Aragonese is a Romance language spoken in several dialects by about 12,000 people as of 2011, in the Pyrenees valleys of Aragon, Spain, primarily in the comarcas of Somontano de Barbastro, Jacetania, Alto Gállego, Sobrarbe, and Ribagorza/Ribagorça. It is the only modern language which survived from medieval Navarro-Aragonese in a form distinct from Spanish.
Basque is a language spoken by Basques and other residents of the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of northern Spain and southwestern France. Basque is classified as a language isolate and the only language isolate in Europe. The Basques are indigenous to and primarily inhabit the Basque Country. The Basque language is spoken by 806,000 Basques in all territories. Of these, 93.7% (756,000) are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country and the remaining 6.3% (50,000) are in the French portion.
Occitan, also known as lenga d'òc by its native speakers, sometimes also referred to as Provençal, is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as Spain's Val d'Aran in Catalonia; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitania. It is also spoken in Calabria in a linguistic enclave of Cosenza area. Some include Catalan in Occitan, as the linguistic distance between this language and some Occitan dialects is similar to the distance between different Occitan dialects. Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century and still today remains its closest relative.
Gascon is the vernacular Romance variety spoken mainly in the region of Gascony, France. It is often considered a variety of Occitan, although some authors consider it a different language.
Ribagorçan is a number of Romance dialects spoken in the modern territories of the medieval County of Ribagorza, in northern Spain.
Joan Coromines i Vigneaux was a linguist who made important contributions to the study of Catalan, Spanish, and other Romance languages.
Spanish is a Romance language which developed from Vulgar Latin in central areas of the Iberian Peninsula and has absorbed many loanwords from other Romance languages like French, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, and Italian. Spanish also has lexical influences from Arabic and from Paleohispanic languages such as Iberian, Celtiberian and Basque.
There have been many languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula.
The language known today as Spanish is derived from spoken Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans after their occupation of the peninsula that started in the late 3rd century BC. Today it is the world's 4th most widely spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi. Influenced by the peninsular hegemony of Al-Andalus in the early middle ages, Hispano-Romance varieties borrowed substantial lexicon from Arabic. Upon the southward territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Castile, Hispano-Romance norms associated to this polity displaced both Arabic and the Mozarabic romance varieties in the conquered territories, even though the resulting speech also assimilated features from the latter in the process. The first standard written norm of Spanish was brought forward in the 13th century by Alfonso X the Wise, probably drawing from the speech of the upper classes of Toledo. Features associated with the Castilian patterns of Hispano-Romance also spread west and east to the kingdoms of León and Aragón for the rest of the middle ages, owing to the political prestige achieved by the Kingdom of Castile in the peninsular context and to the lesser literary development of their vernacular norms. From the 1560s onward the standard written form followed Madrid's.
Occitano-Romance is a branch of the Romance language group that encompasses the Catalan/Valencian, Occitan languages and sometimes Aragonese, spoken in parts of southern France and northeastern Spain.
Proto-Basque is a reconstructed ancient stage of the Basque language. It preceded another reconstructed stage, Common Basque, which is derived by comparing dialects of modern Basque. Common Basque is their reconstructed common ancestor. Proto-Basque is based on the comparison also of words that precede Common Basque, such as Latin words in Basque, and toponyms. Common Basque is dated to the 5th and 6th centuries, while Proto-Basque stage can be roughly dated to the last centuries BCE, before the Roman conquests in the Western Pyrenees.
As Classical Latin developed into Proto-Romance, its lexicon underwent numerous changes.
Basque surnames are surnames with Basque-language origins or a long, identifiable tradition in the Basque Country. They can be divided into two main types, patronymic and non-patronymic.
The Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico is a discursive etymological dictionary of Spanish compiled by Joan Coromines in collaboration with José Antonio Pascual. It was completed in the late 1970s and published in five volumes in the early 1980s. The entries Y and Z plus an index of the five volumes was published as a sixth volume in 1991. The dictionary is an expansion and consolidation of earlier etymological publications by Corominas, particularly the mid-1950s Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana.
The Marraco is a dragon or frightening creature in Catalan myth in the city of Lleida. It possessed a mouth wide enough to swallow a human whole according to tales told to frighten children.
The Reichenau Glossary is a collection of Latin glosses likely compiled in the 8th century in northern France to assist local clergy in understanding certain words or expressions found in the Vulgate Bible.
As a member of the dialect continuum of Romance languages, Catalan displays linguistic features similar to those of its closest neighbors. The following features represent in some cases unique changes in the evolution of Catalan from Vulgar Latin; other features are common in other Romance-speaking areas.
