Ebook: An Approach To The Asturian Language

Romania Minor, 1999. — 28 p.Asturian is a Romance language derived from Latin. It is spoken nowadays in the Princedom of Asturias, in Spain. Asturian belongs to a wider linguistic group called Asturian-Leonese, which was the language of the ancient kingdom of León. Its greatest expansion in the XIIth century occupied today’s Spanish provinces of Asturias, León, Zamora, Salamanca, the western half of Cáceres an Badajoz, the Portuguese region of Miranda do Douro and the eastern bank of Cantabria. Asturian-Leonese never had a unified linguistic standard and several dialects were spoken all over this area. Today Castillian (or Spanish) has almost extinguished all these dialects except two: Asturian and Mirandese (the Asturian-Leonese variant spoken in the Northeast of Portugal). From all these dialects only Asturian has had an outstanding literature. Since the XVI century there is an Asturian literature. Today some important young authors are making a modern and excellent literature. Some independent publishing houses edit a dozen titles every year.