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The Asturian Language
Thanks to toponomy, to
the written sources of classical antiquity and to the hnguAtic suNstraturn, we
know that in Bronze-Age Asturies one or various languages were spoken,
languages which were certainly related to present-day euskera, a phenomena
which was apparantly common to the whol of the Cantabrian coast and whose roots
were pre-Indoeuropean. However, as the peninsular was invaded by Indoeuropean
peoples these languages were displaced by others which gave us geographical
place names associated with rivers and lakes, mountains, and humans (and their
gods), and which reveal a profound Celtic influence upon the country: the best
example is the name of one of the principal tribes of Astures, the Luggones,
whose root Lug is the god-name of the most important of the Celtic
divinities.
After the Roman conquest, from the year 19 B.P. onwards, the pre-Romanic
languages began to disappear, losing their strength to the invaders' language:
Latin. This new language was, however, learnt from the perspective of their own
linguistic systems, a process which left a pre-romanic sub-stratum both in
terms of vocabulary and of articulatory customs, which led to the birth of el
asturiatiu, or Asturian, a romance language which was to find its definitive
place as the national tongue of the Asturian kingdom (719-910). During this
time, however, Latin was the written language of the whole of the peninsular,
and writings in romance languages did not begin to appear until the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, at which time Asturies was subjected to a profound
social, political, economic and cultural isolation which coincided with the
appearance of a new power: Castilian, or Spanish.
The Asturian language, still present in public documents, records of donations,
etc from the thirteenth through to the fifteenth centuries, was not to
disappear but was rather to be maintained by the popular classes and even by
distinguished public figures who were to employ it in their literary works:
Anton de Marirreguera (seventeenth century), Xosefa de Xovellanos and Antonio
Balviclares (eighteenth century), and in the nineteenth century and the first
half of the twentieth a very long list from which we may mention Xuan Maria
Acebal, Caveda and Nava, Teodoro Cuesta, Pepin de Pria, Fernim Coronas, etc,
etc.
At the start of the nineteen seventies, after the long darkness of
dictatorship, there was an authentic explosion of activity in defence of and
assertting the right to use the Asturian language, which was accompanied by a
real literary boom known as the Resurdimientu, or resurgence. In 1981 the
Government Assembly of the Princedom of Asturies created the Academy of the
Asturian language, and the Asturian language began once again to look to the
future with self-confidence as the task of normalisation began. Since that
time, in public demonstrations in the streets and from within institutions, the
civil movement has continued to proclaim and campaign for the recognition of a
basic right: that of officiality for el asturianu.
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