Talk:Iberian Romance languages

Catalan

How many people do speak Catalan in France? Is it really 3,00, and what does this figure present? Should it be 3000 or does it mean 3%. --83.134.111.127 08:32, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

How come Catalan is Ibero-Romance? I thought it was Gallo-Romance, and apparently so did the article about the language itself.-Kaimoconn (talk) 16:19, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Specifically, it's Occitano-Romance, often included in the Gallo-Romance. Some linguists may include Catalan (and even Occitan) in an extension of the Ibero-Romance, as these are the most related languages to this group. That's what should be explained in this article. However, if we study the Occitano-Romace group (Occitan and Catalan), it seems more related to the Gallo-Romance.--Ssola (talk) 22:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Astur-Leonese

Hi, Error! In which state is Artur-Leonese official? Portugal? Mirandese is officially recognised. Spain? Bable is officially recognised. It has no official status. I can be wrong, of course, I hope you'll correct me. Cheers! :) User:Marco Neves

I get a bit dizzy with these edit conflicts. What I hope to have made clear is that Astur-Leones e is (at least for some) the superset of several dialects (Asturian, Leonese, Mirandese, at least). I am not sure if there is a common standard for them or several. At least in Asturias there is an Academy. Bable has been applied to:

• some of dialects in Asturias
• all the dialects in Asturias
• Astur-Leonese as a whole
• It can even translate patois.

Besides some people don't like the word "Bable".

I think that the borders between languages and dialects (as in having a standard) are not very clear for Astur-Leonese.

Summarizing, I thought that Mirandese, hence, Astur-Leonese is co-official in Miranda. If you know otherwise, correct.

After reading the Catalan autonomy act, I am not sure if Aranese is co-official or just very protected.

(I'm tired) -- Error 04:41, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Error, don't get dizzy, this is normal: it is the Wikipedia way of writing articles ;) Mirandese is granted official recognition, and I thought it was official, but I read the Portuguese law about it and it is just protected. Aranese is official, since it can be used by the local authorities and even in the Catalan Parliament (maybe Catalans do this to indirectly criticize the fact that they cannot speak Catalan in Spanish Parliament). Cheers to you! :) User:Marco Neves

Portuguese and Galician: The fact that a Portuguese kingdom was formed allowed the formation of a distinct Portuguese language, based on the ancient Galician-Portuguese romance. Early Portuguese can be seen as codified Galician-Portuguese. Separation and eventual codification of Galician led to these two varieties being considered different languages today. This sentence is completly correct. There is only one official language in Spain, that's Spanish. And there are some other 3 co-official in certain regions of the country (Basque, galician and Catalan, I believe that Valencian is not one); and a number of official recognitions. Mirandese in Portugal is officially recognized (it is not an official Portuguese language, but officially a Portuguese language to be studiyed in local Schools and used in some other aspects of life), it hasn't enough speakers (first and second language speakers number less than 2000, first language less than 500). Portugal has a single official language, Portuguese.Pedro 02:03, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The Valencian language is the Catalan language. It is official in Catalonia, Valencian Country, Balearic Islands and Andorra.--Ssola (talk) 22:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Portuguese, Galician, Galician-Portuguese

"The fact that a Portuguese kingdom was formed allowed the formation of a distinct Portuguese language, based on the ancient Galician-Portuguese romance. Early Portuguese can be seen as codified Galician-Portuguese. Separation and eventual codification of Galician led to these two varieties being considered different languages today." This is a totally biased account:

• There was no objective historical transition between Galician-Portuguese and Portuguese (or Galician). There was no 'codification' of Galician-Portuguese when Portugal became independent; people just kept talking the way they always had.
• Galician and Portuguese are "considered different languages today" for mostly political and sociolinguistic reasons.

I'm deleting it.

I don't entirely agree with you. The language in which early medieval Portuguese literature was written is called Galician-Portuguese and is, for the most part, indistinguishable from the Ibero-Romance spoken in Galicia at the time. However, as the Christian reconquista moved south, the Galician-Portuguese language brought from the North mixed with the Mozarabic dialects that were spoken in the Arab-controlled territories giving rise to a separate Portuguese language which, by the 15th century was already clearly distinct from the language spoken in northwestern Spain. Since Galician and Portuguese form a linguistic continuum, it might be actually hard to differentiate between the two. However, the differences that exist between the two languages are not just the result of the recent (Castilian-influenced) standardization of the Galician language in the 20th century, but actually reflect a linguistic split that took place several centuries ago. 200.177.0.128 01:50, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Are Galician and Portuguese different? Absolutely. So are northern Portuguese and southern Portuguese. Being different doesn't necessarily make them different languages. But what I object to, anyway, isn't the statement that they are separate languages. It's that the wording of the article implied that Portuguese had magically sprung into existence the moment Portugal became independent. That is nonsense; linguistic change is always gradual and slow. There is no moment in time you can point to and say "Here Portuguese and Galician split" (unless you base the split on political criteria). Portuguese is not "based on the ancient Galician-Portuguese"; it's an uninterrupted continuation of it. FilipeS 12:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

For the same reason, I have deleted the following:

"Portuguese split from Galician when the Portuguese population came into contact with speakers of Mozarabic - this explains the many Portuguese words of Arab origin." FilipeS 15:11, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Map!!

This article desperatly needs a detailed map showing all languages and dialects in the Iberian peninsula (see Iberian languages). Anyone has one? The Ogre 18:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the map currently is that there is a whole lot of detail in particular dialects and languages within the Iberian Peninsula but nothing like it outside it. A distinction should be shown between having a official language and people speaking it as afirst language. Clearly there is difference to the Portuguese-speaking of Brazil and Angola and this should be shown on the map. Munci (talk) 16:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

YES! That map is a blunder. I have removed it. It not only has the problem you mentioned, but also it pretends that Spanish is somehow speken ALL over the States, Western Sahara and the Phillippines! I was speaking of a proper map for the Iberian Peninsula. The Ogre (talk) 12:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Judaeo-Spanish?

What about Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino)? It's classified as an Iberian Romance language. I think it should be included in the article. Cazadordemolinos (talk) 19:16, 15 September 2010 (UTC) Already added to the article Viller the Great (talk) 03:38, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Local Iberian Populations?

The article correctly notes that the first step in the developement of the languages was the latinization of the local peoples, but then gives a list in which almost all the examples are not "local iberian populations": the Goths, Vandals, Gauls, Brythons and Suebi all arrived in Iberia much later than the Romans. The true prerroman local populations (the Tartesians, Lusitanians, Iberians, Celtiberians etc.) were probably latinized well before these germanic tribes arrived in the Peninsula. I proceed to delete the list. 213.0.53.131 (talk) 19:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Note that that list included Basque, which was very probably already spoken in Iberia at the time, but that they were never fully Latinized. --JorisvS (talk) 14:15, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Occitano-Romance originates from Iberia?

The article states, perhaps somewhat implicitly, that Occitan (including Catalan) is Iberian Romance. There's even a map to that effect in the article. This is not the mainstream linguistic view as far as I know, which classifies the Occitan/Catalan group as Gallo-Romance. So this should probably be amended per WP:UNDUE. CodeCat (talk) 22:34, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

I believe that's mainly the POV of Ethnologue, where the terms "West Iberian" and "East Iberian" originate from. Linguasphere has no unit corresponding to Ibero-Romance, and it mentions the traditional classification of Catalan as Ibero-Romance but Occitan (including Gascon) as Gallo-Romance. User:Benwing is the most knowledgeable Wikipedian I know on matters of Romance historical linguistics, although he is not very active currently (probably busy with IRL jobs), but I think the problem is that Occitano-Romance does not align closely with either Gallo-Romance or Ibero-Romance, although it has features in common with both. Occitano-Romance looks like either innovative Ibero-Romance (the basis for the Ethnologue classification) or conservative Gallo-Romance (the basis for the traditional classification of Occitan), and it is true that Old Occitan resembles Old French quite a bit. Per Phonological history of Catalan, the only solid, pervasive, ancient communalities Occitano-Romance has with either group are actually with Gallo-Romance (but there are only very few points: I count two innovations and one retention), but in any case, there is no factual basis at all to separate Occitan and Catalan, so both must be treated as a unified group, despite entrenched tradition (which is based on the questionable concept that Catalan has an Iberian substrate that Occitan lacks, ultimately a non sequitur anyway). In view of this, I believe the best solution is to treat Ibero-Romance (Portuguese/Astur-Leonese, Spanish and presumably Aragonese), Gallo-Romance (Oil/Arpitan and Rhaeto-Romance) and Occitano-Romance as separate Western Romance groups and note the conflicting and inconsistent, even illogical, ways Occitan and Catalan have been classified. (Similar things can be said about the languages of Northern Italy.) User:Kwamikagami, what do you think? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:08, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

As far as I know, languages are classified based on shared innovations. Occitan and Catalan clearly share innovations with French and all other Gallo-Romance languages. But which innovations do they share with all Iberian languages, that they do not share with French? CodeCat (talk) 18:43, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, Phonological history of Catalan at least doesn't list any, while there are two innovations that link Occitan/Catalan to French. That's not much, but if these two innovations are rock-solid, there is indeed a (slim but significant, and perhaps sufficient, if relative chronology fits) basis for classifying Occitano-Romance together with French, Arpitan and Rhaeto-Romance, whatever the nomenclature and the definition of Gallo-Romance. So the superficial resemblance of Catalan and Occitan to Spanish and Portuguese could well mislead, especially given how in the medieval period, the resemblance of Occitan to French was greater than it is now. I agree with you that Occitan and Catalan are not Ibero-Romance (if this group is to be defined by innovations), but they may not be Gallo-Romance, either. Do you know any sources which classify not only Occitan but also Catalan as Gallo-Romance? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:22, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't have any sources I can check right now, but I don't doubt that there are some. In any case, innovations don't have to be phonological. They can be morphological or even semantic as well. CodeCat (talk) 09:30, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Of course, but phonological innovations are often simply easier to find out about; a mere practical reason. :-) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree it would be more correct to state that Gallo-Romance (which also includes many Northern Italian languages) includes Occitano-Romance, and that should include Catalan. The problem is that although Catalan shares early phonological innovations with Occitan, it also shares a lot of innovations with the Iberian languages, e.g. very early loss of the two-case system, conversion of initial l- to ll- (also found in Leonese and/or Aragonese). Furthermore it doesn't share in any of the later innovations that characterize most (or all) varieties of Occitan and is phonologically more conservative than any variety of Occitan. It seems clear Catalan and Occitan were originally a unitary dialect variety but fairly early on Catalan became linguistically separate from Occitan and instead became linguistically attached to the bordering Ibero-Romance languages, so that areal influences from the latter began, and continued for many centuries. (NB this areal influence is not a substrate but an adstrate.) The time at which this change occurred was early, well before any written sources in Catalan. That's why there is confusion about Catalan and by extension sometimes Occitan.

BTW I know at least one phonological innovation apparently shared by both Occitan and Catalan but not French, and that's the merger of intervocalic -ð- (Latin -d-) and -z-. In Occitan both show up as -z-; in Catalan both vanish (or in some cases turn up as /w/). Vincent + Harris "The Romance Languages" reconstructs this merged consonant as *ð for Catalan (e.g. *deð < Latin decem). This makes less sense for Occitan, where you'd have to assume *z > *ð > *z; but the merger in both varieties and nowhere else is still striking. Benwing (talk) 08:44, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, Catalan deletes final -n, which many Occitan varieties also do, but not French or other Iberian varieties (AFAIK). Benwing (talk) 08:52, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Innovations unique to Occitan and Catalan are not really the problem. There are several more of those. I was wondering more about innovations that they share with Iberian but not northern Gallo-Romance. If none exist, then grouping them under Iberian is hardly tenable. That said, I now wonder what innovations all the other Iberian languages share with each other. The only thing I can think of right now is the complete elimination of the 3rd conjugation infinitive ending. All Iberian languages that I know of have the 2nd conjugation stressed -er, while Catalan preserves this ending only as an irregular relic, having replaced it with the 3rd conjugation ending -re or unstressed -er, much like the rest of Gallo-Romance.

Of course there is some areal influence from Iberian in Catalan, while there is most definitely areal influence from French on Occitan. But that doesn't change the relationship between them. A very good example of this is South Estonian, which is generally accepted to be the first Finnic language to split off from the Proto-Finnic continuum, as it has not shared in some innovations that occurred in all the other Finnic languages. But there is strong areal influence from northern (standard) Estonian, which has brought them closer together and makes some people consider it an Estonian dialect. The same is probably what has happened with Catalan as well. CodeCat (talk) 10:46, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

It's true that a lot of Ibero-Romance is defined in opposition to Gallo-Romance, by lack of innovation, which doesn't count for grouping in a clade. However, there are definite shared innovations in vocabulary, e.g. izquierda/esquerda "left" (from Basque, apparently) and querer "to want" < Latin quarere "to seek", although this may not be a good way of defining a clade, either. Another apparent shared innovation is early loss of the nominative case, with very few remnants anywhere except maybe in names (Carlos) and dios/deus (contrast French, which preserves a lot of nominatives in words for people, e.g. fils, soeur, prêtre). An arguable common phonological innovation is the preservation vs. loss of final -e, which is lost after single /l, n, r, s, z/ (and /d/ in Spanish) but preserved elsewhere. Benwing (talk) 06:25, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure if particular common items of inherited vocabulary would count, but what would count is if some kind of semantic shift occurred in a particular word and this shift was found in all languages of a certain group. After all, this is an innovation too. CodeCat (talk) 12:37, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Just a thought, the simplest solution for the development of the Occitano-Romance fricative merger is that the result was /z/. While it is true that the Catalan development [z] > [w] looks unusual, that's not a reason to exclude the possibility outright, and perhaps there was an intermediate stage [ð] involved. After all, [ð] > [w] is well-known from Goidelic.

At least it is now admitted in the section "Family tree" that Ibero-Romance may not be a monophylum.

It would be nice if we could agree on a common scheme for the classification of Romance languages to employ in Wikipedia. Given all the controversies, a rather agnostic comb-like scheme would probably work best. My understanding is that the following groups are relatively uncontroversial:

• Sardinian
• (African Romance)
• Romanian
• Dalmatian
• Italo-Romance
• Venetian
• Gallo-Italian
• Western Romance
  • Mozarabic
  • Aragonese
  • Ibero-Romance
  • Occitano-Romance
  • Rhaeto-Romance
  • Gallo-Romance

where "Ibero-Romance" only includes Asturo-Portuguese and Castilian, and "Gallo-Romance" is limited to Oïl and Arpitan.

Of these, Gallo-Italian may actually be Italo-Romance as per Diachronics of plural inflection in the Gallo-Italian languages it seems to share the typically Italo-Romance change of word-final /s/ to /j/. However, as I have learned that Old Venetian was more like Friulian and there is (toponymic?) evidence for the cha-type palatalisation as far south as the Po, I wonder if the best interpretation may not be that the Po was originally the border between Western Romance (Rhaeto-Romance specifically) and Italo-Romance, with Gallo-Italian (especially the northern dialects) partly having a Rhaeto-Romance substrate.

Moreover, Gallo-Romance and Rhaeto-Romance may form a group; Occitano-Romance may be the closest relative of this group.

As for the proposed Pyrenean–Mozarabic branch, I wonder how good the evidence for it is. Does Aragonese share any innovations with Mozarabic? I only know of the retention of the intervocalic voiced stops. Finally, Istriot appears to be of Italo-Romance origin. British Romance and Pannonian Romance are too little known to classify, I think. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:07, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

By the way, I thought Catalan was originally confined to the foothills of the Pyrenees and from about the 12th century on spread well south into the Iberian Peninsula, where it may have had contact not only with Aragonese (which would explain some similarities such as the palatalisation of initial l-), but also with Mozarabic (south of the Ebro at least). If this is so, I don't quite understand why you can't speak about an Ibero-Romance substrate in Catalan as well. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:00, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

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Old 10th cenutry Iberian language spoken in northern Spain

I was researching and found this that shows there was another language spoken in eastern Asturias (around Llanes), Valladolid, Zamora, and eastern Leon. We don't have a name for it though, and they were several dialects. That Northern Irish Historian (talk) 05:42, 15 July 2024 (UTC)