THE SPANISH OF EXTREMADURA
The
contemporary autonomous region of Extremadura comprises the provinces of
Cáceres and Badajoz. Three Andalusian
towns contain residents who also claim to speak extremeño: Cuenca
(Córdoba), Encinasola (Huelva), and Jara (Sevilla) (Ariza Viguera 1981;
1987a: 24). Although sharing historical and cultural referents, the
contemporary speech of the two provinces exhibits as many differences as similarities,
and there is little feeling of being Extremeños
among the residents of both provinces.
The speech of Cáceres bears some similarities with Castile, despite
considerable phonetic reduction, while Badajoz Spanish more closely resembles
the speech of southwestern Andalusia, especially Seville. Along the border with Portugal some traces
of Portuguese creep into Extremadura Spanish, while in the northwestern part of
Cáceres some Leonese traits can still be found. Although the most picturesque and regionally identifiable forms
of Extremadura speech have all but disappeared, the region (particular in
Cáceres) retains the memory of castúo,
the Leonese-influenced vernacular speech populariized (together with its
designation) by the foremost regionalist writer, Luis Chamizo (1982). Historically, Extremadura did constitute a
definable dialect zone, although most scholars would consider Extremeños to be a transitional dialect
of Castilian/Spanish rather than a separate language or even self-contained
regional dialect. Thus Zamora Vicente (1967: 332-336) lumps Extremadura in the `hablas de tránsito' while
Llorente Maldonado (1995: 88) groups
the Spanish of Extremadura, Murcia, the Canary Islands, and Andalusia as simple
continuations of Castilian: `no son otra
cosa que la continuación del antiguo dialecto castellano (hoy convertido en la
lengua española), continuación que presenta algunos fenómenos fonéticos
distintos de los fenómenos del español común y del español coloquial del resto
de las regiones españolas.'
Surrounded,
historically or currently, by Leonese, Portuguese, and the Spanish dialects of
Castile and Andalusia, Extremadura has absorbed numerous influences and
constitutes a variegated mosaic of highly regionalized features more than a
unified dialectal profile. In the
northwestern part of Cáceres province, the traditional speech has been strongly
influenced by Leonese and traces remain to the present day. Along the border with Portugal (e.g. San
Martín de Trevejo, Eljas, Valverde del Fresno) some bilingual contact phenomena
are to be found, and in at least one town on the Spanish side of the border
(Olivenza, in Badajoz province), Portuguese predominates over Spanish (cf.
Alvarez Martínez 1996; Ariza Viguera 1980; Flores de Manzano 1988, 1992;
Martínez Martínez 1974, 1983; Onís 1930; Vasconcellos 1933; Maia 1970, 1977;
Viudas Camarasa 1982).
Extremadura
had an early Celtic and then Roman population, and fell under Moorish dominance
after the ninth century. When the
Mozarabs were expelled from Andalusia in 1125 a substantial number arrived in
Extremadura (Ariza Viguera 1987b: 51),
but the real linguistic reshuffling in Extremadura took place as a consequence
of the Christian reconquest. At the
beginning, the northern portion of modern Cáceres province was divided between
Castile and Leon. Leonese forces
recaptured Cáceres, Mérida, and Badajoz by 1229, while Trujillo held out until
1232, when Castilian armies took the town.
Since the crowns of Castile and Leon had become united in 1230 (under
King Fernando III), Castile and Leon were no longer rivals in the
reconquest. Sevilla and Toledo became
the two linguistic and cultural centers of attraction for Extremadura, until
Madrid took over as the linguistic center of Castile in 1561. Much of Extremadura was repopulated from
Leon, whence the abundance of Leonese features in the extremeño vernacular; to the south, resettlement from Castile and
Andalusia was more common.
Currently,
the two provinces of Badajoz and Cáceres share few common cultural and
linguistic threads, and many residents of the autonomous region of Extremadura
have indicated to the present writer that they find little use in the
designation as extremeños. Ariza Viguera (1987a) explores the
relatively low level of awareness of Extremadura speakers of their dialect:
... el extremeño no tiene conciencia, o mejor dicho,
buena conciencia de su habla regional.
Quiere ello decir que, qun cuando muchos hablantes respondan que hablan extremeño, la idea más generalizada es
que lo que ellos hablan es un mal castellano; de ahí que tiendan--en mayor o
menor medida ... a "corregir" los fenómenos lingüísticos que en su
conciencia o subconciencia de yhablantes consideran como
"incorrectos". Esto es claro
cuando se realizan encuestas dialectales o, simplemente, cuando se observa a un
determinado tipo de hablantes: en
numerosas ocasiones, el encuestado evita pronunciar como él suelo hacerlo,
tendiendo a realizar la norma castellana; por otra parte, muchos estudiantes
universitarios dejan los usos de sus pueblos para incorporarse al de la ciudad
en la que estudian ... muy frecuentemente los estudiantes universitarios
afirman que ellos hablan mal el castellano, cuando la realidad es muy
otra: hablan bien el extremeño ... (22)
Ariza
Viguera clarifies that whereas not all or even most residents of Extremadura
are ashamed of their way of speaking, there exists little regional awareness of
speech tendencies. Mass media present a
homonogenized and standardized Spanish throughout Spain, although some regional
characteristics do slip in, and in schools, `aun cuando el profesor sea extremeño---tenderá
a enseñar un castellano normativo, a escribir la S cuando en el habla es /h/,
es decir, una aspirada, etc. Por un lado ese sentimiento de ser un pueblo marginado
... puede haber creado o ayudado a la "automarginación lingüística";
por otro la falta de una entidad alutinadora--Cáceres ha mirado siempre a
Madrid o a Salamanca, Badajoz a Sevilla--puede también haber contribuído al
hecho en cuestión' (p. 23).
The
rapid disappearance of high regional vocabulary items in recent decades has
also contributed to the erosion of a linguistic consciousness in Extremadura,
this despite the high regard in which the regionalist poetry of José María
Gabriel y Galán and especially of Luis Chamizo. Ariza Viguera (1987a: 23) explains: `ello no se debe tanto a sus indudables calidades literarias como
a un motivo mucho más psicológico y humano al mismo tiempo: el que ambos empleen un lenguaje con el que
el hablante se siente identificado ... el habla extremeña se "consagra"
como habla literaria, lo cual palia, mitifica, en el subconsciente del
hablante, su también inconsciente o latente "complejo de hablar mal"
...
Many of
the linguistic studies of Extremadura and other regions is characterized by the
dialect atlas parameters of 19th century Europe. The emphasis is on small towns and more frequently rural
villages. Ideal informants are elderly,
nearly or totally illiterate, with no residence or even travel outside of the
region. At a time when Spain was still
a patchwork of still viable rustic regional dialects, this approach may have
been warranted, but by the second half of the 20th century Peninsular Spanish
was increasingly dominated by urban middle-class norms, diffused by mass media,
improved public education, military service, and greater social and geographical
mobility. Zamora Vicente (1943:
11-12) typifies the reliance on older, rural, illiterate
informants: `He buscado siempre gentes
de la mayor auctotonía posible:
naturales, hijos de naturales, con deficiente cultura primero, a ser
posible, labriegos; cuando hombres, he preferido los que no habían hecho
servicio militar, que, como es sabido, contribuye mucho a la deformación
lingüística ...' Many of
his subjects were over 70 years of age, although some were younger. This means that research conducted around
1940 was actually picking up traces of regional language which became
solidified as early as 1880. This same
conclusion holds for many regional monographs published in Spain even in recent
decades, so that what appears to be a strikingly diverse set of contemporary
dialects in reality represents the situation in isolated rural areas more than
a century ago.
Viudas
Cmarasa (1987a) provides a recent summary of studies on Extremeño Spanish. Classic studies of Extremadura Spanish
include Fink (1929), Bierhenke (1929, 1932), Zamora Vicente (1943b, 1950),
Santos Coco (1936, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944, 1952), Canellada (1941), Cummins
(1974), Velo Nieto (1956). Viudas et
al. (1987) contains more recent studies.
Other recent works include Montero Curiel (1996), Cortés Gómez (1979),
Indiano Nogales (1977), Lumera Guerrero (1979, 1988, 1992), Ariza Verguera
(1992). Bibliographical surveys are
contained in Viudas Camarasa (1987a) and Alvarez Martínez (1996).
As a
transitional area between Spain and Portugal, Extremadura once contained a not
inconsiderable black population, as black slaves and workers were transferred
from southern Portugal to Andalusia (Cortés Cortés 1987). The tangible results of this community on
local varieties of Spanish were probably minimal, but particularly in Badajoz,
residents became accustomed early on to Africans' attempts to speak
Spanish. Diego de Badajoz is one of the
first Peninsular writers to offer literary imitations of the habla de negros (cf. Barrantes
(1882, 1886), in a series of farsas,
including the `Farsa teologal,' `Farsa del moysen,' `Farsa de la hechicera,'
and `Farsa de la ventera.' All were
apparently composed between 1533 and 1548, which, extrapolating backwards,
would make these among the very first Afro-Hispanic literary texts. In addition to being one of the first
Spanish writers to employ Africanized language, Sánchez de Badajoz is one of
the few Spaniards to use literary habla
de negro language who did not live and work in Seville and other southern
areas where the African slave population was predominant. Diego Sánchez was born near the city of
Badajoz, probably in Talavera la Real, a few kilometers away, and almost on the
Portuguese border. His date of birth is
not known, but was probably in the last decade or two of the 15th century. In all of his dramatic writings, Diego
Sánchez demonstrated a keen awareness of popular speech. The most common linguistic resource is the
abundant use of sayagués by his
rustic characters, the stereotypical lenguaje
pastoril of Spanish Golden Age literature, combining popular traits with
regional Leonese/Extremeño forms. This
language was particularly appropriate for Diego Sánchez, since the rustic speech
of southern Extremadura bore a great similarity to the partially idealized sayagués. The African characters who appear in Sánchez' plays based their
pidginized language as much on this rustic vernacular as on the learned Spanish
of their masters, and the `African' component of their language must be
evaluated against the backdrop of these nonstandard rustic variants. In particular, sayagués frequently interchanged /l/ and /r/ in several positions,
dropped many final consonants, shortened words by dropping unstressed initial
and final syllables, and employed many lexical and morphological variants which
bear a greater similarity to Portuguese than to Castilian.
(1) All of modern Extremadura is characterized
by extremely high rates of aspiration and deletion of syllable- and word-final
/s/ (and /θ/). In most of the
region the rates of weakening are as high as in Andalusia, but in northeastern
Cáceres province the rates of weakening diminish somewhat. Table 1 gives some comparative figures. Although there has been no significant
variational research on the sociolinguistics of Extremadura Spanish, there is
nothing to suggest that weakening of /s/ is in any way stigmatized or socially
stratified within Extremadura. Salvador
Plans (1987a: 26) suggests that loss of
final /s/ may lead to a phonological differentiation of lax vowels (resulting
from loss of /s/) to mark plurality, as opposed to tense vowels, in singular
forms, much as occurs in eastern Andalusia.
I have encountered no convincing cases of this phenomenon, but the
matter remains open to further study.
In some instances, a glottal stop may replace a deleted syllable-final
/s/ (Cortés Gómez 1979: 29).
(2) Virtually all of the province of Cáceres
(except along the border with Portugal-Salvador Plans 1987a: 31) and part of Badajoz province
distinguishes /s/ and /θ/ The city
of Badajoz exhibits seseo, with the
same alveolar [s] found in western Andalusia.
Further to the north in Badajoz province and Cáceres, some use of
apicoalveolar [s] is found. In the town
of Malpartida de Plasencia, whose local dialect is known as chinato, intervocalic /θ/ has
traditionally been realized as [δ]; this voicing is sometimes carried over
to intervocalic /s/ (Catalán 1954, Espinosa 1935, Viudas Camarasa 1987b). Ariza Verguera (1992b) has determined that in
Malpartida de Plasencia voicing of intervocalic /s/ and / / is no longer
current, but has detected this process in the town of Serradilla. In this same area, uniform ceceo (realization of /s/ as [ ]) is
also found (Salvador Plans 1987a:
31). The town of Fuente del
Maestre (Cáceres) is an island of seseo
surrounded by towns which distinguish /s/ and /θ/ (Salvador Plans
1987a: 31).
(3) Final /n/ is velarized throughout
Extremadura, with loss of /-n/, leaving a nasal or oral vowel, also
occurs. In the extreme northwest of
Cáceres province, velarization is less common (Cummins 1974: 64).
(4) As in the rest of southern Spain,
intervocalic /d/ is weak and often disappears, especially in the suffix -ado.
Word-final /d/ routinely falls.
In traditional castúo speech,
word-initial /d/ also frequently disappeared:
icí < decir, escudiar < descuidar, etc. (Santos Coco 1936: 13).
(5) Confusion of syllable- and word-final /l/
and /r/ is usual in Extremadura. In the
capital cities of Cáceres and Badajoz, both /l/ and /r/ normally fall
phrase-finally in casual speech.
Aspiration of preconsonantal /r/ sometimes occurs (Cortés Gómez
1979: 28). The stereotyped pronunciation of word-final /r/ as [l] is still
found in rural regions, especially in Badajoz province and in the north of Cáceres. Syllable-final / / or /s/ may also emerge as
[l]; the entire suffix may also reduce to -ajo: noviazgo
> novialgo > noviajo, portazgo > portalgo
> portajo (Zamora Vicente
1967: 334).
(6) The capitals of Cáceres and Badajoz no
longer distinguish /y/ and /λ/, but the later phoneme remains in some
rural areas and smaller towns in Cáceres province. In Badajoz province only a few tiny enclaves of /λ/ remain
(Salvador Plans 1987: 32; Hidalgo
Caballero 1977). In some rural regions
groove fricative or rehilada
pronunciation of /y/ is still heard (Zamora Vicente 1943: 24) but, as in the rest of Spain, this is
quite infrequent. Sporadically, the
groove fricative pronunciation [zh] of /y/-/λ/ is found in Extremadura
(Salvador Plans 1987a: 33-4).
(7) In Badajoz and southern Extremadura, the
posterior fricative /x/ is a weak aspiration [h]. In Cáceres and nearer the Castilian border, a velar [x] or uvular
[X] appears.
(8) Traditional castúo Spanish, heavily influenced by Leonese, tended to realize
final unstressed /e/ as [i] and unstressed /o/ as [u]. This trait appears in all folkloric texts,
but is limited to certain geographical regions and sociolinguistic strata
nowadays. Salvador Plans (1987a: 28-9) describes a swath cutting diagonally
from northwest to southeast in Cáceres province (not reaching the southeast
border) in which raising of final unstressed vowels may still be heard
(9) There are still a few regions of Extremadura
that distinguish /b/ and /v/ (Ariza Verguera 1992a, Alvarez Martínez
1996).
(1) The traditional diminutive ending in
Extremadura is -ino. In contemporary urban speech, -ito and even -illo are making inroads.
(2) Traditional
Extremadura Spanish combines the definite article and the possessive: el tu
padre, los mis muchachos, la nuestra iglesia (Zamora Vicente
1967: 335; Salvador Plans 1987b: 40).
(3) It is still possible to hear the archaic
imperative of first-conjugation verbs in -ai: echai,
hablai, etc.
(4) Vernacular castúo speech contains apocopated verb
forms, such as estuvon < estuvieron, quisun < quisieron, dijon < dijeron, vinon < vinieron.
(5) The analogical pronouns mos (nos), mosotros (nosotros), muestro (nuestro) can be found in rustic speech.
(6) Loss of final /s/ has resulted in lexical
restructuring of some plural forms in rustic vernacular, much as in rural
Andalusia: los árboles > lo(h) árbo, etc. (Salvador Plans
1987b: 40).
(7) For the town of Higuera de Vargas, Cortés
Gómez (1979: 37) reports that female
residents when speaking to children sometimes use the definite article uno instead of un: `eres uno potrino cerril,' `dame uno beso,' etc.
(1) Vernacular speech sometimes places proclitic
pronouns before affirmative commands: se siente usted, se vaya Ud., etc. (Zamora Vicente 1943: 43), much as occurs in some varieties of Portuguese.
(2) The verb caer
can be transitive, meaning `drop, spill, knock over': caí un vaso de agua `I
spilled/knocked over a glass of water.'
Haber can be used transitively
meaning `have': no habemos mucho trabajo `we don't have a lot of work.' Whether this is an archaic carryover or an
innovation is not clear (Salvador Plans 1987b:
43). Similarly, quedar can be used transitively meaning
`to leave behind,' entrar can mean
`to place inside.'
(3) In some areas, overt preposed subjects of
infinitives can be heard: `encima de yo
haberle dicho' (Cortés Gómez 1979: 38).
In the
northwestern portion of Cáceres province, Leonese traits are still found in combination
with Extremadura characteristics (e.g. Cummins 1974). The Extremeño features of aspiration or loss of syllable-final
/s/, elimination of word-final /l/ and /r/, are combined with raising of final
unstressed vowels and significant modification of tonic vowels. Thus, Cummins (1974: 34-5) finds continued evidence of
non-dipthongized mid vowels or of the diphthong uo: nuobi (nueve), fuora (fuera), cuorpo (cuerpo), simpri [sjimpri] (siempre),
quiri [kjiri] (quiere), etc. Reduction of
diphthongs (pacencia < paciencia, tútano < tuétano) is
also found, as in other vernacular dialects of Spanish. Metaphony, that is, raising of tonic mid
vowels due to the presence of a final high vowel, is still found in
northwestern Extremadura: [tjini] < tiene, utru < otro, sombriru < sombrero, etc. (Cummins 1974:
39). Throughout the region,
final unstressed mid vowels are routinely raised: frutu < fruto, lechi < leche, eneru < enero. Loss of word-initial
consonants is frequent in casual speech:
eθe < desde, ehkanso < descanso, ahtanti < bastante, etc. Intervocalic
/d/ is consistently lost, while /x/ is a weak aspiration and sometimes
disappears (Cummins 1974: 57). There is some vocalization of /d/ before
liquids, suggesting resyllabification into the coda of the preceding
syllable: mairi < madre, mairí < Madrid, poiríu < podrido (Cummins 1974: 62).
There is considerable pronunciation of /y/ as groove fricative [ž]
throughout the region. The imperatives velahí < velo ahí, velaquí < velo aquí are sometimes
used without imperative or adverbial force, sometimes to mean `and that's it'
(Cummins 1974: 99-100):
aquí, pu se cultivan velaquí lechuga ...
la rahtra velahí, ¿no be uhté?
Se le echa ehtierco y velahí
In
constructions involving parecer, yo is used instead of a mí
... me: yo parece (paece/paí) que
...
Examples of Extramadura/castúo
Spanish
Voy a contalti aqueyo, mujel mía;
te voy a icir las gielis de mi alma,
el por qué de chiquinu
siempre quería estal solu en la montaña;
cuando diva a tu casa
y estaba siempri serio, siempri tristi,
como las nubes pardas.
Yo nunca tuvi padres,
jui hijo de la desgracia,
jui un pilongu, ya ves, un hespeciano,
un naide, un peazo e zarza (Delgado Fernández 1925: 15)
Venga usté, señol D. Recio
que presona tan lustrá mereci tos los respetos;
usté, pol sabel de pluma,
va a ser cabo furriel presto,
y queremos preparali
pal día que desaminemos;
bien mos puedi dal las gracias
por tos aquellos currelos
que le dimos pa enseñali,
que bien mos merecemos ... (Delgado Fernández 1925: 49)
Ya me voy a encerral los guarrapus,
diju tía Consuelu:
porque me paeci
que vieni el porqueru"
y, al marchalsi, quearun las tres
dali que te pegu
al "dicin que dicin"
soltandu el venenu ... (García García 1977: 149).
Example of chinato speech, by Gregoria Canelo (Viudas
Camarasa 1987bL 72):
---Buenoj diaj tia Antoña.
---Buenoj moloj de Dio Ludia. ¿Aonde ba V. tan temprano?
---Por mira boy a pol un comino de agua pol que quiero
mazal unoj panedillo u aluego ilme a pladencia a molel una maquilla.
---y tu, ¿ande baj Ludia?
---Poj yo boy apol doj pera daguardiente pa Zajinto,
polque le tengo malo y tiene unoj comitoj que le dejchangan tuyto.
---Poj di ¿como no ce lo didij al meico? No cea que baya acel enfermea! No modobligara el didilcelo ...
---Poj mira Ludia ci te baga al tarde badamicada, polque
mandicho ca la tarde ay bayle en el cadino, y a mi no me jade gracia que baya
aezoj bayle la mi Anicacia pol que ezoj baylej degarraoj paece que loj mozoj
laj lleban abrazaj alaj mozaj y no jaden maj que illaj contando tuytaj laj
zartaj del ejpinado, y mira ami no mejido farta il aloj cadino pacadalme con un
buen mozo, y rico, poj noce cijuera la mi muchacha menuo zarmorejo me la
madian, aciej que badami cada ici ella quiere il no la dejej tu bue baya ...
Early imitation of extremeño speech (Santos Coco 1936: 9):
---Iyo!
---He? ¿Qué hay?
---Ná ... m'acaban de icí que Bartó está pa lialaj pa'l
otro mundo.
---Poj yo lo qu'iba sabío era que ejtaba malo. ¿Quién s'iba e pensá que juera pa eso?
---Poj esa ej la pura.
Perico me ijo que lo vido ejta mañana, y qu'ejtaba sin abla, y que no
conocía a naide.
---No semoj naína. Cuando ejtamo maj ejcudiaoj moj da er patatúj, moj queamoj tiesoj
y ...chanfli!
---An cá Perico ejtaba tamié er tío Bajtián, y dijo iba
jecho un cuiciyo delantre dér, y que la ejaba una manda a su sobrino Frajco er
Cegañuto.
Pronunciation
of /s/-/θ/ in selected Spanish dialects(%)
Dialect /s/C /s/#C /s/## /s/#V /s/#v
______________________________________________________________________________
[s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h]
[Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø]
______________________________________________________________________________
Barcelona 99
1 0 92 8 0 95 4
1 100 0
0 96 4
0
Madrid 94 6
0 69 29
2 82 12
6 92 8
0 96 4
0
Toledo 65
31 4 21 59 20 76 4
20 84 9
7 82 8 10
Cáceres 2
91 7 0 94 6 9 8
83 23 77
0 0 95
5
Granada 0
82 18 0 85 15 1 2
97 0 15
85 2 50
48
Murcia 1
70 29 0 80 20 18 11
71 36 28
38 38 41
21
Sevilla 0
95 5 0 91 9 5 2
93 69 10
21 1 46
54
Las
Palmas 2 85 13 0 89
11 2 17
81 75 25
0 0 92
8
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C =
consonant; V = stressed vowel; v = atonic vowel; # = word boundary; ## = phrase
boundary/pause