Mirandese
mirandés
Spoken in	Portugal
Region	Northeastern Portugal (municipalities of Miranda do Douro, Vimioso and Mogadouro)
Total speakers	10,000-15,000[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Gallo-Iberian Ibero-Romance West Iberian Astur-Leonese Mirandese
Official status
Official language in	Co-official recognition. Special protection status in Miranda do Douro, Portugal
Regulated by	None (but there is an orthographical convention)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	mwl
ISO 639-3	mwl
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Street sign, at Genísio village, with the street name in Mirandese and in Portuguese

The Mirandese language (autonym: mirandés or lhéngua mirandesa; Portuguese: mirandês or língua mirandesa) is a Romance language belonging to the Astur-Leonese linguistic group, sparsely spoken in a small area of northeastern Portugal, in the municipalities of Miranda do Douro, Mogadouro and Vimioso. 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).^{[citation needed]} 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 Astur-Leonese language of northern Iberia, the last remnant of the ancient language of the Kingdom of León, and closely related to modern the Astur-Leonese languages in Spain. 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.

[edit] Speakers

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.

[edit] Variants

Three variants of the Mirandese language exist: Border Mirandese (Mirandés Raiano), Central Mirandese (Mirandés Central) and Sendinese (Sendinés). Most speakers of Mirandese also speak Portuguese; some of these speak Spanish as well.

The main differences between Mirandese in Portugal and the Astur-Leonese languages in Spain are caused by the dominant languages in each region. Mirandese has been influenced phonetically and in lexicon by Portuguese and the Astur-Leonese languages in Spain by Spanish (Castilian). All have distinctive orthography that phonetically reflects the respective main national languages. Another difference is that Mirandese and Leonese remain very conservative, while Asturian has undergone a greater amount of change.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Sample text

The following is a sample text of the Mirandese language, written by Amadeu Ferreira, and published in the newspaper Público, on the 24th July 2007.

Then a comparison of the previous text in three modern languages of the Astur-leones group:

[edit] National attention

Public sign with the history of Miranda do Douro Cathedral written in Mirandese.

Mirandese, given its status as second official language in Portugal after Portuguese, has been the object, in the last years, of some publicity and attention in the rest of the country. A monthly chronicle in Mirandese, by researcher and writer Amadeu Ferreira, appears in the daily Portuguese national newspaper Público. The first volume of the The Adventures of Asterix, named Asterix, L Goulés (Asterix the Gaul), was published in a Mirandese translation by Amadeu Ferreira in 2005, and sold all throughout Portugal. Amadeu Ferreira also translated into Mirandese the epic poem by Camões, Os Lusíadas (Ls Lusíadas), under his pseudonym Francisco Niebro and published it in 2009.

[edit] See also

• Astur-Leonese Group

[edit] References

• FERREIRA, Manuela Barros e RAPOSO, Domingos (coord) (1999), Convenção Ortográfica da Língua Mirandesa, Miranda do Douro / Lisbon, ed. Câmara Municipal de Miranda do Douro / Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa

[edit] External links

Mirandese language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mirandese language

• (Portuguese) Orthographic Convention for Mirandese Language (PDF)
• Ethnologue report for Miranda do Douro (Mirandese)
• Mirandés na Net Lhéngua i Cultura Mirandesa (Mirandese Language & Culture)
• Excerpt of The Lusiads in Mirandese
• L Mirandés: Ũa Lhéngua Minoritaira an Pertual Mirandese: A minority language in Portugal (PDF, in Mirandese)
• (Portuguese) Piece of legislation which officially recognizes Mirandese as a language of Portugal