Old Leonese or Medieval Leonese is a West Iberian dialect of

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...

spoken in several regions of the

Kingdom of León The Kingdom of León; es, Reino de León; gl, Reino de León; pt, Reino de Leão; la, Regnum Legionense; mwl, Reino de Lhion was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in 910 when t ...

and the medieval Principality of Asturias. It was the ancestor of several languages, all forming the Asturleonese language family. Old Leonese was spoken until around the year 1500, and was attested starting from the 10th century with the

Nodicia de kesos In the early 20th century, Zacarías García Villada discovered the ''Nodicia de kesos'' on the backside of a tenth-century parchment recording a gift to the monastery of San Justo y Pastor, which was located in either Chozas de Abajo or Ardón ...

Phonology

Consonants

* The sound change to in some contexts may appear in Old East and Central Leonese (such as in and ). According to some researchers, this trait might have contributed to the spread of

yeísmo ''Yeísmo'' (; literally "Y-ism") is a distinctive feature of certain dialects of the Spanish language, characterized by the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme (written ) and its merger into the phoneme (written ), ...

Castilian Castilian or Castillian may refer to: * Castile (historical region), Castile, a historic region of Spain ** Castilian people, an ethnic group from Castile ** Castilian languages, a branch of the West Iberian languages consisting of all linguistic ...

, brought by Asturian and Leonese settlers.

Vowels

* Latin ŏ and ĕ developed in Old Leonese to and respectively, such as in . Compare Old Galician-Portuguese . However, in areas of Galician-Portuguese influence, monophthongisation may occur, more often in reverting to . Some texts shown both forms though ( & , & , etc.).

Literature

The first text in the Leonese vernacular was the

, dated from the 10th century. Meanwhile, in 1155, Fueru d'Aviles was written, being the oldest text in the Asturian vernacular. The majority of Old Leonese texts from the 13th century are in the book ''Étude sur l'ancien dialecte léonais d'après des chartes du XIIIe siècle'' by Erik Staaff in 1907. A notable text is the translation of ''

liber iudiciorum The ''Visigothic Code'' ( la, Forum Iudicum, Liber Iudiciorum; es, Fuero Juzgo, ''Book of the Judgements''), also called ''Lex Visigothorum'' (English: ''Law of the Visigoths''), is a set of laws first promulgated by king Chindasuinth (642–653 ...

'', the ''

Fuero juzgo The ''Fuero Juzgo'' () was a codex of Spain, Spanish laws enacted in Kingdom of Castile, Castile in 1241 by Ferdinand III of Castile, Fernando III. It is essentially a translation of the ''Liber Iudiciorum'' that was formulated in 654 by the Visigot ...

'' or ''Fueru xulgu''.

Sample text

Extract from a letter in Old Leonese, dated to 1294.Sanz Fuentes, M.J. 2012. De la vida y de la muerte. Cuatro documentos asturianos del siglo XIII. Revista de Filoloxía Asturiana. 3, 3-4 (feb. 2012). Available at: https://reunido.uniovi.es/index.php/RFA/article/view/9242 (Accessed: 28 February 2025). : Modern Asturian: : English: :

References

{{Romance languages Languages of Spain Astur-Leonese languages Languages attested from the 10th century Medieval languages