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| Murcian Spanish | |
|---|---|
| murciano | |
| Pronunciation | [muɾˈθjano] |
| Native to | Spain |
| Region | Murcia, Andalusia (Almería, partially in Jaén and Granada), Castile-La Mancha (Albacete) and Valencia (Vega Baja, Alicante) |
Early forms | |
| Spanish orthography (Latin script) | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Spain |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | es-u-sd-esmc |
 | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Murcian (endonym:murciano) is a variant ofPeninsular Spanish, spoken mainly in theautonomous community ofMurcia and the adjacentcomarcas ofVega Baja del Segura andAlto Vinalopó in theprovince of Alicante (Valencia), thecorridor of Almansa in Albacete (Castile-La Mancha). In a greater extent, it may also include some areas that were part of the formerKingdom of Murcia, such as southeastern Albacete (now part of Castile La Mancha) and parts of Jaén and Almería (now part of Andalusia).
The linguistic varieties of Murcian form a dialect continuum with Eastern Andalusian and Manchego Peninsular Spanish.
Murcian is considered a separate language from Spanish by some of its native speakers and by proponents ofMurcianism, who call itllengua murciana.[1][2] The termpanocho is also used to designate the Murcian language; however it mostly refers to the variety spoken in thecomarca of theHuerta de Murcia.
Murcian emerged from the mixture of several linguistic varieties that joined together after theKingdom of Murcia was conquered by theCrown of Aragon and theCrown of Castile and populated with principally northeastern settlers in the 13th and 14th centuries.[3] The linguistic varieties were mainlyTudmir'sRomance (a type ofAndalusi Romance),Arabic,Aragonese,Old Castilian andOccitano-Catalan. In modern times Murcian has also been influenced byFrench andCaló.
The most notable characteristics of a Murcian accent involve the heavy reduction ofsyllable-final consonants, as well as the frequent loss of/d/ from the suffixes-ado/ada, -ido/-ida. No non-nasal consonants are permitted in word-final position. As is typical of Spanish, syllable-final nasals are neutralized, and assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. In Murcian, as in many other varieties, the word-final nasal is typically realized as a velar[ŋ] when not followed by a consonant.[4]
Non-liquid, non-nasal postvocalic consonants in the syllable coda assimilate to both the place and the manner of articulation of the following consonant, producing ageminate. For instance, historical/pt/,/kt/ and/st/ all fall together as/tt/, renderingcacto 'cactus',casto 'chaste' andcapto 'I understand' homophonous as[ˈkatto]. Historical/kst/ also joins this neutralization, renderingsexta 'sixth' (f.) homophonous withsecta 'sect' as[ˈsetta]. Other historical postvocalic clusters affected by this include/sp,sd,sk,sɡ,sm,sn,sl/, in each case producing a geminated second element:[pp,dd,kk,ɡɡ,mm,nn,ll] (with[ðð] being an alternative to[dd]). This produces minimal pairs differentiated by consonant length, such ascisne[ˈθinne] 'swan' vs.cine[ˈθine] 'cinema'. This process also occurs across word boundaries, as inlos nenes[lɔnˈnɛnɛ] 'the kids'.[5]
Syllable-final/r/ can assimilate to a following/l/ or/n/, while syllable-final/l/ may assimilate to a following/r/ and become a tapped[ɾ] before any other consonant.[4]
In casual speech, syllable- and word-final/s/ is never pronounced as a sibilant[s].[6] It is usuallyelided entirely or forms part of a geminate, although in areas bordering Andalusia it may bedebuccalized, pronounced as an[h].[7]
In older working-class rural speech, syllable-final/s/ surfaces as[ɾ] before word-initial consonants (particularly the voiced plosives and/n/), as inlos vasos[lɔɾˈβæsɔ] 'the glasses'./b,d,ɡ/ are lenited after this allophone. The replacement of[s] with[ɾ] is perceived as a very marked feature of rural Murcian, and it is disapproved of by the local population.[8]
While the wordpara is frequently realized aspa' in all Spanish varieties, in Murcian Spanish this is much more widespread, being more common among the upper classes and in more formal situations than in other zones.[9]
There are linguistic phenomena characteristic of traditional Murcian speech, many of which are or were usual in other linguistic varieties (Aragonese, Mozarabic, Catalan, Andalusian, etc.):
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | e | o | |
| Open-mid | (ɛ) | (ɔ) | |
| Open | (æ) | a | |
The vowel system of Murcian Spanish is essentially the same as Eastern Andalusian.
The open-mid vowels[ɛ,ɔ] as well as the open front[æ] are realizations of/eC,oC,aC/ (where ⟨C⟩ stands for any consonant other than/n/ or/d/)[11] in the syllable coda. Due tovowel harmony, the close-mid[e,o] and the open central[ä] (hereafter transcribed without the diacritic) are banned from occurring in any syllable preceding that with[ɛ,ɔ,æ]. This change is sometimes[12] calledvowelopening, but this is completely inaccurate for[a], which is not only more back than[æ] but alsolower than it. Thus, the contrast betweenmañanas/maˈɲanas/ and the singular formmañana/maˈɲana/ 'morning' surfaces as a contrast of vowel quality:[mæˈɲænæ,maˈɲana], rather than the presence of terminal[s] in the former word.[10]
Some authors have questioned whether the opening of the high vowels/i,u/ is significant (cfr., e.g., Zubizarreta, 1979, Poch / Llisterri, 1986, Sanders, 1994), while others argue that, although the opening is less than in the case of middle and low vowels, it is entirely relevant (cfr., e.g., Alonso / Canellada / Zamora Vicente, 1950, Mondéjar, 1979, Alarcos, 1983). In any case, the opening of these final high vowels also triggers vowel harmony.
Thediminutive suffix is-icho, which is likely related to-ico.[3]