Consuelo López Morillas criticizes this kind of a representation of the linguistic landscape in medieval Iberia for equating linguistic frontiers with political frontiers, and for deceptively fragmenting Romance into several varieties—throughout the peninsula people described their language asladino instead ofleonés,navarro, etc.[4]
Like all Romance languages,[5] the Iberian Romance languages descend fromVulgar Latin, the nonstandard (in contrast toClassical Latin) form of the Latin language spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire. With theexpansion of the empire, Vulgar Latin came to be spoken by inhabitants of the various Roman-controlled territories. Latin and its descendants have been spoken in Iberia since thePunic Wars, when the Romans conquered the territory[6] (seeRoman conquest of Hispania).
The modern Iberian Romance languages were formed roughly through the following process:
This list points to common traits of these Iberian subsets, especially when compared to the other Romance languages in general. Thus, changes such as Catalanvuit/huit and Portugueseoito vs. Spanishocho are not shown here, as the change -it- > -ch- is exclusive to Spanish among the Iberian Romance languages.
The length difference between r/rr is preserved through phonetic means as[ɾ]/[r], so that the second consonant in words such ascaro andcarro are not the same in any of the three.
The Iberian Romance languages all maintain a completeessence-state distinction inthe copula (the verb "to be"). The "essence" form (Portuguese and Spanishser and Catalanser andésser) is derived in whole or in part from the Latinsum (the Latin copula), while the "state" form (estar in all three languages) is derived from the Latinstāre ("to stand").
The distinction between Latin short-n-,-l- and long-nn-,-ll- was preserved by means of palatalizing-nn-,-ll- to/ɲ,ʎ/, as in Latinannum > Spanishaño, Catalanany vs. Latinmanum > Spanishmano, Old Catalanman (modern Catalanmà). This also affects some initial L in Catalan. However, in most dialects of Spanish, original/ʎ/ has become delateralized. Portuguese maintains the distinction, but in a different way; compareano vs.mão.
Velarized L[ɫ], whichexisted in Latin, is preserved at the end of syllables, and was later generalized to all positions in most dialects of both languages.
Stressed Latin e/o, both open and closed, is preserved so and does not become adiphthong.
Portuguese, official language innine countries including Portugal andBrazil. After Spanish, Portuguese is the second most widely spoken Romance language in the world with over 250 million speakers, currently ranked seventh by number of native speakers.[15] VariousPortuguese dialects exist outside of theEuropean standard spoken in Portugal.
Galician, co-official inGalicia and also spoken in adjacent western parts ofAsturias andCastile and León. Closely related toPortuguese, with Spanish influence.[21] It shares the same origin as Portuguese, from the medievalGalician-Portuguese. Modern Galician is spoken by around 3.2 million people and is ranked 160th by number of speakers.[20]
Additionally,Asturian (dialect of Asturleonese), although not an official language,[22] is recognised by theautonomous community ofAsturias. It is one of the Asturleonese dialects along withMirandese, which in Portugal holds an official status as a minority language.[23]
The Iberian Romance languages are a conventional group of Romance languages. Many authors use the term in a geographical sense although they are not necessarily a phylogenetic group (the languages grouped as Iberian Romance may not all directly descend from a common ancestor). Phylogenetically, there is disagreement about what languages should be considered within the Iberian Romance group; for example, some authors consider that East Iberian, also called Occitano-Romance, could be more closely related to languages of northern Italy (or also Franco-Provençal, the langues d'oïl and Rhaeto-Romance). A common conventional geographical grouping is the following:
^If Pyrenean–Mozarabic or Unshifted Western Romance is not included.
^Sometimes considered part ofGallo-Romance, and isn't always consideredmonophyletic even when included here.
^Sometimes considered part of a Pyrenean–Mozarabic or Unshifted Western Romance branch alongsideNavarro-Aragonese.
^Iberian languages is also used as a more inclusive term for all languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, which in antiquity included the non-Indo-EuropeanIberian language.
^Pharies, David A. (2007).A Brief History of the Spanish Language. University of Chicago Press. p. 13.ISBN978-0-226-66683-9.
^López-Morillas, Consuelo (2000). "Language". The literature of Al-Andalus. New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521471596.004. ISBN 9781139177870.
^Thomason, Sarah (2001).Language Contact. Georgetown University Press. p. 263.ISBN978-0-87840-854-2.
^Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (2008).Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Elsevier Science. p. 1020.ISBN978-0-08-087774-7.
^Penny, Ralph (2002).A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge University Press. p. 8.ISBN978-0-521-01184-6.
^Turell, M. Teresa (2001).Multilingualism in Spain: Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Linguistic Minority Groups. Multilingual Matters. p. 591.ISBN978-1-85359-491-5.
^Bec, Pierre (1973),Manuel pratique d'occitan moderne, coll. Connaissance des langues, Paris: Picard
^Sumien, Domergue (2006),La standardisation pluricentrique de l'occitan: nouvel enjeu sociolinguistique, développement du lexique et de la morphologie, coll. Publications de l'Association Internationale d'Études Occitanes, Turnhout: Brepols
^Myers-Scotton, Carol (2005).Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 57.ISBN978-0-631-21937-8.
