Mirandese ( ) is an Asturleonese language or variety that is sparsely spoken in a small area of northeastern Portugal in eastern Tierra de Miranda, an ethnocultural region comprising the area around the municipalities of Miranda de l Douro, Mogadouro and Bumioso. It is extinct in Mogadouro and present in Bumioso only in some eastern villages, like Angueira. The Assembly of the Republic granted Mirandese official recognition alongside Portuguese for local matters with Law 7/99 of 29 January 1999. In 2001, Mirandese was officially recognised by the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, which aimed to promote the survival of the least-spoken European languages.
Mirandese has a distinct phonology, morphology and syntax. It has its roots in the local Vulgar Latin spoken in the northern Iberian Peninsula.
The language is a descendant of the Asturleonese variety spoken in the Kingdom of León and has both archaisms and innovations that differentiate it from the modern varieties of Asturleonese spoken in Spain. In recognition of these differences, and due to its political isolation from the other Asturleonese-speaking regions, Mirandese has adopted a different written norm to the one used in Spain for Asturleonese.
History Mirandese is a descendant of the Old Leonese language spoken in the Kingdom of León in medieval Iberia. In the early 16th century, Old Leonese began to split, alongside Galician–Portuguese, into the varieties existing today, one of them being Mirandese.
Until 1884, Mirandese was a purely spoken language, but in that year, José Leite de Vasconcelos wrote the book (, in Mirandese), in which he proposed a writing system for Mirandese. The system included a large number of diacritics which have helped to convey how Mirandese sounded in the 19th century.
Transcribed below is a poem included in as a sample text, (, spelled in the modern orthography):
Vasconcelos's orthography (1884)First official orthography (1990s)Current orthographyEnglish translation
In the 19th century, Leite de Vasconcelos described Mirandese as "the language of the farms, of work, home, and love between the Mirandese". Since 1986–87, it has been taught optionally to students at the primary and lower secondary level, and has thus been somewhat recovering. By Law 7/99, Mirandese was given official recognition by the Assembly of the Republic alongside Portuguese. The law provides for its promotion and allows its usage for local matters in Miranda de l Douro.
In 1999, Mirandese gained its first official orthography, which was later tweaked in 2000. Today Mirandese retains speakers in most of the villages of the municipality of Miranda de l Douro and in some villages of Bumioso (such as Vilar Seco and Angueira); and some linguistic influence can be observed at other villages of the municipality of Bumioso and the municipalities of Mogadouro, Macedo de Cavaleiros and Bragança.
A 2020 survey by the University of Vigo, carried out in Miranda de l Douro and Bumioso, estimated the number of speakers of the language to be around 3,500, with 1,500 of them being regular speakers. The study observed strong decline in the usage of the language in younger people, verifying a roughly 40% decline in the exclusive use of Mirandese across the 32 settlements where it is still spoken, when comparing speakers aged over 60 to the teen population, alongside a modest increase of about 8% in bilingual usage between those same demographics.Persente i feturo de la
lhéngua mirandesa, Universidade de Vigo, p. 37
Lack of protection measures There are significant limitations in the protection of the Mirandese language:
Portugal has not ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. There is no Mirandese law, its use in courts or public administration is not legal. The budget for the protection and promotion of Mirandese is not implemented. Lack of specialized teacher training, translations and media Education in Mirandese is not mandatory and discouraged Most software applications do not support Mirandese, with the exceptions of SwiftKey and Heliboard on mobile.
The following measures have been taken to protect and develop Mirandese:
Allow primary teaching staff in the district of Miranda de l Douro to teach in Mirandese, since 1986/1987, thanks to the ministerial authorisation published on 9 September 1985. Publish books in Mirandese and about the Mirandese language, promoted by the Council of Miranda de l Douro. Facilitate annual celebrations in the city as well as a literary competition, promoted by the Council of Miranda do Douro. Use Mirandese in town celebrations, official commemorations and, occasionally, on social media. Publish two volumes of the Asterix comic books. Translate all the toponymic signs in Miranda do Douro, promoted by the Council of Miranda do Douro in 2006. Develop studies by research centres in Portugal, such as , by the at University of Lisbon, and , by the University of Coimbra. Create Biquipédia, a Mirandese-language Wikipedia. Make sites available in Mirandese, such as Photoblog and WordPress. Record Mirandese music, with singers including Roberto Leal in his albums (2007) and / (2010). Integrated into the SwiftKey keyboard in 2018, with autocorrect and word suggestions. Participation in the European Language Equality project (2021–2022), which promotes digital equality by 2030. Create a GNOME Translation Team to help translate Linux distros into Mirandese.
Recognition Mirandese, given its status as a recognised language in Portugal after Portuguese, has been the subject in recent years of some publicity and attention in other parts of Portugal. A monthly chronicle in Mirandese, by researcher and writer Amadeu Ferreira, appears in the daily Portuguese national newspaper Público. The first volume of the Adventures of Asterix, named Asterix, L Goulés (Asterix the Gaul), was published in a Mirandese translation by Amadeu Ferreira in 2005, and sold throughout Portugal. Amadeu Ferreira also translated into Mirandese the epic poem by Camões, Os Lusíadas (Ls Lusíadas), under his pseudonym Francisco , and published it in 2009. In 2011, the four Gospels of the Bible's New Testament were translated into Mirandese, and in 2013 the entire Bible was translated into the language by Domingos Augusto Ferreira.
Variants Three primary variants of the Mirandese language exist: Border Mirandese (), Central Mirandese () and Sendinese (). Most speakers of Mirandese also speak Portuguese.
Despite there being a singular writing system for Mirandese, there is one phoneme that is written differently in different dialects. In the Sendinese dialect, many words that in other dialects are said with , are said with : examples include for ; for ; for .
The main orthographical differences between Mirandese in Portugal and the Asturleonese languages in Spain are caused by the dominant languages in each region. And while Mirandese has been influenced phonetically and in lexicon by Portuguese and the Asturleonese languages in Spain by Spanish, they retain more similarities among themselves than to the main languages of each country. Another difference is that Mirandese and Leonese remain very conservative, while Asturian has undergone a greater amount of change.
Phonology Development Some historical developments in Mirandese are the following: Mirandese maintains distinct reflexes of all seven Ibero-Romance sibilants: {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;" |- ! Proto–Ibero-Romance||Mirandese||Portuguese||Northern/Central Spanish
| or || / || / || / |- | || / || / || / |- | |||| || / |- | || / || / ||
and indicate apico-alveolar sibilants (as in modern Catalan, northern/central peninsular Spanish and coastal northern European Portuguese), while and are dentalized laminal alveolar sibilants (as in most modern Portuguese, French and English). The unrelated Basque language also maintains a distinction between and (Basque has no voiced sibilants), which suggests that the distinction originally was an areal feature across Iberia.
Portuguese spelling still distinguishes all seven sibilants and is identical to Mirandese spelling in this respect, but in pronunciation, Portuguese has reduced them to four except in northern hinterland European Portuguese dialects, including those in the area where Mirandese is also spoken. Northern/central Peninsular Spanish has also reduced them to four but in quite a different way: . Western Andalusian Spanish and Latin American Spanish have further reduced them to three: .
Retention of the initial from Latin, like all of Western and Central Asturleonese and Galician-Portuguese. Development of the Latin initial consonant clusters , , evolve into , as in Leonese and Galician-Portuguese. Development of the medial clusters and as , like in Galician-Portuguese and various Western Asturleonese varieties. The cluster /-mb-/ is kept, like various Asturleonese varieties. Development of as : > . Preservation of the falling diphthongs and , like Western Asturleonese and Galician Portuguese, but not any other Asturleonese varieties nor Castilian. Raising of final to , as in Asturleonese and Galician-Portuguese. Retention of voiced sibilants, like Portuguese, but unlike most West-Iberian varieties of Spain. Retention of intervocalic , , like all West-Iberian varieties besides Galician-Portuguese Frequent diphthongization of Western Romance , to , , as in some Leonese varieties; this happens not only before palatals, as in Aragonese, but also before nasals. Word-initial palatalization of , as in other Asturleonese varieties and Catalan.
Consonants Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal VelarNasal Plosive Affricate Fricative Approximant ~ () Trill Tap
As stated above, the laminal dental sibilants correspond to Portuguese . These are spelled c/ç and z. The corresponding alveolar sibilants are apical and are spelled s(s) and s. Furthermore, there is an additional palatal affricate ch that is distinct from the fricative , spelled x. The voiced is spelled j or g, as in Portuguese. Standard Portuguese has reduced all these sounds to just four fricatives: . The "hard" or "long" R is an alveolar trill , as in other varieties of Asturleonese and in Spanish. The Portuguese uvular fricative is not found in Mirandese. The "soft" or "short" R is an ordinary alveolar tap commonly found in the Iberian Peninsula. As in other languages spoken in the region, the two contrast only in word-internal position. Voiced stops may be lenited as fricatives .
Vowels Mirandese has the same basic phonemes as most Asturleonese varieties, but with some differences in allophones: +Mirandese vowels Front Central Back Close Mid Open
has allophones of , of , of , of , and of . Vowels can become glides when preceding or following other vowels. All vowel phonemes have nasal counterparts, reflected in all its allophones.
Orthography Mirandese is written using the Latin alphabet, and its orthography is based on that of Portuguese: Letters and Digraphs Names IPA Uppercase Lowercase A a á [a] AN an— [ã(ŋ)] B b bé [b], [β] C c cé, qué [k], [s̻] Ç ç cé de cedilha [s̻], [z̻] D d dé [d], [ð] E e é [ə~e~ɛ] EN en— [ə̃~ẽ~ɛ̃(ŋ)] F f fé [f] G g gué [g], [ɣ], [ʒ] H h hagá— I i i [i], [ɪ], [j] ([ɨj], Sendinese) IN in— [ĩ(ŋ)], [ɪ̃(ŋ)] [j̃] ([ɨj̃], Sendinese) J j jé [ʒ] L l lé [l], [ɫ] LH lh— [ʎ] M m mé [m],[ ̃ ] N n né [n], [ ̃ ], [ŋ] NH nh— [ɲ] O o ó [o~ɔ] [u~ʊ] ON on— [õ~ɔ̃(ŋ)] P p pé [p] Q q qué [k] R r ré [ɾ], [r] RR rr— [r] S s sé [s̺], [z̺] SS ss— [s̺] T t té [t] U u u [u~ʊ], [w] UN un—[ũ~ʊ̃(ŋ)] X x xiç [ʃ], [k͡s̻] Y y i griego [j~ʝ] Z z zé [z̻]
Superseded orthography