Cantabrian (, in Cantabrian) is a group of dialects belonging to Astur-Leonese. It is indigenous to the territories in and surrounding the Autonomous Community of

Cantabria Cantabria (, also , , Cantabrian: ) is an autonomous community in northern Spain with Santander as its capital city. It is called a ''comunidad histórica'', a historic community, in its current Statute of Autonomy. It is bordered on the ea ...

, in Northern

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' ( Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

. Traditionally, some dialects of this group have been further grouped by the name ('from the Mountain'), ('the Mountain') being a traditional name for Cantabria due to its mountainous topography.

Distribution

These dialects belong to the Northwestern Iberian

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

and have been classified as belonging to the Astur-Leonese domain by successive research works carried out through the 20th century, the first of them, the famous work , by

Ramón Menéndez Pidal Ramón Menéndez Pidal (; 13 March 1869 – 14 November 1968) was a Spanish philologist and historian."Ramon Menendez Pidal", ''Almanac of Famous People'' (2011) ''Biography in Context'', Gale, Detroit He worked extensively on the history of t ...

. This dialect group spans the whole territory of Cantabria. In addition, there is historical evidence of traits (such as toponyms, or certain constructions) linking the speech of some nearby areas to the Cantabrian Astur-Leonese group: * The western part of

Las Encartaciones Enkarterri (Spanish: ''Las Encartaciones'') is a comarca of the province of Biscay, in the Basque Country, Spain. It is one of the seven ''eskualdeak/comarcas'' or districts that make up the province of Biscay. Its administrative centre is Balmase ...

, in

Biscay Biscay (; eu, Bizkaia ; es, Vizcaya ) is a province of Spain and a historical territory of the Basque Country, heir of the ancient Lordship of Biscay, lying on the south shore of the eponymous bay. The capital and largest city is Bilbao. ...

. * Bordering areas with

Burgos Burgos () is a city in Spain located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is the capital and most populated municipality of the province of Burgos. Burgos is situated in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, on the confluence o ...

: especially the upper valleys of Espinosa de los Monteros, where Pasiegu dialect was spoken. * Bordering areas with

Palencia Palencia () is a city of Spain located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is the capital and most populated municipality of the province of Palencia. Located in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in the northern half ...

* Valleys of Peñamellera Baja, Peñamellera Alta, eastern

Llanes Llanes (the ''Concejo de Llanes'', ''Conceyu de Llanes'' in Asturian language) is a municipality of the province of Asturias, in northern Spain. Stretching for about 30 km along the coast at the extreme east of the province, Llanes is bound ...

and Ribadedeva, in the easternmost part of

Asturias Asturias (, ; ast, Asturies ), officially the Principality of Asturias ( es, Principado de Asturias; ast, Principáu d'Asturies; Galician-Asturian: ''Principao d'Asturias''), is an autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensi ...

. Some of this areas had historically been linked to Cantabria before the

1833 territorial division of Spain The 1833 territorial division of Spain divided the country into provinces, in turn classified into "historic regions" ( es, link=no, regiones históricas). Based on the location where dialects are spoken, we find a traditional dialectal division of Cantabria, which normally corresponds to the different valleys or territories: However, based on linguistic evidence, R. Molleda proposed what is today the usual division of dialectal areas in Cantabria. Molleda proposed to take the isogloss of the masculine plural gender morphology, which seems to surround a large portion of Eastern Cantabria, running from the mouth of the Besaya River in the North, and along the Pas-Besaya watershed. He then proceeded to name the resulting areas Western and Eastern, depending on the location to the West or East of the isogloss. This division has gained support due to the fact that, although masculine morphology by itself is not a very important difference, many other isoglosses draw the same line.

Linguistic description

There are many features in common with Spanish. Cantabrian's set of consonants is nearly identical to that of Northern Iberian Spanish. In the Valles Pasiegos, becomes before voiced consonants. This has also occurred in the names of the rivers Arlanza and Arlanzón in

. This type of change is also the source of the Spanish word , from earlier . Also in the Valles Pasiegos, syllable-final word-internal and are frequently confused. In Tudanca and neighboring zones, can be aspirated, that is, pronounced as , when before consonants, or at the end of a word and before another word which begins with a vowel, as in 'the ears'. That said, cannot be aspirated before a pause in this zone. Similar patterns of -aspiration have been found in some other Astur-leonese zones as well. An important difference is preservation of the voiceless glottal fricative (/h/) as an evolution of Latin's word initial f- as well as the -hmergers; both features are common in many Spanish dialects, especially those from Southern Spain and parts of Latin America. The preservation of the voiceless glottal fricative was usual in Middle Spanish, before the /h/ in words like /humo/, from Latin ''fumus'', resulted in Modern Spanish /umo/. Every Cantabrian dialect keeps /f/ before consonants such as in /'fɾi.u/ (cold), just as Spanish and Astur-Leonese do. The - hmerger is typical in most Western and Eastern Coastal dialects, where merges into However, the Eastern dialects from the Inner Valleys have merged into moreover, there are older speakers that lack any kind of merger, fully distinguishing the minimal pair /huegu/ - /xuegu/ (fire - game). Other features are common to most Astur-Leonese dialects; some of these are: *Use of /u/ as masculine singular gender morpheme: most dialects use a closed central rounded vowel � as masculine morpheme, although only eastern dialects have shown �- contrast. *Opposition between singular and plural masculine gender morphemes. The dialectal boundaries of this feature are usually used to represent the western and eastern dialects: ** Western Dialects oppose /u/ masculine singular marker to /os/ masculine plural marker. E.g. ''perru'' (dog) but ''perros'' (dogs). ** Eastern Dialects used to oppose /ʉ/+metaphony (masc. sing.) to /us/ (masc. plural). E.g. ''pirru'' pɨ.rʉ(dog) but ''perrus'' (dogs). This opposition is nearly lost and only few speakers of the Pasiegu dialect still use it. Nowadays, the most common situation is the no-opposition, using /u/ as a masculine morpheme both in singular and plural. *Mass neuter: this feature marks uncountableness in nouns, pronouns, articles, adjectives and quantifiers. As in general Astur-Leonese, the neuter morpheme is /o/, rendering an opposition between ''pelo'' (the hair) and ''pelu'' (one strand of hair), however the actual development of this feature changes from dialect to dialect: ** Most western dialects have recently lost this distinction in nominal and adjectival morphology, merging masculine and neuter morphology (''pelu'' for both previous examples), although keeping this distinction in pronouns, quantifiers and articles, so ''lo'' (it, neuter) would refer to ''pelu'' (the hair, uncountable), but ''lu'' (it, masculine) would refer to pelu'' (hair strand, countable). ** Eastern dialects show a more complex behaviour, with metaphony as the main mechanism for neuter distinction. Due to this, word-final morphology was not so important, and the mutations in stressed and previous syllables play a more important role. Thus, these would have pɨ.lʉ(strand of hair, countable) and pe.lu(the hair, uncountable), the same applied for adjectives. Likewise, eastern dialects modified their pronoun systems in order to avoid misunderstandings, replacing ''lu'' with ''li'' (originally dative pronoun) as third person singular accusative pronoun, and using ''lu'' for mass neuter. However, this distinction has been gradually lost and is now only retained in some older speakers of Pasiegu dialect. A unique feature of these dialects is the use of feminine agreeing quantifiers with neuter nouns, such as: ''mucha pelu'' (much hair). *Dropping of the -r from verb infinitives when clitic pronouns are appended. This results in ''cantar'' (to sing) +''la'' (it, feminine) = ''cantala''. *Preference of simple verbal tenses over complex (compound) tenses, e.g. "ya acabé" (I already finished) rather than "ya he acabáu" (I have already finished).

Threats and recognition

In 2009, Cantabrian was listed as a dialect of the

Astur-Leonese language Asturleonese ( ast, Asturlleonés; es, Asturleonés; pt, Asturo-leonês; mwl, Asturlhionés) is a Romance language The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages th ...

by UNESCO's ''Red Book of the World’s Languages in Danger'', which was in turn classified as a definitely

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead lang ...

.UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger
, where Cantabria is listed as a dialect of the Astur-Leonese language.

Comparative tables

The following notes only apply for the Cantabrian derivatives, but might as well occur in other Astur-Leonese varieties: : Many verbs keep the etymological -h- or -d- as an internal -y-. This derivation is most intense in the Pasiegan Dialect. : Latin -MB- group is only retained in the derivatives of a group containing few, but very used, Latin etyma: ''lumbum'' (loin), ''camba'' (bed), ''lambere'' (lick), etc. however, it has not been retained during other more recent word derivations, such as ''tamién'' (also), which comes from the -mb- reduction of ''también'' a compound of ''tan'' (as) and ''bien'' (well). : In Pasiegan dialect, all masculine singular nouns, adjectives and some adverbs retain an ancient vowel mutation called '' Metaphony'', thus: ''lumu'' (one piece of loin) but ''lomu'' (uncountable, loin meat), the same applies for ''ḥuigu'' (a fire/campfire) and ''ḥuegu'' (fire, uncountable) and ''muistru'' and ''muestru'' (our, masculine singular and uncountable, respectively). : Most Western Cantabrian Dialects retain the ancient initial F- as an aspiration (IPA , so: FACERE > /haθer/. This feature is still productive for all etyma starting with An example of this is the Greek root ''phōs'' (light) which, through Spanish ''foto'' (photo) derives in ''ḥotu'' (IPA: otu(photography). : All Eastern Dialects have mostly lost Latin initial F-, and only keep it on certain lexicalized vestiges, such as: ḥumu (IPA: umu. Thus: FACERE > /aθer/. : Prothesis: some words derive from the addition of an extra letter (usually /a/) at the beginning of the word. ''arradiu'', ''amotu''/''amutu'', ''afutu''. :

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 ), ...

: Most Cantabrian dialects do not distinguish between the /ʝ/ (written y) and /ʎ/ (written ll) fonemes, executing both with a single sound � Thus, rendering ''poyu'' and ''pollu'' (stone seat and chicken, respectively) homophones. : Lleísmo: Pasiegan Dialect is one of the few Cantabrian Dialects which does distinguish /ʝ/ and /ʎ/. Thus, ''puyu'' and ''pullu'' (stone seat and chicken, respectively) are both written and pronounced differently. :

Palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation ...

: Cantabrian Dialects do mostly not palatalize Latin L-, however, some vestiges might be found in Eastern Cantabrian Dialects, in areas bordering Asturias (Asturian a very palatalizing language). This vestiges are often camouflaged due to the strong

. Palatalization of Latin N- is more common, and words such as ñudu (from Latin nudus), or ñublu (from Latin nubĭlus) are more common.

Sample text

Central Cantabrian

Extracted from ,

Spanish

English (approximate-literal translation)

Nothing, we tipped over, and I ended up on the ground and with some cramps that invaded me with tremors... The axis was far away, totally torn apart; the broken stakes... But even so, I was almost grateful for the header, because my heifers — which after the fall should have been left to bury – were hardly hurt. In total: Some scratches like nothing!

Footnotes

References

* * * *

External links

Cantabrian-Spanish Dictionary
in the Asturian wiktionary (in Cantabrian).
Alcuentros
Cantabrian magazine of minority languages (in Cantabrian/Spanish)
Proyeutu Depriendi
Distance learning of Cantabrian (in Cantabrian/Spanish) {{Romance languages Cantabrian culture Astur-Leonese languages