Talk:Aranese dialect

Untitled

Aranese is not a language, is only an Occitan dialect. The name of the page is not apropiated. Llull 13:45, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Every dialect is a language, so there should be no problem concerning the title. --zeno 12:27, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Aranese people cosidere themselves that speak a dialect (as they wrote in their laws).

More acurately, they speak a language, Occitan, and people there call it Aranese, which is also the name of the sub-dialect of Occitan spoken there. Aranese<Pyrenean<Gascon<Occitan. Moreover, the written form they developed uses the classical norm of Occitan with the general adaptations to Gascon, with further modifications to fit their sub-dialect. That norm is also modified to be used for other dialects and sub-dialects of Occitan : it's a pluricentric language, like Catalan. Correjon (talk) 23:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

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I have another question: The article says Aranese is an official language in the Aran valley - how far does that go? Is it really used in the administration? Are there any documents stating this fact? --zeno 12:27, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is taught in schools. I'm not sure about the administration, but keep in mind that Val d'Aran is a really small, its entire population is about 7000. Bogdan | Talk 13:17, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's the point. If it is just taught in schools, it is not an official language at all. I had English at school, but this language is by no means an official language in Germany. --zeno 11:53, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it's official. No only it's the main language at the schools (the only when they are babies). The Conselh Generau d'Aran use only this language and the Goverment of Catalonia and its public television must use Aranese too. If you visit the region you'll see that the official posters only are in this language.

In fact it is co-official. By law, Aranese must coexist with Catalan and Spanish, the same way as Catalan and Spanish are co-official in the rest of Catalonia. The Conselh d'Aran uses aranese as official language, but anyone should be able to use any of the three languages when addressing them, forms and documentations should be available in the thre languages, etc. There are some radio stations that emit in Aranese; about TV as far as I know is restricted to some spaces in Aranes locally emitted through catalan television (they don't have a public TV on their own). Xavier 02:26, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC)

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Regarding the "Alphabet" section: could we please keep the language on the English wikipedia pages to English, not Hungarian. If somebody reading this speaks both Hungarian and English, could they please try to translate it. Co1dfus1on789 13:10, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirect from Aranes

Hello, I just added a redirect from Aranes (see //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aranes_(language)&redirect=no), and indicated that it was an alternate spelling (Other spellings). If anyone knows better, please edit accordingly. --Jsf 00:47, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Meaning

I can't understand what "benefits, like Béarnais, from a certain linguistic normalization which keeps it original" is supposed to mean. Can anyone translate into English? Mark O'Sullivan 09:30, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

• That line made no sense whatsoever. I looked for a similar statement that might have been poorly translated from the Spanish, Occitan, or Catalan versions of this article, but found none. So, I deleted it. —Tox 08:04, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

One of the strongest actors - original research?

The article says:

"Because of its co-official status the Aranese variety is currently one of the strongest actors in the Occitan sphere"

This sentence has two potential problems:

1. It asserts that Aranese is one of the strongest actors in the Occitan sphere without clearly providing a source.
2. It provides an explanation to its alleged being "one of the strongest actors". Such an explanation must also have a source.

As it is now, it's essentially weasel wording. As a minimum there should be a source for this statement. Better yet, there should be examples of notable writers or public figures that come from Aran and set the tone for the whole Occitan sphere.

I traveled for a few days in Aran and the dedication of the local government and the public to promoting the language indeed seem impressive, but i have not been in the French Occitan areas and i haven't ever studied Occitan properly. So i am not saying that this statement about Aranese is not plausible, but a better source is needed. --Amir E. Aharoni 20:12, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry - no explanation, so i had to remove it. If you have sources, please put it back. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 10:44, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Category - Gascon or Occitan

Aranese is a kind of Gascon, everyone seems to agree about that - Aitor Carrera's Aranese grammar says that, Antoni Badia i Margarit's Catalan grammar mentions it, and it appears in other sources too.

Whether Gascon is a "language" or a "dialect" - that's a matter of debate. But Aranese should be categorized under the Gascon category, no matter how it is called.

If you think that the category name is wrong, you can propose to rename it at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 22:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Number of speakers

I have added the "dubious" tag to the impossible statement in the infobox that Aranese has 250,000 native speakers. The Val d'Aran only has about 7,000 inhabitants, of which only 65% can speak Aranese, according to the referenced EU document. That would give a figure of 4,550 speakers or so. Even Fala, which is not official in Extremadura, seems to have a larger number of speakers, and even accounting for some Aranese speakers who migrated elsewhere, a figure of 250,000 seems impossible. Maybe that is the figure for Gascon, not specifically Aranese, but then it is a dubious figure anyway, as the article is about Aranese. As I could find no evidence of vandalism in the article's history and no reliable source giving an accurate number of speakers (the EU document would only allow interpolations), I decided that tagging would be the best for now. --UrsoBR (talk) 09:23, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

References

Re broken link, I don't speak Aranese, but I wondered whether this reference would this be any help: http://www.324.cat/noticia/26187/valldaran/Un-jove-de-Minnesota-prepara-el-primer-diccionari-aranes-angles Or perhaps: http://www.324.cat/noticia/115912/altres/Presenten-el-primer-diccionari-aranes-angles Or: http://malaltsdeneu.mforos.com/20523/310088-a-minessota-es-parla-el-aranes/ Dawright12 (talk) 21:00, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I've changed the broken link. Jotamar (talk) 13:49, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Recent changes to the comparison table: comments

Hello,

I made some edits to the comparison table that was recently added since there appeared to be incorrect information. In addition, I made (or tried to make) various improvements. Since I'm not sure if everything I did was right, I summarized the uncertain changes below for all of you to see:

Aranese hèsta /ˈesta/ -> /ˈɛsta/ (ignoring the addition of "(h)", which I am sure is correct)

Aranese castèth /kasˈtet(ʃ)/ -> /kasˈtɛt(ʃ)/

Aranese arrir /aˈriɾ/ -> /aˈri(ɾ)/

... I don't think the change from "e" to "ɛ" was wrong since the PDF on Aranese orthography mentioned in the list of references says that ⟨è⟩ is [ɛ], and it didn't mention any change in pronunciation of ⟨è⟩ in those environments.

As for the final ⟨r⟩ of arrir, I know final R in Occitan infinitives is typically silent, but I'm not sure whether it remains silent if pronouns get attached to it (in Aranese). I think the PDF implied that it remains silent on page 4, but I can't read Aranese all that well.

Catalan riure /rjuɾe/ -> /ˈriwɾe/ (it'd probably be a bit better as as /ˈriw.ɾe/)

Italian ridere /riˈdere/ -> /ˈridere/

Latin rīdēre /ˈridere/ -> /ˈriːdeːre/. I don't know if the rest of the Latin data's fine.

To the Italian 'she' cell, I added ella (with the transcription /ˈɛlːa/) since the pronoun is still in normal use in certain parts of Italy. Note that I don't know actually know whether the stressed vowel is /ɛ/ or /e/ according to the "gold standard". I just went with /ɛ/ since it "felt" better (it really does need to be investigated...).

Finally, don't take my leaving the French data alone as an indication of any sort of belief on my part that there's nothing wrong with it, for I don't know much about French (and absolutely nothing about French accentuation).

Thanks,

Espreon (talk) 22:50, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Firstly, thank you, Espreon for making some edits. I was doing it when I was exhausted after a hard day at work, and regarding the extra stress marks: I was literally copy-pasting code so those slipped in, as did some less-than-perfect transcriptions (especially in languages I'm not too well versed in: Italian, Catalan). Thanks for catching that! For sake of keeping everything in one spot, I'll respond to your comments on my talk page and on this page here.

Re: dialectal /h/ (eg, /'(h)esta/)—I'm conflicted about whether or not to include that. From what the sources say, it only occurs in 2 towns, which have a combined population of 165, and not all of them necessarily speak Aranese. Then again, Aranese has under 5000 speakers so even 100 speakers in Bausen and Canejan would account for 2% of the entire population of speakers. I guess it's not wrong to include it but maybe we should add a note to that table discussing it?

Re: /ɛ/ vs /e/ and /ɾ/ vs /(ɾ)/—My understanding is that /e/ is the phoneme and that [ɛ] is an allophone. Since I was doing phonological transcriptions, not phonetic ones, I believe that all those /ɛ/ should be reverted to /e/. As for the terminal R (such as in infintives), I'm not sure if you would transcribe it phonologically as /ɾ/, /(ɾ)/ or silent. The situation appears very similar to non-rhotic accents of English, and I can't think for the life of me how to phonologically transcribe those accents. If the transcriptions in the table were phonetic, I'd completely agree that it should be /(ɾ)/. Here's what the source says (page 11, note 33):

• R is pronounced [r] between vowels
  • pora, cara
• and [r] at the beginning of a word or in contact with a consonant:
  • còr, pòrta
  • rason, arren
• R in final position is generally mute [Ø]:
  • cantar, víuer, molièr
• Compare:
  • cantarè, viueria, molièra

It's not 100% clear, mostly because the inclusion of còr in that second grouping confuses me. They don't have transcriptions of the words which makes it difficult to "compare". I'm still under the impression that it's a /ɾ/ phoneme with a phonetic realization of silence.

I'll take a look around the internet to see if I can find anything else on the subject.

Let me know your thoughts and I can do the changes if you'd like. I'm new at this editing Wiki thing; I'm just trying to procrastinate grad school applications and that's brought me here haha

Edit: You were right about the E, espreon. There are two phonemes.

Sj122390 (talk) 02:04, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello. Sorry for not responding earlier; I've been a bit busy recently.

I'm still not quite sure what to do with word-final ⟨r⟩. If the rhotic cannot be brought back to the surface (with normal processes, at least), then I'd kick it out of transcriptions. I'm getting a sort of tome on Aranese speech soon, so I might find some helpful information on this.

Out of curiosity, what led you to believe that there was not a separate /ɛ/?

As for dialectal /h/, I think we should keep a representation of it in the table, since you bothered to include it in the consonant chart and especially since we currently represent ⟨th⟩ as /t(ʃ)/, and you did add some stuff saying that ⟨th⟩ is only pronounced as [tʃ] in the same two towns. Also, I don't think it's necessary to say that ⟨h⟩ and ⟨th⟩ are only [h] and [tʃ] in those two towns in that table.

I believe we should remove the stress marks from the French transcriptions since this site's articles on French say that French does not differentiate words using stress and that it is not assigned like it is in languages such as Spanish or English. Even transcriptions on this site for readers that aren't familiar with French don't attempt to mark stress.

A quick bit of searching (using this dictionary) suggested that Italian ella ought to be transcribed with /e/ instead of /ɛ/, but I'll look into it some more before doing anything.

Espreon (talk) 07:36, 26 August 2014 (UTC)