Navarro-Aragonese
Navarro-Aragonese is a Romance language once spoken in a large part of the Ebro River basin, south of the middle Pyrenees, although it is only currently spoken in a small portion of its original territory. The areas where it was spoken might have included most of Aragón, southern Navarre, and La Rioja. It was also spoken across several towns of central Navarre in a multilingual environment with Occitan, where Basque was the native language.
Navarro-Aragonese gradually lost ground throughout most of its geographic areas to Castilian, with its last remnants being the dialects of the Aragonese language still spoken in northern Aragon.
Origins and distribution
The language was not defined by clear-cut boundaries, but rather it was a continuum of the Romance language spoken on the stretch extending north of the Muslim realms of the Ebro, under the influence of Mozarabic and Basque, towards the Pyrenees. The Muladies Banu Qasi, lords of Tudela in the 9th century, may have mostly spoken a variant of Navarro-Aragonese. Early evidence of the language can be found in place-names like Murillo el Fruto attested as Murello Freito and Muriel Freito and Cascante, Olite or Urzante with a typical restored -e ending after "t" in this area.The language is also attested in major towns of Navarre in a multilingual environment where Basque was the natural language, used by most of the people, Occitan was spoken by the Franks in their ethnic boroughs, while Hebrew was used for written purposes in the aljamas along with Basque and Navarro-Aragonese as vernaculars in their respective linguistic regions.
in La Rioja is home to the oldest records in Navarro-Aragonese