Leonés (Asturleone from León and Zamora)

Leonese Leonese (called in traditional languages as cabreirés, senabrés or paḷḷuezu) is the gluttony term used to refer to the set of vernacular Romance speeches of the Asturian language in the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora.

The term Leonés has also been used historically by certain authors, since Menéndez Pidal published his study On the Leonese dialect in 1906, to refer to the entire language, whose location has traditionally been located from Cantabria to Extremadura, although currently in these last two communities only transitional dialects with Castilian are spoken, as is also the case with the traditional languages of the province of Salamanca. On the other hand, given the little social and political acceptance of calling the language Leonese in Asturias, and Asturian the language in other parts of the domain such as León or Zamora, today an important part of the authors and specialists prefer to refer to the whole of the same as Astur-Leonese, although others continue to use regional or regional denominations (such as Asturian, Leonese, Mirandés, etc.).

Derived from Latin, it was implanted as the language used both publicly and privately in the territories of the kingdom of León until it was gradually replaced by Spanish in public use after the union of both kingdoms, being reduced to an area of oral use, where the Spanish language acquired a predominant role.

After several centuries relegated to the background, in the XIX century it began its recovery, consolidated throughout the century XX, with authors such as Eva González Fernández, and especially in the early years of the XXI, with a new generation of writers joined by various sociolinguistic studies, as well as various cultural associations and institutions (being recognized by the Statute of Autonomy of Castilla y León) encourage its use and dissemination.

Unesco lists Astur-Leonese as an endangered language and recommends its preservation.

Denominations

There are several autoglotonyms used by different groups to refer to Leonese:

• Lilione or asturllionés: is the one used by a series of cultural groups and associations without political ends (Furmientu, The Caleya, Facendera pola Llengua, The Teixu and Faceira) and writers (Roberto González-Quevedo, Héctor Xil, Xosepe Vega, Xairu López...) who make use of the orthographic norms of the Asturian Language Academy and therefore, among other orthographic resources, do not use the diheresis to show the dial in a diptongo. This group is based on the fact that so much Leon Like Asturian or mirandés, are denominations that, although with their respective dialectical peculiarities in the case of the Mirandés, refer to the same language, called linguistically asturleon (form used by the RAE).
• Lleonés: according to the Dictionary of the Asturian Language Academy.
• Llïonés (with diéresis): denomination promoted by the political leader Abel Pardo Fernández, Conceyu Xovenin the activities that he promoted when he occupied the Council of Culture of the City of León, as well as some cultural groups or associations such as L'Alderique, CommunityLeoness.ES, The Fueyu, The Toralin and The Barda (all chaired by members of the political organization Conceyu Xoven or linked to it). These groups consider that Leon and Asturian, although belonging to the same linguistic domain, two different languages should be considered. Professors of the University of León have deauthorized this denomination.
• Take it, lleounés, Lliounésor lliunés: is the way used by some media. A lack of linguistic criteria, in some cases it is used pejoratively.

Linguistic description

Classification

Most of the current Leonese languages are included within the western dialect of Astur-Leonese, which is also the most widespread in Asturias, occupying most of western Asturias from the Cantabrian coast and which also includes Mirandés from Miranda do Douro in Portugal. Astur-Leonese is a language evolved from Latin, and is included within the Romance Ibero-Romance languages. In turn, this language is subdivided into three dialects or linguistic blocks (western, central and eastern) that vertically trace the actual division of the language from north to south, from Asturias to northern Portugal:

Western Bloc

It is the block with the largest territorial extension in both Asturias and León, and it is the only one spoken in Portugal. In Spain it covers the speeches of councils and western regions of Asturias, León and Zamora, while in Portugal it is found in the municipality of Miranda do Douro and the towns of Río de Onor and Guadramil. It is the dialect used as a normative base in León and Miranda, and in Asturias it also has its own normative used by several authors who consider it as their mother dialect. Characteristics, in front of the central block:

• Conservation of decreasing diptongos ei and ou (as in caldeiru and cousa).
• plural females in - (houses, cows), although in San Ciprián de Sanabria there are also female plurals in -.
• It has three possible solutions in diptongation or brief Latin tonic (door, bid, bid).

Central block

Groups the subdialects of central Asturias and those of the Argüellos region of Leon. Although its territorial extension is smaller than that of the western one within Asturias itself, it brings together a greater number of speakers because the central area of the Asturian autonomous community where it is spoken is the most populated of the entire linguistic domain with three large nuclei of population, Oviedo, Gijón and Avilés. It is the one used as the basis for the normative Astur-Leonese most used in Asturias by writers, journalists and public institutions, although both the Western and the Eastern also have regulations adapted to some use, especially in the case of Western Astur-Leonese. Most notable differences of central Astur-Leonese with respect to the western dialect:

• Monoptongation of decreasing diptongos (calderu, Something).
• Existence of a third neutral genus in - or in adjectives for uncountable continuous concepts, collectivities and abstracts (the humid earth, the dry yolk, the xente mozo, a cold morning...). This neutral genus is also present in the Eastern Bloc, but it is non-existent in the West.
• Termination in - for plural females (les cases, les vaques), except in the Alto Aller, Lena (valle del Huerna), Argüellos, Gordon and former Concejo de Alba (La Robla, León) where the plural is made in -as.
• Single diptongation or brief Latin (door).

Eastern Bloc

It covers the subdialects of eastern Asturias and the northeastern area of the province of León. One of the main characteristics that differentiates it from the other two previous dialects:

• La f- Latin initial becomes a h- vacuum.

Regarding the dialectology of the Leonese territory, there are subdialects or minor entities such as Berciano-Sanabrés, Cepedano-Alistano, Leonés-Ribereño and Leonés Extremado.

Regarding transitional speech, we find dialect areas with a strong Asturian influence such as Extremadura, Cantabrian or Salamanca speech.

Phonology and writing

Phonology

The transcription is done according to the rules of the international phonetic alphabet.

Vocals

The vowel system of Leonese distinguishes five phonemes in tonic position, divided into three degrees of opening (minimum, medium and maximum) and three situations (central, anterior and posterior). In unstressed position (pretonic or final) the number of possible allophones is reduced to three [a, i, u]. /e/ and /i/ merge into [i] (in pretonic position above all), while /o/ and /u/ merge into [u]; there are some rules to opt for one of the two spellings at the time of writing.

Consonants

/n/ is pronounced as /ŋ/ in coda position and /g/ is often pronounced as a voiced fricative even at the beginning of a word.

The phoneme /ʝ ~ j/ has several allophones [ɟʝ ~ dʒ] (after pause or nasal) and [ʝ ~ ʒ] in all other contexts.

Writing

Leonese is written using the Latin alphabet, but lacks an officially regulated written standard. Some associations have proposed their own standard, differentiated from those already existing in the linguistic domain (such as the one applicable in Asturias, regulated by the Asturian Language Academy, or the Anstituto de la Lhéngua Mirandesa, applicable to the Mirandés de Miranda do Douro), while other associations and writers from León and Zamora propose to follow the spelling rules of the Academy of the Asturian Language.

Dialectal graphies

The Academy of the Asturian Language proposes the following solutions for the western and eastern dialectal varieties:

• The digit El (che vaqueira, also represented, among other graphs, as «ts» to reflect in writing the speech of the western zones, where the phone /č/ has that phonetic realization) is used to represent sounds considered varieties of the fonema ///, mainly in the variety of Western asturleones ( obu) for example.
• The grafema ḥ (aspired car) represents the fonema /h/, especially in the areas of the eastern asturleon where the f- Latina is aspirated: (ḥaba).

As the graphemes ḥ and ḷḷ do not appear in most of the typefaces commonly used in both computer media and graphic publications, they are often changed, and this is also supported, by h. and l.l (“ts”) respectively.

Sample Text

Historical Changes

Religious groups

• The /-li-/ Latin group originates "-y-" in Leon, being a solution of its own within Romanesque languages.
• Palatalization of /pl-/, /fl-/, /kl-/ in /t a/ or conservation and substitution of /l/ by /r/, as in Portuguese and Galician.
• The Latin /-mb-/ group is preserved in lioness.
• The Latin initial /f-/ is preserved in lioness (in the east lioness it aspires), as in Italian, French or Romanian.
• The Latin initial /l-/ is palated in lioness, as in Catalan.
• The Latin initial /n-/ is usually palatalized in lioness, being a distinctive feature.
• The lioness maintains the /-e/ of the Latin infinitives, like the Italian.
• Yod+t development in /-lt-/, /-kt-/ groups (resulting in [-jt-]).
• Diptongation /o/ y /e/ ante Yod.

Grammar

Substantive

Nouns have two genders: masculine and feminine, as well as two numbers: singular and plural. The main endings, by gender and number, are:

• Male in -u, plural in -os: the feitu, the feit(The fact, the facts).
• Female in -a, plural in -as: The cousa, The cous(The thing, the things).

Adjectives

Adjectives have two genders: masculine and feminine, as well as two numbers: singular and plural. The main endings, by gender and number, are:

• Male in -u, plural in -os: feyu, fey(feo, ugly).
• Female in -a, plural in -as: piqueiña, piqueiñ(small, small).
• Male/female in -e, plural in -es: rote. rotis (podrid, possible).

The adjective in Leonese agrees in gender and number with the noun, as it happens in other Latin languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese or Italian.

Positive

Leonese includes the article in a position before the possessive determiner, as in Galician or Italian.

• Leonés: the mieu teléfonu, My cows.
• Gallego: o meu phone, as my cows.
• Castellano: my phone, my cows.

Articles

The articles in Leonese are:

Names

The personal pronouns in Leonese are:

• You.
• You.
• He, eilla, eillu.
• Weoutros.
• Vosoutros.
• Eillos, eillas.

Demonstrative

Leonese has the following demonstrative determiners:

Unique

• Male: This one, that one.
• Female: This one, that one, that one.

Plural

• Male: These, those, skeletons.
• Female: These, those, squats.

Verbs

There are three conjugations in Leonese:

• First conjugation: finished verbs in -are.
• Second conjugation: finished verbs in -ere.
• Third conjugation: finished verbs in -I'll go..

Leonese lacks compound tenses in its verbal system, relying on a system in which actions are subdivided into categories:

• Past: finished action.
• Present: action being developed.
• Future: action to be developed.

Leonese divides the mood into the indicative mood and the subjunctive mood.

Apostrofation

Leonese uses apostrophations, especially with articles: l'amigu (the friend).

Contracts

Leonese uses contractions between articles and other determiners: na (in the).

Comparison tables

See more comparative tables

Historical, social and cultural aspects

History of the language

The transformation from Latin to Leonese occurs in a progressive and imperceptible way as it happens in the rest of the languages, so it is impossible to date precisely when Latin becomes Leonese. From Asturias it spread almost to Andalusia. In the Middle Ages it was considered that Leonese was preferred for literature, however, Castilian was displacing it very soon.

CenturyVIII

In the 8th century century, the language of the Church and administration was so different from that spoken that one can already Think of two different systems: Latin and Romance. Thus, in the X century we have a writing in the Romance language, the Kesos News, in the one in which the romance of that time replaces the Latin in a routine act of buying and selling. The language of this writing is considered as the prelude to Astur-Leonés.

CenturyXII

The area of the current Asturleon linguistic domain is largely confined to the limits of what during the centuries I and IIIa. C. was the extension of the territory astur. The origin of this name is supposedly in the river Amount (Esla). By him, his riversiders were called astures and this gentile was extended to all the inhabitants of that territory, whose capital, by the effect of romanization, was called Asturica Augusta (Astorga) by the Romans. The territory was sometimes called Asturia (existing a Asturia cismontana and a transmontana Asturia). In the centuryVIII this enclave became the germ of Asturorum Regnum (Kingdom of Asturias), later called the kingdom of Leon (sixteenth century)X). As a result of these historic changes the Latin spoken by the astures evolved into a language of romance of its own

The reconquest made it easier for the Latvian Romance language to expand into the new territories of the Leonian kingdom, thus setting up a new linguistic domain that was progressively diminishing and yielding land to the Castilian language.

Map of romance languages in Europe in the centuryXX.

The language used in the writing of all kinds of acts will progressively be Astur-Leonese in the territory of the Kingdom of León. It is therefore a language that is used at an administrative, public and private level: wills, letters of sale, everything in this period is written in Asturian Romance. Even legal writings such as the Fuero juzgo and the fueros granted to various cities such as Avilés, Oviedo, León, Zamora or Salamanca are drafted. chancellery. Outside the administrative and legal sphere, features of the Leonese style of the XIII century can be distinguished in manuscripts such as the Libro de Alexandre or the Dispute de Elena y María, probably introduced by copyists from Leon.

CenturyXIV

Including the Leonese territories under the Castilian orbit, and in the time in which the appropriate circumstances could arise for its development as a language of prestige and culture, Castilian will replace Leonese in these areas, as well as in neighboring Galicia, postponing it to oral use, as happened before with Latin. Consequently, there will be a significant distance between the spoken language and the written language, Spanish.

CenturyXV

From this century to the 18th century this period can be referred to as the dark centuries, where, like In other areas of the Iberian Peninsula and Europe, the languages of the resulting states, in a process of centralization, will marginalize those of the rest of those territories, removing linguistic and cultural homogenization that endangers the existence of some languages and leads to the dialectal fragmentation of these.

CenturyXVI

In the Modern Age, production in Leonese was focused on the literary field where authors such as Juan del Enzina, Lucas Fernández or Torres Naharro published works using Leonese, especially those focused on eclogues.

CenturyXVIII

With the Enlightenment movement, a drive for the recovery of languages (dialects in the terminology of the time) was glimpsed, with Jovellanos proposing the creation of an Academy, a grammar and a dictionary of the bable, name also applied to Astur-Leonese. There is also a literary activity that suggests the possibility of a continuity of Asturian literature since the Middle Ages. Another prominent author is Torres Villarroel, from Salamanca.

CenturyXIX

It is at this time with Romanticism, as in all of Europe, when languages gained momentum in the literature and culture of that time. In the Asturian linguistic domain, this path is followed. In Miranda the Gospels are translated, as in León where we can add the existence of poetry of a minor nature. It is in Asturias where it regains more strength, mainly due to the presence of the university. Thus there will be grammar proposals, dictionaries and a bulky literature with authors such as José Caveda y Nava or Juan María Acebal.

CenturyXX.

Map of extension of the asturleon language until the twentieth century

At the beginning of the century, this period of recovery followed with an approach to the aesthetic models of the time, with people like José García Peláez («Pepín de Pría») and especially Father Galo Fernández ("Fernán Coronas"), author of a melancholic poetry in which he confronts the linguistic reality of Asturias, León, Zamora and Miranda as a basis for access to a prestigious language. Spanish Civil War and the subsequent period of the Franco dictatorship, this project stops and falls into oblivion. In the 1970s, the project was resumed and materialized in the creation of the Academia de la Llingua, an official body, in literary growth and in a social demand for the language, which contributed to its presence in the Asturian school and Mirandesa, along with a broad petition for its official status (already achieved in the Mirandes case). Nothing else would be left to include León and Zamora in that normalizing process that concerns the entire domain.

Eva González Fernández, born in Palacios del Sil, is the most important writer in the Leonese language of this period. Her writing stems entirely from oral tradition, even following its metric, style and rhythm.Her son Roberto González-Quevedo, a member of the Academy of Asturian Language, continues the work of dignifying and disseminating the Leonese language undertaken for her mother.

The result of various collective initiatives, and successor to various personal contributions made in the eighties, Facendera pola Llengua was born in León in 1994, a collective that defends a new role for the Asturian people. Since its creation, it has organized courses, talks and all kinds of activities leading to filling the great information gaps in Leon and Zamora society. Its objective is to bring closer the reality of the Asturian language, its history, its literature and its situation.

CenturyXXI

Flowering of Leonese literature. Roberto González-Quevedo became the most recognized and prolific writer in the Leonese language. After him a new generation of writers emerged, mostly sponsored by the writer and editor Xosepe Vega Rodríguez and the editorial project of Libros Filandón, which aims to serve as a support for the development of literature and the creation of Leonese authors, but especially for creative expression in the traditional languages of that region. A more accentuated claim begins on the part of cultural associations that ask for a complete institutional implication regarding the protection and promotion of the use of Leonese, and at the initiative of the University of León, a series of linguistic congresses are held with the aim of laying the foundations for linguistic normalization.

History of his studio

CenturyXIX

Various studies and dictionaries related to the Latvian language

Research on Leonese as a language began, at an international level, in the XIX century. The German Gessner published Das Altleonesische in Berlin in 1867, identifying the language of the former kingdom of León as Leonese. In Santiago de Chile, Hanssen published in 1896, his Studies on the Leonese conjugation.

Centuries XX. and XXI

The beginning of the XX century is the point at which studies and the production of works in Leonese reach a great level. In 1906 Menéndez Pidal carried out a study on the entire Asturian language domain, creating a school that would set the standard not only for Spanish philology, but also internationally. The study on Leonese not only focuses on the present reality but also on the from Leon in the Middle Ages. The Swede Erik Staaf published the Étude sur l'ancien dialecte léonnais d'après les chartes du XIIIÈ siècle in 1907 and Hanssen himself published in 1910 The Leonese infinitives of the Poem of Alexander.

International-class philologists, such as the German Krüger, are interested in studies on Leonese and after a study on the West (1906), he studied Leonese in Sanabria (1923). In 1999, the Breton professor of philology Janick Le Men published León Lexicon.

Other philologists will publish works on Leonese in certain counties and regions. Santiago Garrote does so about Astorga, Agustín Blánquez about Alcañices, Puebla de Sanabria and La Bañeza, and Américo Castro who in his 1913 work Contribution to the study of the Leonese dialect of Zamora analyzes Leonese in that province. In Salamanca, where Leonese has been less studied, the linguist and professor Antonio Llorente Maldonado studied the extinct Riberan language, giving it an "eminent Western Leonese dialectal character, with abundant archaic features", also identifying in it common elements with Sayagués and the mirandés.

Later, during the second half of the 20th century and first half of the XXI, several linguistic studies will be carried out focused on the traditional Leonese languages that still today (2010) maintain patrimonial speakers. Among other examples, in 1948, the ethnologist María Concepción Casado Lobato published El Habla de Cabrera Alta; in 1959 the philologist Ángel R. Fernández González published The speech and popular culture of Oseja de Sajambre; in 1985 the philologist and professor Guzmán Álvarez Pérez published El habla de Babia y Laciana; in 2001 the philologist Roberto González-Quevedo published La Fala de Palacios del Sil; Margarita Álvarez Rodríguez published in 2010 a complete study of the phonetic, morphological and vocabulary characteristics of Valdesamario and in 2011 Professor Fernando Bello published Lexicon and literature of oral tradition in the environment of Las Médulas. These works were complemented by different dictionaries and vocabulary compilations: Vocabulariu de Palacios del Sil, by Roberto González-Quevedo, Vocabulariu de La Baña, by Jonatan Rodríguez Bayo, The vocabulary of the Lomba Council in the mountains of León, by César Morán Bardón, the posthumous work of José Díaz y Díaz-Caneja and Olegario Díaz-Caneja, completed before 1965, was published in 2001 under the title of Vocabulario sajambriego; Diccionario de Sanabrés and New Dictionary of Sanabrés, by José Domingo Martín Álvarez or Voces del Eria: uses of the Leonese dialect in the Valdería by Isidora Rivas Turrado, among others.

At the end of 2017, and with the financial support of the Junta de Castilla y León, the University of León began the development of the embryo of the "Chair of Leonese Studies", mainly in what will be its organization and fit into the university structure. In addition, it is expected that, once it is launched, the chair will also open the door to the teaching of Leonese and that schoolchildren will choose it as one more subject in their academic training.

Current extension of the asturleon language in the 21st century

Use and Distribution

Geographic distribution

Asturleon linguistic domain map

Linguistically, it is considered that within the Astur-Leonese linguistic domain, the denominations known as Leonés, Asturiano or Mirandés form part of a macrolanguage, understood as a language that exists in the form of different linguistic varieties, where the isoglottic traces, especially in Vocalism and cultured groups evolve from West to East, thus sharing some traits with Galician-Portuguese and Castilian.

By geographical extension, linguistics describes that the fundamental features of the Asturian language currently extend through Asturias, León, Zamora and Miranda do Douro. The common character of Astur-Leonese in all these territories is not characterized by being an aggregation of an Asturian dialect, another from Leon, another from Zamora, another from Salamanca and another from Mirandés; The first scientific division of Asturias-Leonese, described by linguistics, is precisely another, vertical and divided into three cross-border dialect blocks shared mainly between Asturias and León: Occidental, Central and Oriental. Only at a second level of analysis could smaller entities be described. Political or administrative entities and linguistic spaces rarely coincide biunivocally, the most common is that languages cross borders and do not coincide with them.

• The Dictionary of Philological Terms defines linguistic domain as a geographical territory in which a language or a dialect is spoken.

• The DRAE collects only the meaning of Leon as synonymous with asturleon(Romance dialect born in Asturias and in the ancient kingdom of León as a result of the peculiar evolution experienced there by the Latin) and not as a specific denomination of the variety of this dialect spoken in Castile and Leon (if it collects, instead, the denomination of Asturian for the variety of asturleonés spoken in Asturias).
• The DALLA refers to Leon as a linguistic modality, and in the same way defines mirandés as an asturleon linguistic variety (which is spoken in Miranda del Douro).
• The Atlas of the Unesco of the Languages in Danger in the World brings together the words of Asturias, northwest of Castile and Leon, Cantabria and Extremadura with the name of asturleoness.
• SIL identifies with ISO 639 code («ast») the Asturleonian, whom he also appoints asturian, lioness or bable.
• The association Ethnologue identifies the Asturian as an alternative name of the Asturleonian and identifies the Leonid as a dialect of that language.

Use and status

Number of speakers

There is no linguistic census that makes it possible to know precisely the real number of Leonese speakers in the provinces of León and Zamora. The estimates made range between 5,000 and 50,000 speakers.

Perception of speakers

Current linguistic map of the provinces of Zamora and León

Some sociolinguistic studies state that 82.6% of the Asturians surveyed believe that there is no Asturian beyond the borders of the Asturian autonomous community. Other studies carried out in the Leonese municipalities that border Asturias state that 65% of those surveyed believe they do not agree or disagree that the traditional speech of León has linguistic unity with Asturian; Paradoxically, in this same study, the speakers mostly refer to the language as Asturian-Leonese.

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This inconsistency is mainly due to the fact that 30% of the Leonese population has not internalized the idea that Asturian or Leonese is a different language from Spanish.

On the other hand, a quarter of Leonese say they understand traditional speech and 67.2% of Leonese are in favor of collaborating with Asturias on language policy. Almost 50% are in favor of traditional speech (whether called Leonese, Asturleonés, Fala or Bable) acquiring full legal recognition in the Statute of Autonomy, compared to 42% who would not agree at all or little.

Regardless of the name given to traditional languages, they have generally enjoyed little reputation among the speakers themselves, especially in rural areas. To the point of wanting to hide them in the presence of outsiders, considering them crude and typical of illiterates compared to Spanish, the language to which they would grant greater social prestige. The study Limits of the western Leonese dialect in Alcañices, Puebla de Sanabria and La Bañeza from 1907 clearly reflects this negative connotation that the speaker has towards his own language:

See what happened to me among others in Rioconejos, the people of the Puebla de Sanabria party. He talked to the mayor, the pedantic, and four or five other men: at the entrance of the people I had found two women who carried the cows to a meadow, and asked them for the house of the mayor: I'll go by., tells me one of them, I think the youngest, and to the doughnut is the house: this indicated to me of course that the dialect should be there quite alive; however, I spoke to them of indifferent things first, and I observed some words of leon; I asked questions later, and when I knew my object, those who spoke almost at once, they were silent, and only one, who seemed or had more worship, answered denying that there was said, cousa, outru, I die, etc., and the others were limited to saying: "no, no, sir: here is not said that; that is by the mountain range; those of Cabrera did. over. so." At last I was able to convince them that nothing bad meant to them; that their language was not uncultivated, that it was a dialect as respectable as Galician, Catalan, etc.: then the mayor, who seemed a good subject, confessed to me that, indeed, such was speech, though he tended to disappear.

Agustín Blánquez Fraile.

Political recognition

Only Mirandés enjoys official recognition in the municipality of Miranda de Duero by virtue of Law No. 7/99 of January 29, 1999 of the Portuguese Republic (Official recognition of language rights of the community of Mirandesa) while in the Spanish autonomous communities of Castilla y León and Asturias only the language is mentioned to indicate that it will be the object of protection, use and promotion, without any official recognition. Orthographic Convention of the Mirandese Language refers to 'zones from Leon in Portugal', and Mirandese is identified as a language that, even though it belongs to the same linguistic domain as Asturian or Leonese, it is believed appropriate to use a spelling closest to Portuguese.

In October 2005, the cultural associations Facendera pola Llengua Llionesa, Furmientu and Xunta pola Defensa de la Llingua Asturiana issued a joint statement in the one that they ask, attending to the debate of the statutory reform in Asturias and in Castilla y León, responsibility to the political representatives to achieve the maximum possible degree of protection, legal status and normalization of the language. In this sense, these associations understand that it is interesting to use a common term to refer to the language that, in line with the sociopolitical reality of León and Zamora, does not create confusion before the Spanish and European institutions and makes it clear that they are talking about the same language as the one mentioned in the Statute of Autonomy of Asturias.

Leonese is cited and its protection is recognized in the Statute of Autonomy of Castilla y León, in article 5 of the Preliminary Title:

Lioness will be subject to specific protection by institutions for their particular value within the Community's linguistic heritage. Their protection, use and promotion shall be subject to regulation.

In November 2008, the Furmientu association filed a complaint with the Commonwealth of Castilla y León Procurator against the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, requesting him to urge said departments to develop and carry out the aspects included in the statutory article no. statute, and agreed with Furmientu by sending a formal resolution to the autonomous administration urging "...to promote the corresponding legislative initiative through the relevant project".

In May 2010, the PSOE presented in the Parliament of Castilla y León a Non-Legal Proposal to comply with the reform of the Statute and make article 5.2 effective, thus allowing the regulation, protection, use and promotion of Astur-Leonese in the areas where, due to its particular value within the linguistic heritage of the Community of Castilla y León, it is still spoken. Consequently, the Cortes unanimously agreed to promote Leonese with specific protection measures and the regulation for its use and protection, mainly due to its linguistic heritage value and because it is a hallmark of the Autonomous Community.

Faced with this proposal, various cultural associations from Leon and Zamora (El Teixu, La Caleya, Furmientu and Facendera pola Llengua) received the news with some suspicion, because on other occasions, similar statements of support ended up being mere rhetoric. In this sense, in June 2010 these same associations sent a detailed report to the Council of Europe denouncing the total breach of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages by the Junta de Castilla y León, despite being Approved the aforementioned article no. 5.2. of the Statute of Autonomy.

In December 2010, the Popular Party rejected in the Cortes the amendment presented by the PSOE, despite the fact that in May all the parliamentary groups unanimously approved that the Junta de Castilla y León would promote the Leonese with measures of specific protection. Thus, the doubt and negative skepticism that the cultural associations related to the recovery of the Asturian language showed at the time this proposal was presented materialized.

Consequently, and given the passivity of the Junta, in February 2011 a large group of cultural associations from Castilla y León dedicated to the defense, promotion and study of Galician and Leonese (Furmientu, Xente Nova, Buraco, Campo Aliste, Agora, Citizens of the Kingdom of León, Documentation and Study of El Rebollar, Facendera, Fala Ceibe, El Teixu and La Caleya), joined in defense of both languages in this autonomous community; asking for respect and autonomous protection for minority languages and speech, and demanding an active policy from the Board and respect for the Statute. The constituent associations of the Plataforma en Defensa del Gallego y del Leonés argued that the Junta de Castilla y León completely neglected the protection of Leonese, doing so partially in the case of Galician. Likewise, they compared this situation with that of other autonomous communities in which the linguistic heritage other than Spanish was protected, whether or not it was an official language. In 2017, the Government Council of Castilla y León granted 200,000 euros for the provision of an academic chair at the University of León as part of the "support for Leonese for its value within the linguistic heritage".

Danger of extinction

Painted in the Maragatería that claims the use of traditional toponymy and the Latvian language in the labelling of signs and posters

Unesco classifies Leonese among the languages at high risk of extinction. The precarious situation of the Leonese is directly determined by the following conditions:

• Unofficial language.
• Low or no media presence.
• Low or residual level of knowledge and use.
• Low social consideration of the language.
• Absence of language in school.
• Toponymy without normalizing.

Unesco recommends the following action plans to guarantee the preservation of this and other minority languages:

• Government measures that encourage the learning of two or three languages from primary education, provided that the mother tongue is respected.
• Investments from the public and private sector that promote the translation of software and content development that promote linguistic diversity on the Internet.
• Taking advantage of new technologies for the creation of a documentary base, the first phase of which would be based on the collection of materials by specialized linguists.

Language standardization

Linguistic normalization is a process of establishing linguistic norms that aims to make a language an adequate instrument for communication. To achieve standardization, an orthography, a normative grammar, and a normative dictionary must be available or created. This task is in charge of specialists normally congregated in an academy or similar institution. As far as the Leonese language is concerned, its standardization is taking place in a slow and complex process, due in part to several factors, such as the lack of real action measures by the Junta de Castilla y León, absence of institutional collaboration between the different territories of the linguistic domain, and even discrepancies, especially in the achievement of a linguistic standard, by the different associations that promote Leonese.

In May 2008, the University of León organized a conference on the Leonese language in which the challenge of analyzing the role that Leonese will play in the XXI. Experts and specialists with experience in similar processes of recovery and linguistic normalization of minority languages participated in it. Representatives of some of the different cultural associations also participated, which despite having different approaches, are united by the common objective of promoting the use of Leonese. On the one hand, there is a group of cultural associations that are in favor of the joint normalization of the entire Asturian language domain and the use of the spelling and grammar rules of the Asturian Language Academy is not a problem for them: El Teixu and Furmientu in Zamora, La Caleya and Facendera pola Llengua in Astorga. And on the other would be the associations related to the ideology of Conceyu Xoven who consider the Leonese language different from Asturian and promote the use of a differentiated written code: El Fueyu and L'Alderique in León and El Toralín in the El Bierzo region.

In this congress, the following proposals and measures to be adopted to move towards linguistic normalization were highlighted:

• Compliance and proper development of the statutory article n.o 5.2 of the Junta de Castilla y León.
• Dignification of the traditional language.
• Avoid the subjection of the lioness for the effect of political interests.
• Traditional labelling of toponymy and leoness and zamorana hydronimia.
• The right without impositions to the presence of traditional culture and language in the teaching centers, mainly in the areas where this language lives.
• I encourage research, the promotion of creation in Leon, the edition of teaching materials and books in Leon.
• Creation of an autonomous institution that would deal with the aforementioned activities and standardizing measures.

Promoting language

Since the 1990s, a series of activities have been carried out in order to promote the use and recovery of Leonese. These actions have been carried out by cultural associations and some institutions:

• Cultural association Facendera pola Llengua it was one of the first to teach Leon classes on a continuous basis, also performing working days, lectures cycles, talks and round tables in the main towns of León and Zamora.
• The Caleya has carried out work in the promotion, defense and dissemination of the cultural heritage of Latvia, highlighting the organization of courses of the Latvian language or of informative talks on the linguistic heritage. In collaboration with the Council of Culture of the Board of Castile and Leon, the Council of Leon, through the Leon Institute of Culture and the City of Astorga, held several contests of traditional Leon tales, written in the linguistic modalities of Leon (Leonese, Galician or Castilian), aimed at schoolchildren up to 14 years of the province of León, which were translated into the book Popular lion counts (written by children). Annually he also performs a literary contest of short stories in the lion tongue.
• Furmientu is the cultural association of reference in Zamora. He has held courses, lectures, as well as informative exhibitions, and proposals to councils for the recovery of toponymy and the use of vernacular names in posters, signs, etc; in this sense he convenes an annual competition of traditional Zamoran vocabulary and toponymy. Furmientu has also developed the use of leonés as a written language, plasming it in the creation and publication of poems, stories and translations.
• Cultural association The Teixu He has conducted several courses of surveyors of dialectology and asturleonian toponymy in the provinces of Zamora and León, in order to provide students with professional knowledge and tools to enable them to recover, with full scientific guarantees, the oral tradition of these places. The first was held during the month of September and October 2009 in Zamora. The aim of this course was to contribute to the attainment of theoretical and practical bases that serve students to design and perform field linguistic works focused on the talk of the province of Zamora. In this first edition, students were familiarized with field research techniques in two very related linguistic disciplines: dialectology (the study of linguistic variation in space) and toponic research (the study of place names).^,
• In November 2009, promoted by cultural association Furmientu, was born the electronic magazine Faceira, aimed at the research and dissemination of the cultural heritage of Leon, was also created with the will to serve as a linguistic meeting point, in order to strengthen ties with the territories in which historically asturleon roots are shared.
• Abel Eugenio Pardo Fernández, secretary general and founder of Conceyu Xovenas well as the cultural association The Fueyu, was the architect of a series of measures to promote the Latvian language, during the time he occupied the councils of Education, Leonean Culture and New Technologies of the City of León, which were sometimes controversial, to the point of being removed from his municipal office, and suspended from militancy by his party, Union del Pueblo Leonés:
  • In 2006 the Provincial Council of León signed a protocol of collaboration with the cultural association The Fueyu by which a subvention was agreed for the conduct of eight courses in Leon province and the celebration of the Llingua Day Llïonesa (Día de la Lengua Leonesa).
  • In 2008 the Council of Culture Leonesa offered classes of Latvians in the schools of the municipality, aimed at 5th and 6th elementary schoolchildren.
  • In 2009 the City Council of León began to offer all its documents in Spanish and Leon. However, in 2011, with the entry of the Popular Party into the City Council government, the Leonid was removed from official texts and digital supports.
  • An agreement between TVCyL and the Council of Leonean Culture of the City of León allowed that during the summer of 2009, the 8 of Castilla y León Televisión broadcast two weekly informations in the Latvian language (in Spanish).Xornal Informativu en Llingua Llïonesa), for a duration of 10 minutes.
  • The University of León in an agreement with the Council of Leonean Culture of the City of León agreed to grant the title Llingua Llïonesa monitor, which would train for the teaching of this language, in no case dealing with a university degree, a degree or a diploma. Subsequently, through the vice-rector of Institutional Relations and the coordinator of university courses, the University itself that issued these degrees, questioned the teaching quality of the courses, noting, in reference to the contents, the absence of a sufficient theoretical corpus and criticizing the lack of university degree of those who gave them.
  • In June 2009 at the initiative of the Council of Leonean Culture of the City of León, the controversy Llionpedia was created, an encyclopedia written in the Latvian language, with the same format as Wikipedia, which was already criticized and accused of sectarianism and scarce encyclopedic rigor, and whose administrators, among which was related to several members of the Conceyu Xoven; Councilman Abel Eugenio Pardo Fernández and two workers from the council of León (one of them president and spokesman The Toralin), were linked to the writing of several articles related to the denial of the Nazi Holocaust.
• The Government Council of 9 November 2017 of the Board of Castile and Leon approved a grant in the amount of 200 000 euros to the University of León (ULE) to finance actions aimed at the protection, use and promotion of the Leon, as the Community's linguistic heritage. At present, ULE is promoting academic research, contributing to the public dissemination of such research and providing researchers with useful tools for their work in this area. Among these initiatives is the creation, organization and endowment of the "Leonese Studies Chair", but also the organization and attendance of seminars of specialty, congresses and scientific meetings for the promotion of the Leonese; courses for the teaching and cycles of lectures of the Leonese; awards, scholarships and grants to university studies linked to the Leonid; the development of teaching materials linked to the teaching of the Leoncorés; scientific publications related to the

Literature

Literature written in Leonese, as such, was practically not written until well into the XX century. Except for a few examples, most of the literature that has been preserved has been thanks to oral transmission, although there are some works written in Leonese or in which one of the Leonese dialects has significant weight.

It was from the XIII century when the substitution of Latin for the Romance language in administrative documentation progressively accentuated, as can be seen in the medieval documentation of the Tumbo Viejo of the Monastery of San Pedro de Montes:

Several Romance works are known from that same period, characterized by the abundance of Leonisms in their texts, such as the “Book of Alexandre” the “Dispute of Elena and Maria” or the "Chronicle of Alfonso XI". In the case of the first work, of which two original handwritten editions are preserved, some authors affirm that the extensive existence of Leonisms in one of the editions could be due to the copyist who transcribed the work from Leon, thus transmitting without awareness of it linguistic habits of his first language:

In the XVI century, around the University of Salamanca and under the signature of authors such as Juan del Enzina or Lucas Fernández, among others, arose a production of pastoral theatrical pieces in the Sayagués dialect characterized by presenting Leonese traits that were basically phonetic and hardly morphosyntactic, almost stereotyped along with a certain vocabulary that sought the humor and laughter of their contemporaries, in which the sayagués is used as a paradigm of the rural and rough, exaggerating and inventing expressions that ultimately would have nothing to do with the sayagués dialect itself. An example of a sayaguesa eclogue in the “Romance de Gallinato”:

Flanders Picture of 1872 by Luis Álvarez Catalá

From the XIV century, Leonese literature was generally popular and transmitted orally, manifesting itself mainly in stories, legends, proverbs, romances or songs. The society of Leon and Zamora was mainly rural, and taking into account the high degree of illiteracy that existed, the only access to literature was orally. The filandón or serano was where this literature reached its maximum expression; In the heat of the fire and at night, the neighbors and relatives of the villages would gather, thus celebrating a social event where stories were told, they sang, they danced and they spun.

This traditional literature is characterized by several aspects:

• Your transmission is oral.
• It constantly presents variations in its parts due to orality-based diffusion.
• Its authors are anonymous, although later the works have acquired a collective character.
• Popular literature has a functional sense, by pretending to teach, have fun or mitigate the hard work of the field, etc.
• The social context in which it develops, whether in the form of a religious celebration, a filandon, a wedding or a family meeting, is important.
• They are essential, and inseparable from oral literature, other aspects such as the speaker's body and gestual language, the melody in the songs or the play within the children's oral literature.

According to the linguist specializing in minority languages, Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera, the fact that a language lacks writing does not mean that it is exempt from literature or that it is not a language of culture, adding as an example that "Each Every time an old man dies in Africa, it's like burning a library."

Example of a typical couplet used in popular songs, generally accompanied by a tambourine or pandeiru cuadráu, of which various versions can be found in the oral tradition:

It is from the XIX century when new samples of written literature are known again. In 1847 the text was written in the Cedano dialect “The parable of the prodigal son” by J.B. Dantin. Also from the second half of this century the “Letters to Gallardo” were written in the babiano dialect. It deals with the reflections typical of his language that a speaker of Leonese makes. The information in question appears anonymously and in the form of several letters that a Babiano correspondent sent to the bibliographer and writer Bartolomé José Gallardo and that the philologist Emilio Alarcos Llorach later published:

Already in the XX century, the book Stories in Leonese dialect was published in 1907 by Cayetano Alvarez Bardon. It is a compilation of short stories in prose and verse from the Ribera Alta del Órbigo, La Cepeda and Montaña Leon. A snippet from this book:

In 1921 the costumbrista novel «Entre Brumas» by José Aragón Escacena, who was a rural teacher in a Cabreirese village, was published. Set in the early years of the XX century, this book recounts in the first person the relationships and experiences of the protagonist in the region of La Cabrera. In the voice of its author, it sometimes reproduces an exaggerated, and not entirely faithful, dialect of the town of La Baña. This is shown in the following snippet:

During the XX century, there were few samples of literature and it was not until the end of the century when production resurfaced again literary. From this last period, the poems of the writer Eva González stand out. Her style has been characterized by emerging from the oral tradition, thus adopting its metric, style and rhythm. She along with her son Roberto González-Quevedo have been some of the most outstanding authors in the paḷḷuezu dialect.

In Laciana a movement arose in defense of the autochthonous cultural heritage to which new writers in Leonese (González-Banfi, Néstor Baz, Severiano Álvarez, Emilce Núñez, etc.) joined, mostly thanks to the magazine El Calecho, which was published in Villablino.

In 1996 the book "Tales of Lleón (antoloxía d'escritores lleoneses de güei)" was published. It is a set of stories by Leonese authors coordinated by the linguist Héctor Xil, many of them new speakers, who in some way could mark the starting point from which the possibility of promoting and recovering the Leonese language began to be considered..

Subsequently, authors such as the prolific Roberto González-Quevedo or Xosepe Vega (head of Llibros Filandón, an Astorganan publishing house that publishes poetry and narrative in Asturleonese), among others, have once again stood out on the Leonese map. They usually write in a dialect-based Astur-Leonese in paḷḷuezu and cabreirés respectively, and whose writing breaks with the oral tradition of rural themes, moralizing and dialogue and is characterized by following the contemporary guidelines and lines.

In the meantime, new names appear in the literary panorama of León and Zamora that confirm the growing interest in this language: Juan Andrés Oria de Rueda, Francisco Pozuelo, Emilio Gancedo, Ramón Rei, Dori Barrio.

Some examples of written literature