Speakers of Iberian-Romance languages. What does Asturian sound like to you?

[nooj]

I made this short video, based on just a handful of the examples offered by the Atlas Sonoru de la Llingua Asturiana, starting from the eastern most towns and going to the south west. I purposely excluded the Galician language of Asturias, on the far left marked in purple, also called Galician-Asturian, and kept to the varieties that one would reasonably call 'Asturian language' proper.



Asturian is an endangered language belonging to the Astur-Leonese language family which is spoken in two Iberian countries (Portugal and Spain).

[Iversen]

To me Asturian sounds like Castellano with more u sounds in it and quite a few mysterious words - and apparently mostly spoken by elderly people who also might have been fairly hard to understand in Standard Spanish. I could understand it, but I had to concentrate hard.

[iguanamon]

To my ears, it sounds more like Portuñol- heavy on the "ñol" and much lighter on the "portu".

[nooj]

quite a few mysterious words

You speak both Portuguese and Spanish. Are there any words in the Asturian clips that you don't recognise in Spanish, but you don't recognise from Portuguese either?

[iguanamon]

I don't have time today to analyse the whole video, unfortunately. The word "gochu" stands out to me, which I assume is some kind of Asturian pork. I assume "tar" to be a contraction of "estar".

edit: Of course, being a vegetarian, sausage making does not appeal to me as a topic,

[Iversen]

I didn't write any words down, but I listened once again to the first lady (the one who spoke about a church) and jotted three words down.

The first was churlo, which apparently means "canvas spice bag" in Spanish. That's a word which I could have missed for the rest of my life if it hadn't turned up here. But I can't see how that interpretation fits into the context. My immediate hunch was that it was a parallel to French "gueule" (dirty word for mouth), and right after that "gola" (neck, collar) from either Spanish or Portuguese - but still not quite what I had expected. If I had an Asturian dictionary I would definitely have looked it up.

The second was "rumbaras", which I at first listening just passed over as something like chaos or a general mess (maybe a reference to the Cuban dance 'rumba'), but the second time I heard it as a parallel to the indefinido of Spanish "romper" or some other Spanish verb. It seems that 'rumba' is based on a verb that may have meant 'throw' - anyway I ended up hearing that somebody had two women and amidst some turmoil left one and departed with a third one ... and lived in sin thereafter because there wasn't a church in the neighbourhood.

The third one was "chulo". At first I thought that it had to be something edible from Latinamerica, but in the context that idea had to be dismissed. Then it had to be a negative way to characterize men who had mistresses. Anywhay, I have looked it up now and found that it exists in both Spanish and Portuguese, but I didn't immediately recognize it - however the meaning apparently is close to the one I ended up with.

[Saim]

I don't have time today to analyse the whole video, unfortunately. The word "gochu" stands out to me, which I assume is some kind of Asturian pork. I assume "tar" to be a contraction of "estar".

edit: Of course, being a vegetarian, sausage making does not appeal to me as a topic,

“Gochu” means “pig”.

[Nogon]

To me - not a speaker of Spanish or Portuguese - it sounds like Spanish with lots of extra "sh"-sounds.

[Odair]

It sounds like Spanish with an accent. I could never tell it was a different dialect from listening alone.

[leosmith]

it sounds like Spanish with lots of extra "sh"-sounds.

Same here. Spanish with dodgy S's.