1
Mirandese is a Romance language, the same family as Portuguese and Spanish, which are spoken all around the world, but also Asturian, Galician and other languages that are spoken in the Iberian peninsula. Many Mirandese speakers are trilingual and are used to switching between three languages on a daily basis, especially those who live or work near or across the border with Spain. For this reason, many tourists and visitors are surprised when they find themselves lost in translation.
But Mirandese doesn’t only live in close contact with Portuguese and Spanish. It often gets compared with Galician and Leonese too. Depending on who you ask, you might find yourself in the middle of some heated debates.
“Se fur berdade que ls falantes de pertués i ls falantes de spanhol anténden mirandés… anton l mirandés puode ser ua de las lhénguas mais antendidas de l mundo.”
But in our team, we like to say:
“If it’s true that all Portuguese and Spanish speakers can understand Mirandese… then Mirandese might be one of the most widely understood languages in the world!”
Mirandese has distinctive sounds, vocabulary and grammar. While they might look very similar in the written form, Mirandese isn’t always mutually intelligible with the rest of the languages in the area. We will have opportunities to hear Mirandese later on in the module, but if you already know a Romance language, you might want to give this written quiz a try…
