Mirandese ( ) is an almost extinct language or variety that is sparsely spoken in a small area of northeastern Portugal in eastern Tierra de Miranda, an ethnocultural region comprising the area around the municipalities of Miranda de l Douro, Mogadouro and Bumioso. It is extinct in Mogadouro and present in Bumioso only in some eastern villages, like Angueira. The Assembly of the Republic granted Mirandese official recognition alongside Portuguese for local matters with Law 7/99 of 29 January 1999. In 2001, Mirandese was officially recognised by the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, which aims to promote the survival of the least-spoken European languages.
Mirandese has a distinct phonology, morphology and syntax. It has its roots in the local Vulgar Latin spoken in the northern Iberian Peninsula.
The language is a descendant of the Asturleonese variety spoken in the Kingdom of León and has both archaisms and innovations that differentiate it from the modern varieties of Asturleonese spoken in Spain. In recognition of these differences, and due to its political isolation from the rest of the Asturleonese-speaking territory, Mirandese has adopted a different written norm to the one used in Spain for Asturleonese.
Mirandese is a descendant of the Old Leonese language spoken in the Kingdom of León in medieval Iberia. In the early 16th century, Old Leonese began to split, alongside GalicianâÂÂPortuguese, into the varieties existing today, one of them being Mirandese.
Until 1884, Mirandese was a purely spoken language, but in that year, José Leite de Vasconcelos wrote the book (, in Mirandese), in which he proposed a writing system for Mirandese. The system included a large number of diacritics which have helped to convey how Mirandese sounded in the 19th century.
Transcribed below is a poem included in as a sample text, (, spelled in the modern orthography):
In the 19th century, Leite de Vasconcelos described Mirandese as "the language of the farms, of work, home, and love between the Mirandese". Since 1986âÂÂ87, it has been taught optionally to students at the primary and lower secondary level, and has thus been somewhat recovering. By Law 7/99, Mirandese was given official recognition by the Assembly of the Republic alongside Portuguese. The law provides for its promotion and allows its usage for local matters in Miranda de l Douro.
In 1999, Mirandese gained its first official orthography, which was later tweaked in 2000. Today Mirandese retains speakers in most of the villages of the municipality of Miranda de l Douro and in some villages of Bumioso (such as Vilar Seco and Angueira); and some linguistic influence can be observed at other villages of the municipality of Bumioso and the municipalities of Mogadouro, Macedo de Cavaleiros and Bragança.
A 2020 survey by the University of Vigo, carried out in Miranda de l Douro and Bumioso, estimated the number of speakers of the language to be around 3,500, with 1,500 of them being regular speakers. The study observed strong decline in the usage of the language in younger people, verifying a roughly 40% decline in the exclusive use of Mirandese across the 32 settlements where it is still spoken, when comparing speakers aged over 60 to the teen population, alongside a modest increase of about 8% in bilingual usage between those same demographics.
Mirandese is written using the Latin alphabet, and its orthography is based on that of Portuguese:
Three primary variants of the Mirandese language exist: Border Mirandese (), Central Mirandese () and Sendinese (). Most speakers of Mirandese also speak Portuguese.
Despite there being a singular writing system for Mirandese, there is one phoneme that is written differently in different dialects. In the Sendinese dialect, many words that in other dialects are said with , are said with : examples include for ; for ; for .
The main orthographical differences between Mirandese in Portugal and the Asturleonese languages in Spain are caused by the dominant languages in each region. And while Mirandese has been influenced phonetically and in lexicon by Portuguese and the Asturleonese languages in Spain by Spanish, they retain more similarities among themselves than to the main languages of each country. Another difference is that Mirandese and Leonese remain very conservative, while Asturian has undergone a greater amount of change.
Some historical developments in Mirandese are the following:
Mirandese has the same basic phonemes as most Asturleonese varieties, but with some differences in allophones:
Pronunciation differences between the three Mirandese dialects may be illustrated with the following example:
As in Portuguese, Mirandese still uses the following synthetic tenses:
Mirandese was formerly spoken in the general area of the district of Bragança ( in Mirandese), that speaks the Transmontano dialect of Portuguese. Although Mirandese has been lost in this region, it left some words and phonetic influences behind.
There are significant limitations in the protection of the Mirandese language:
The following measures have been taken to protect and develop Mirandese:
The following is a sample text of the Mirandese language, written by Amadeu Ferreira and published in the newspaper Público on 24 July 2007.
Then a comparison of the previous text in three modern languages of the Asturoleonese group:
When Mirandese was first officially recognised and a writing system was established, it used and (like Portuguese) to represent and respectively in the diphthongs and . These have since fallen in disuse because this rendering was only accurate in the Central and Raiano dialects, where these diphthongs read and , unlike in the Sendinese dialect, where they had been reduced to and .
In 2000, the () was made to the Mirandese orthography, quickly followed by a second one two years later, but only the first was put to use officially, removing the glyphs and and allowing Sendinese speakers to spell their unpalatalised pronunciation of words using instead of , among other small changes.
Mirandese, given its status as a recognised language in Portugal after Portuguese, has been the subject in recent years of some publicity and attention in other parts of Portugal. A monthly chronicle in Mirandese, by researcher and writer , appears in the daily Portuguese national newspaper Público. The first volume of the Adventures of Asterix, named Asterix, L Goulés (Asterix the Gaul), was published in a Mirandese translation by in 2005, and sold throughout Portugal. also translated into Mirandese the epic poem by Camões, Os LusÃÂadas (Ls LusÃÂadas), under his pseudonym Francisco , and published it in 2009. In 2011, the four Gospels of the Bible's New Testament were translated into Mirandese, and in 2013 the entire Bible was translated into the language by Domingos Augusto Ferreira.