Extremaduran Language - History

History

After the union of the kingdoms of León and Castile (into the "Crown of Castile and León"), the Castilian language slowly replaced Latin as the official language of the institutions, thus relegating Old Leonese to a sign of poverty and ignorance of those who spoke it. Only in Asturias, where the language was born, people were conscious of speaking a language different from Castilian; but even there only some authors used it in their writings.

Probably the cultural upheaval of Spanish-speaking Salamanca's University was the cause of the quick Castilianisation of the eastern parts of this province, so dividing the Astur-Leonese domain between Asturian, Leonese and the Extremaduran in the south of the old Leonese kingdom.

The late 19th century saw the first serious attempt to write in Extremaduran, up to then an oral language, with the poet José María Gabriel y Galán. Born in Salamanca, he lived most of his life in the north of Cáceres, Extremadura. He wrote in a local variant of Extremaduran, full with dialectal remains, but always with an eye on Spanish usage.

After that, localismes are the pattern in the attempts to defend the Extremaduran language, to the extent that today only a few people try to revive the language and make northern Extremadura a bilingual region, whereas the government and official institutions think the best solution is for the northwestern Extremadurans to speak a Castilian dialect without any kind of protection. There are also attempts to transform the southern Castilian dialects ("castúo", as some people named them using the word which appeared in Luis Chamizo's poems) into a language, which makes even harder to defend the High Extremaduran, considered more frequently as a "real" language, and makes it easier for the administration to reject co-officiality and normalisation of Extremaduran. It is in serious danger of extinction, with only the oldest people speaking it at present, while most of the Extremaduran population ignores the language, since the majority of Extremadurans, and even own speakers regard it a poorly spoken Spanish.