Everything about Extremaduran totally explained
|region=
autonomous community of
Extremadura
|speakers=200,000 (500,000 total)
|familycolor=Indo-European
|fam2=
Italic
|fam3=
Romance
|fam4=
Italo-Western
|fam5=
Gallo-Iberian
|fam6=
Ibero-Romance
|fam7=
West Iberian
|fam8=
Astur-Leonese
|iso2=roa|iso3=ext}}
Extremaduran (
estremeñu) is a
Romance language, spoken by some thousands in
Spain, most of them in the
autonomous community of
Extremadura.
Dialects
Extremaduran is usually classified in three branches (Northern or "High" --
artu estremeñu, Central or "Middle" --
meyu estremeñu, and Southern or "Low" --
bahu estremeñu). The northern one is usually considered to be the language proper, and is spoken in the northwest of the autonomous region of Extremadura, and the southwest of Salamanca, a province of the autonomous region of
Castile and Leon. The central and southern ones are spoken in Extremadura and in the provinces of
Huelva and
Seville, in the autonomous region of
Andalusia, and are at least since the
18th century Castilian dialects. In the Portuguese town of
Barrancos (in the border between Extremadura, Andalusia and Portugal), a dialect of
Portuguese heavily influenced by Extremaduran is spoken, known as "
Barranquenho", the Barrancainian dialect. The northern extremaduran had also a sub-dialectal region in southern Salamanca, the "palra d'El Rebollal", which has almost disappeared.
History
Western Extremadura was reconquered by the
Kingdom of León, whose language,
Old Leonese, was used by the new Christian inhabitants, who arrived around the
12th century to the actual territory where Extremaduran is still spoken.
After the union of the kingdoms of Leon and Castile (into the 'Crown of Castile and Leon'), the Castilian language (
Spanish) slowly substituted Latin as the official language of the institutions, thus relegating the Old Leonese to a sign of poverty and ignorance of those who spoke it. Only in
Asturias (where the language was born) were the people conscious of speaking a language, different from Castilian; but even there only some authors used it in their writings.
Probably the cultural upheaval of Spanish-speaking
Salamanca's University was the cause of the quick Castilianisation of the eastern parts of this province, so dividing the Astur-Leonese domain between Asturian and Leonese in the north, and the Extremaduran in the south of the old Leonese kingdom. The expansion of Spanish also came from the south with the economic revival of the Province of
Badajoz.
The late
19th century saw the first serious attempt to write in Extremaduran, up to then an oral language, with the famous poet
José María Gabriel y Galán. Born in Salamanca, he lived most of his life in the north of
Cáceres, Extremadura. He wrote in a local variant of Extremaduran, full with dialectal remains, but always with an eye on Spanish usage, and also writing most of its works in Spanish.
After that, localisms are the pattern in the attempts to defend the Extremaduran language, to the extent that today only a few people try to revive the language and make northern Extremadura a bilingual region, whereas the government and official institutions think the best solution is for the northwestern Extremadurans to speak a Castilian dialect without any kind of protection. There are also attempts to transform the southern Castilian dialects ("castuo", as some people named it using the famous word which appeared in
Luis Chamizo's poems) into a language, which makes even harder to defend the "real" language, and makes it easier for the administration to reject co-officiality and normalisation of the Extremaduran. It is seriously endangered of disappearing, with only the oldest people speaking its remnants at present, while most of the extremaduran population ignores the actual delimitation (or even the existence) of the language, with almost all the written media and all the audiovisual media in Spanish.
Organizations and media
There exists a regional organization in Extremadura, APLEx, which tries to defend the Extremaduran language (and also the Spanish dialects of Extremadura), one journal (Belsana) and one cultural newspaper, Iventia, written in the new unified Extremaduran and the old sub-dialect "palra d'El Rebollal".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Extremaduran'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://extremaduran_language.totallyexplained.com">Extremaduran language Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
