Asturleonese language

Asturleonese
Asturlleonés, Asturllionés, Sturlhionés
Geographic distribution	Spain (Asturias, northwestern Castile and León) Northeastern Portugal (Tierra de Miranda) Some authors include Cantabria and parts of Extremadura
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Romance Italo-Western Western Ibero-Romance West Iberian Asturleonese
Subdivisions	Asturian Leonese Mirandese Extremaduran (transitional to southern Peninsular Spanish) Cantabrian (transitional to northern Peninsular Spanish)
Language codes
ISO 639-2 / 5	ast, mwl, ext
ISO 639-3	ast, mwl, ext
Glottolog	astu1244  (Asturo-Leonese) astu1245  (Asturian-Leonese-Cantabrian) extr1243  (Extremaduran) mira1251  (Mirandese)
The current extent of the Asturleonese varieties
Asturleonese is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Asturleonese^[1] is a Romance language or language family spoken in northwestern Spain and northeastern Portugal, namely in the historical regions and Spain's modern-day autonomous communities of Asturias, northwestern Castile and León, Cantabria and Extremadura, and in Riudenore and Tierra de Miranda in Portugal. The name of the language is largely uncommon among its native speakers, as it forms a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties and therefore it is primarily referred to by various regional glossonyms like Leonese, Cantabrian, Asturian or Mirandese (in Portugal).^[2] Extremaduran is sometimes included as well. Asturleonese has been classified by UNESCO as an endangered language, as the varieties are being increasingly replaced by Spanish and Portuguese.^[3]

Phylogenetically, Asturleonese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages that gradually developed from Vulgar Latin in the old Kingdom of León. The Asturleonese group is typically subdivided into three linguistic areas (Western, Central and Eastern)^[4] that form the vertical Asturleonese region, from Asturias, through León, to the north of Portugal and Extremadura. The Cantabrian Montañes in the East and Extremaduran in the South have transitional traits with Spanish (northern Spanish for Cantabrian, southern Spanish for Extremaduran). There are differing degrees of vitality of the language for each region in the area: Asturias and Miranda do Douro have historically been the regions in which Asturleonese has been the best preserved.^[5][6]

Leonese (used interchangeably with Asturleonese) was once regarded as an informal dialect (basilect) that developed from Castilian Spanish, but in 1906, Ramón Menéndez Pidal showed it developed from Latin independently, coming into its earliest distinguishable form in the old Kingdom of León.^[7][8][9] As is noted by the Spanish scholar Inés Fernández Ordóñez, Menéndez Pidal always maintained that the Spanish language (or the common Spanish language, la lengua común española, as he sometimes called it) evolved from a Castilian base which would have absorbed, or merged with, Leonese and Aragonese.^[10] In his works Historia de la Lengua Española ('History of the Spanish language') and especially El español en sus primeros tiempos ('Spanish in its early times'), Menéndez Pidal explains the stages of this process, taking into account the influence Leonese and Aragonese had on the beginnings of modern Spanish.