the Asturleonese dialects along withMirandese,which in Portugal holds an official status as a minority language.[22]
Family tree
editThis sectionpossibly containsoriginal research.(April 2023) |
The Iberian Romance languages are a conventional group of Romance languages. Many authors use the term in a geographical sense although they are not necessarily a phylogenetic group (the languages grouped as Iberian Romance may not all directly descend from a common ancestor). Phylogenetically, there is disagreement about what languages should be considered within the Iberian Romance group; for example, some authors consider that East Iberian, also called Occitano-Romance, could be more closely related to languages of northern Italy (or also Franco-Provençal, the langues d'oïl and Rhaeto-Romance). A common conventional geographical grouping is the following:
- East Iberian
- West Iberian
Daggers (†) indicate extinct languages
- Iberian Romance languages
- East Iberian(alternatively classified asGallo-Romance languages)
- Catalanic
- Occitanic
- West Iberian
- East Iberian(alternatively classified asGallo-Romance languages)
See also
editReferences
edit- ^Iberian languagesis also used as a more inclusive term for all languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, which in antiquity included the non-Indo-EuropeanIberian language.
- ^Pharies, David A. (2007).A Brief History of the Spanish Language.University of Chicago Press. p. 13.ISBN978-0-226-66683-9.
- ^"Ethnologue: Statistical Summaries".Archived fromthe originalon 2011-08-07.Retrieved2010-11-08.
- ^Dalby, David (2000)."5=Indo-European phylosector"(PDF).The Linguasphere register of the world's languages and speech communities.Vol. 2. Oxford: Observatoire Linguistique, Linguasphere Press.
- ^Thomason, Sarah (2001).Language Contact.Georgetown University Press. p. 263.ISBN978-0-87840-854-2.
- ^Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (2008).Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World.Elsevier Science. p. 1020.ISBN978-0-08-087774-7.
- ^Penny, Ralph (2002).A History of the Spanish Language.Cambridge University Press. p. 8.ISBN978-0-521-01184-6.
- ^Penny (2002),p. 16
- ^Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition(2009)."Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Italo-Western, Western, Gallo-Iberian, Ibero-Romance, West Iberian".Retrieved13 August2010.
- ^Turell, M. Teresa (2001).Multilingualism in Spain: Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Linguistic Minority Groups.Multilingual Matters. p. 591.ISBN978-1-85359-491-5.
- ^Cabo Aseguinolaza, Fernando; Abuín Gonzalez, Anxo; Domínguez, César (2010).A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula.John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp.339–40.ISBN978-90-272-3457-5.
- ^Lapesa, Rafael (1968).Historia de la lengua española (7th ed.)(in Spanish). Gredos. p. 124.ISBN84-249-0072-3.ISBN84-249-0073-1.
- ^"Lengua Española o Castellana".Promotora Española de Lingüística(in Spanish).
- ^"Ethnologue: Table 3. Languages with at least 3 million first-language speakers".Archived fromthe originalon 2011-08-07.Retrieved2010-11-08.
- ^See Ethnologue
- ^Constitution of Andorra(Article 2.1)
- ^Bec, Pierre(1973),Manuel pratique d'occitan moderne,coll. Connaissance des langues, Paris: Picard
- ^Sumien, Domergue (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
- ^Myers-Scotton, Carol (2005).Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism.Wiley-Blackwell. p. 57.ISBN978-0-631-21937-8.
- ^abEthnologue
- ^Posner, Rebecca(1996).The Romance Languages.Cambridge University Press. p. 57.ISBN978-0-521-28139-3.
- ^"La jueza a Fernando González: 'No puede usted hablar en la lengua que le dé la gana'".El Comercio.12 January 2009.
- ^See:Euromosaic report