Cantabrian dialect
Cantabrian is a group of dialects belonging to Astur-Leonese. It is indigenous to the territories in and surrounding the Autonomous Community of Cantabria, in Northern Spain.
Traditionally, some dialects of this group have been further grouped by the name Montañés, La Montaña being a traditional name for Cantabria due to its mountainous topography.
Distribution
These dialects belong to the Northwestern Iberian dialect continuum and have been classified as belonging to the Astur-Leonese domain by successive research works carried out through the 20th century, the first of them, the famous work El dialecto Leonés, by Menéndez Pidal.This dialect group spans the whole territory of Cantabria. In addition, there is historical evidence of traits linking the speech of some nearby areas to the Cantabrian Astur-Leonese group:
- The western part of Las Encartaciones, in Biscay.
- Bordering areas with Burgos: especially the upper valleys of Espinosa de los Monteros, where Pasiegu dialect was spoken.
- Bordering areas with Palencia
- Valleys of Peñamellera and Ribadedeva, in the easternmost part of Asturias.
Dialects
Based on the location where dialects are spoken, we find a traditional dialectal division of Cantabria, which normally corresponds to the different valleys or territories:| Autoglottonym | Area of usage | Meaning of name |
| Montañés | La Montaña, i.e. Coastal and Western parts of Cantabria | of or pertaining to the people of La Montaña |
| Pasiegu | Pas, Pisueña and upper Miera valleys | of or pertaining to the people of Pas |
| Pejín | Western coastal villages | from peje "fish". |
| Pejinu | Eastern coastal villages | from peji "fish". |
| Tudancu | Tudanca | of or pertaining to the people of Tudanca |
However, based on linguistic evidence, R. Molleda proposed what is today the usual division of dialectal areas in Cantabria. Molleda proposed to take the isogloss of the masculine plural gender morphology, which seems to surround a large portion of Eastern Cantabria, running from the mouth of the Besaya River in the North, and along the Pas-Besaya watershed. He then proceeded to name the resulting areas Western and Eastern, depending on the location to the West or East of the isogloss. This division has gained support due to the fact that, although masculine morphology by itself is not a very important difference, many other isoglosses draw the same line.
Linguistic description
There are some features in common with Spanish, the main of which is the set of consonants which is nearly identical to that of Northern Iberian Spanish. The only important difference is preservation of the voiceless glottal fricative as an evolution of Latin's word initial f- as well as the mergers; both feature are common in many Spanish dialects, especially those from Southern Spain and parts of Latin America.The preservation of the voiceless glottal fricative was usual in Middle Spanish, before the /h/ in words like /humo/, from Latin fumus, resulted in Modern Spanish /umo/. Every Cantabrian dialect keeps /f/ before consonants such as in /'fɾi.u/, just as Spanish and Astur-Leonese do.
The merger is typical in most Western and Eastern Coastal dialects, where merges into . However, the Eastern dialects from the Inner Valleys have merged into ; moreover, there are older speakers that lack any kind of merger, fully distinguishing the minimal pair /huegu/ - /xuegu/.
Other features are common to most Astur-Leonese dialects; some of these are:
- Use of /u/ as masculine singular gender morpheme: most dialects use a closed central rounded vowel , as masculine morpheme, although only eastern dialects have shown - contrast.
- Opposition between singular and plural masculine gender morphemes. The dialectal boundaries of this feature are usually used to represent the western and eastern dialects:
- * Western Dialects oppose /u/ masculine singular marker to /os/ masculine plural marker. E.g. perru but perros.
- * Eastern Dialects used to oppose /ʉ/+metaphony to /us/. E.g. pirru but perrus. This opposition is nearly lost and only few speakers of the Pasiegu dialect still use it. Nowadays, the most common situation is the no-opposition, using /u/ as a masculine morpheme both in singular and plural.
- Mass neuter: this feature marks uncountableness in nouns, pronouns, articles, adjectives and quantifiers. As in general Astur-Leonese, the neuter morpheme is /o/, rendering an opposition between pelo and pelu, however the actual development of this feature changes from dialect to dialect:
- * Most western dialects have recently lost this distinction in nominal and adjectival morphology, merging masculine and neuter morphology, although keeping this distinction in pronouns, quantifiers and articles, so lo would refer to pelu, but lu would refer to pelu.
- * Eastern dialects show a more complex behaviour, with vowel harmony as the main mechanism for neuter distinction. Due to this, word-final morphology was not so important, and the mutations in stressed and previous syllables play a more important role. Thus, these would have and , the same applied for adjectives. Likewise, eastern dialects modified their pronoun systems in order to avoid misunderstandings, replacing lu with li as third person singular accusative pronoun, and using lu for mass neuter. However, this distinction has been gradually lost and is now only retained in some older speakers of Pasiegu dialect. A unique feature of these dialects is the use of feminine agreeing quantifiers with neuter nouns, such as: mucha pelu.
- Dropping of the -r from verb infinitives when clitic pronouns are appended. This results in cantar +la = cantala.
- Preference of simple verbal tenses' over complex tenses, e.g. "ya acabé" rather than "ya he acabáu".
Threats and recognition
Comparative tables
| West. Cantabrian | East. Cantabrian | - | ||||
| Gloss | Latin | Asturian | Montañés | Pasiegu | Castilian Spanish | Features |
| "high" | altu | altu | altu | alto | ALTUM > altu | |
| "to fall" | cayer | cayer | cayer | caer | Before short e, /d/ → /j/. | |
| "to say" | dicir | dicir/icir | dicir/dicer/icir | decir | Conjugation shift -ERE → -IR | |
| "to do" | facer/facere | ḥacer | hacer | hacer | Western /f/→. Eastern /f/→∅. | |
| "iron" | fierro | ḥierru | yerru | hierro | Western. Eastern. | |
| "flame" | llama | llapa | llama | llama | Palatalization /FL-/ > | |
| "fire" | fueu/fuegu | ḥueu | ḥuigu/ḥuegu | fuego | Western: FOCUM >. Eastern: FOCUM > . | |
| "fireplace" | llar | llar | lar | lar | Western: Palatalization of ll-, yeísmo. | |
| "to read" | lleer | leer | leyer | leer | Eastern: survival of -g- as -y-. | |
| "loin" | llombu | lombu/llombu | lumu/lomu | lomo | Western: conservation of -MB- group. Eastern: metaphony. | |
| "mother" | madre/ma | madre | madri | madre | Eastern: closing of final -e. | |
| "blackbird" | mierbu | miruellu | miruilu | mirlo | Westen: palatalization of -l-. Eastern: metaphony. | |
| "to show" | amosar | amostrar | mostrar | mostrar | Western: prothesis. | |
| "knot" | ñudu | ñudu | ñudu | nudo | Palatalization of Latin N- | |
| "ours" | nuestru/nuesu | nuestru | muistru | nuestro | Eastern: metaphony and confusion between Latin pronoun nos and 1st person plural ending -mos. | |
| "cough" | tus | tus | tus | tos | ||
| "almost" | cuasi | cuasi | casi | casi | ||
| "to bring" | trayer | trayer | trayer | traer | Conservation of Latin -h- by -y-. | |
| "to see" | ver | veer | veyer | ver | Eastern: before short e, /d/ → /y/. |
| West. Cantabrian | East. Cantabrian | - | ||||
| Gloss | Latin | Asturian | Montañés | Pasiegu | Castilian Spanish | Features |
| "photo" | -- | foto | ḥotu | afutu | foto | Western shows > , while Eastrn prefers prothesis. |
| "dog/dogs" | -- | perru/perros | perru/perros | pirru/perrus | perro/perros | Western masculine singular -u, plural -os. Eastern masculine singular -u + metaphony, plural -us. |
The following notes only apply for the Cantabrian derivatives, but might as well occur in other Astur-Leonese varieties: