Barranquenho
| Barranquenho | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Portugal, Spain (around Barrancos ) | |
| speaker | 1500-3000 | |
| Linguistic classification |
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Barranquenho , also o barranquenho ( Portuguese ) or el barranqueño (Spanish), is a border dialect of European Portuguese with a strong influence from Extremaduric and Andalusian . The language area mainly comprises the Portuguese-Spanish border region around the city of Barrancos in the Beja district .
history
The first treaty between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Spain over the areas of the Algarve dates back to 1253, in which the Guadiana River was established as the border between the two. The later Treaty of Badajoz (1267) confirmed this until the Treaty of Alcañices (1297), in which new borders were established. The 120 kilometer long section in the Alentejo between Moura and Aroche had not been defined in more detail, so that until well into the 16th century the areas were more or less shared by both kingdoms - the city of Barrancos was also located in these areas. In order to settle the resulting disputes, the kings João III signed in 1542 . of Portugal and Carlos I of Spain signed the Moura Concordat , in which both kingdoms agreed to jointly use the area. The border between Portugal and Spain has only been precisely defined since 1893, and Barrancos has belonged to Portugal ever since. In the 20th century, especially in the 1940s, a large part of the population of Barrancos were involved in the smuggling of goods due to the economic depression in Spain.
Historically, the area around Barrancos was therefore subject to strong influences from Spain, and it is still considered to be very remote in the extreme south-east of Portugal. To date, the transport connection to Spain is faster and above all shorter than to Moura, 50 kilometers away. This particular form of isolation from the rest of the Portuguese language area led to the development of a separate dialect with strong influences from the Andalusian and Extremadurian languages.
Use and legal status
While Portuguese is spoken as a prestigious language in public institutions (town hall, school, hospital) as well as in banks and in the church, Spanish (or Andalusian or Extremadurian) is spoken mainly by residents who have moved from Spain for centuries. Barranquenho is spoken by all people born in Barrancos, it is considered the common language of all residents and is mainly heard in everyday life. There is no written language.
Leite de Vasconcelos reports in his work from 1940 that the residents of Barrancos are practically trilingual. Navas Sánchez-Élez contradicts this view and sees them as more or less bilingual. Only the few residents who have received a higher education are trilingual. They would speak Portuguese at work, in the Barranquenho family and Spanish with Spaniards.
The barranquenho has no rights in Portugal or Spain. The city of Barranco made efforts to have the dialect recognized and protected as a national cultural asset. The number of speakers is given as 1500 to 3000.
Phonology
The Barranquenho is a Romance dialect that can be assigned to Portuguese, more precisely to Alentejano . Nevertheless, it has very strong influences from Andalusian and Extremadurian. Furthermore there are archaic aspects as well as influences of the Leonese and the Mozarabic language .
In the Barranquenho, the unstressed vowels are not pronounced openly. The nasal diphthongs in Portuguese, derived from the Latin -am , are monodiphthong ([ɑ̃]). The occlusive consonants [b], [d] and [ɡ] tend to be fricatives. The final consonants [l] and [r], as in Andalusian, are hardly pronounced. The same thing happens with the sibilants, which are often swallowed.
With regard to the Portuguese influence, the sound shift from [e] to [i] is very clear. The monodiphthongization of [ej] to [e], very typical in numerous Portuguese dialects, can also be found in the Barranquenho.
Morphosyntax
In the Barranquenho there is a gender shift in some words, for example a sangue (instead of o sangue ) and a sal (instead of o sal ). A very typical influence of Andalusian is the lack of adaptation of the number in the plural, which is due to the lack of pronunciation of the sibilants.
Furthermore, in the Barranquenho, the second person singular of the verb ser is formed with the Spanish eres , presumably to avoid confusion between és (Portuguese second person singular) and é (Portuguese third person singular). The use of the Spanish hay (instead of há ) is also evident. Furthermore, as is common in rural dialects of Portuguese, a different plural form is common for certain words, for example catalões instead of catalães .
Mixed forms of Portuguese and Spanish are very typical of the Barranquenho. For example, plural is used as the component com nos (Portuguese connosco , Spanish con nosotros ) for the first person . There is something similar in Mirandés . Also special is the new creation of the third person plural with vocedes from the influence of the Spanish ustedes , the Portuguese vocês takes over the second person plural.
bibliography
- José Leite de Vasconcelos : Filologia Barranquenha - apontamentos para o seu estudo ; Imprensa Nacional de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1940, published posthumously in 1955
- María Victoria Navas Sánchez-Élez: The barranqueño: un modelo de lenguas en contacto ; Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Marid, 2011
- Luis Filipe Lindley Cintra: Nova proposta de classificação dos dialectos galego-portugueses , Boletim de Filologia XXII, pp. 81-116, 1971
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Portugal. In: www.ethnologue.com. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, accessed April 3, 2014 (English, undated).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i María Victoria Navas Sánchez-Élez: El barranqueño: un modelo de lenguas en contacto. (PDF) (No longer available online.) In: Revista de Filologia Romanistica, vol. 9. Editorial Complutense, Madrid, 1922, pp. 225-246 , archived from the original on July 9, 2007 ; Retrieved April 3, 2014 (Spanish). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Luís Miguel Lourenço (Lusa): Município quer tornar barranquenho dialecto oficial e Património Linguístico Nacional. RTP.pt, December 9, 2007, accessed April 3, 2014 (Portuguese).
