Ribagorçan

Ribagorçan is a romance dialect spoken in the Aragonese counties of Ribagorça and La Litera, in Huesca, and Alta Ribagorça in Lleida, Catalonia. All three counties reflect their historical geo-linguistic heritage of having belonged to the important and formerly much larger medieval County of Ribagorça. Today, depending on provincial and regional perspectives, Ribagorçan may be described in Aragon as transitional to Catalan, or in Catalonia as transitional to Aragonese.

Historically, the county and its dialect was influenced by its political alliances, conquerors and rulers - ranging from the Romans to the Goths, Navarrese, the Franks, Moors, Castilians and Catalans. As such, the spoken language evolved from an Aragonese variant of Vulgar Latin and was influenced along the way by its geo-linguistic neighbors - Basque, Gascon, medieval Occitan, Castilian, French and modern Catalan.

Written Language

Being predominantly a spoken language, written documents are scarce, but they do exist - most notably, the "Pastoradas of Benabarre" compiled by Ricardo del Arco as well the writings of Tonón de Baldomera and poetry of Cleto Torrodellas; and more recently works by Ana Tena Puy, Carmen Castán and Bienvenido Mascaray Sin.

With the recognition of Aragonese as a language in 2003, intra-regional identities, among them Ribagorçan, have gained strength and there is renewed interest in preserving, teaching and developing the local dialects commonly referred to as "fabla".

Linguistic Characteristics

In Aragon, the dialect in Ribagorça can be clustered into 2 main groups Upper and Lower Ribagorçan defined by an isogloss line running east-west from the Turbon mountain. However locals prefer to demarcate 3 subdialects:
* Upper, where altorribagorzano (or Patués, c.f. Patois, a mixture of Aragonese, Gascon and Catalan) is spoken - as heard in Benasque;
* Middle, or Meyorribagorzano (transitional to Upper and Lower), as exemplified by the language spoken in Campo;
* Lower, or Baxorribagorzano, spoken in and south of Graus, and more influenced by Castilian.

In La Litera as spoken in Sant Esteve, it can be described as Catalan dominant transitional to Aragonese Ribagorçan and Castilian.

In Catalonia the Ribagorçan dialect spoken in the county of Alta Ribagorça, is also clustered. A dialectal variant exemplified by the Ribagorçan speakers of Pont de Suert, is Catalan dominant transitional to Aragonese with some traits of Aranese Gascon.

Phonology

Some features include:
* Palatalization of IPA|/l/ in IPA|/pl kl fl/ clusters e.g. "pllou" IPA| [ˈpʎɔw] ('it rains'), "cllau" IPA| [ˈkʎaw] ('key')
* General loss of Latin final unstressed vowels except for IPA|/a/, as in Catalan. Moving westward preserved final IPA|/o/ is more frequent.
* Occasional diphthongization of Romance short vowels: IPA|/ɛ/ → IPA| [ie] ; IPA|/ɔ/ → IPA|/ue/, becoming more generalized moving westward. E.g. Lat. "terra" → "tierra"; Lat. "ponte" → "puent"
* Occasional interdental fricative as reflex of to Latin IPA|/k/ before front vowels, e.g. "cinc" IPA| [θiŋk] ('five'). This feature gets more general moving westward.
* Different results for 2nd person plural endings of verbs (Lat. -tis), from west to east: "-z" IPA| [θ] (as in some occidental variants of Aragonese), "-ts" IPA| [ts] (as in Occitan), "-u" IPA| [w] (as in contemporary Catalan).
* Different results from the Romance voiced prepalatal affricate (IPA| [dʒ] from "i-, dj- gj-"), from west to east: IPA| [tʃ] (as in some occidental variants of Aragonese and "apitxat" Valencian), IPA| [dʒ] (as in medieval Catalan and most of contemporary Valencian), IPA| [ʒ] (as in most of contemporary Catalan). E.g. IPA| [tʃ] "ovens" (West Ribagorza), IPA| [dz] "ovens" (East R.) ('young ones').
* Loss of final IPA|/r/ of infinitives and polysyllabic words, a feature shared with most of contemporary Catalan (except Valencian variants). E.g. Lat. "muliere" → "mulle(r)" ('woman'), Lat. "tripaliare" → "treballa(r)" ('to work')
* Past perfect of verbs formed with auxiliary forms derived from Latin VADERE + infinitive e.g. "van fer" [ban ˈfe] ('they did').