Murcian (endonym: murciano) is a variant of Peninsular Spanish, spoken mainly in the autonomous community of Murcia and the adjacent comarcas of Vega Baja del Segura and Alto Vinalopó in the province of Alicante (Valencia), the corridor of Almansa in Albacete (Castile-La Mancha). In a greater extent, it may also include some areas that were part of the former Kingdom of Murcia, such as southeastern Albacete (now part of Castile La Mancha) and parts of Jaén and Almería (now part of Andalusia). The linguistic varieties of Murcian form a dialect continuum with Eastern Andalusian and Manchego Peninsular Spanish. Murcian is considered a separate language of Spanish by some of its native speakers and by proponents Murcianism, who call it llengua murciana. The term panocho is also used to designate the Murcian language, however it mostly refers to the variety spoken in the comarca of the Huerta de Murcia.

History

Murcian emerged from the mixture of several linguistic varieties that joined together after the Kingdom of Murcia was conquered by the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile and populated with principally northeastern settlers between the 13th and 14th centuries. The linguistic varieties were mainly Tudmir's Romance (a type of Andalusi Romance), Arabic, Aragonese, Old Castilian and Occitano-Catalan. In modern times Murcian has also been influenced by French and Caló.

Phonetic features of Murcian

Consonants

The most notable characteristics of a Murcian accent involve the heavy reduction of syllable-final consonants, as well as the frequent loss of from the suffixes -ado/ada, -ido/-ida. No non-nasal consonants are permitted in word-final position. As is typical of Spanish, syllable-final nasals are neutralized, and assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant. In Murcian, as in many other varieties, the word-final nasal is typically realized as a velar when not followed by a consonant. Non-liquid, non-nasal postvocalic consonants in the syllable coda assimilate to both the place and the manner of articulation of the following consonant, producing a geminate. For instance, historical, and all fall together as , rendering cacto 'cactus', casto 'chaste' and capto 'I understand' homophonous as. Historical also joins this neutralization, rendering sexta 'sixth' (f.) homophonous with secta 'sect' as. Other historical postvocalic clusters affected by this include, in each case producing a geminated second element: (with being an alternative to ). This produces minimal pairs differentiated by consonant length, such as cisne 'swan' vs. cine 'cinema'. This process also occurs across word boundaries, as in los nenes 'the kids'. Syllable-final can assimilate to a following or, while syllable-final may assimilate to a following and become a tapped before any other consonant. In casual speech, syllable- and word-final is never pronounced as a sibilant. It is usually elided entirely or forms part of a geminate, although in areas bordering Andalusia it may be debuccalized, pronounced as an. While the word para is frequently realized as pa' in all Spanish varieties, in Murcian Spanish this is much more widespread, being more common among the upper classes and in more formal situations than in other zones. In older working-class rural speech, syllable-final surfaces as before word-initial consonants (particularly the voiced plosives and ), as in los vasos 'the glasses'. are lenited after this allophone. The replacement of with is perceived as a very marked feature of rural Murcian, and it is disapproved of by the local population.

Phonetic development

There are linguistic phenomena characteristic of traditional Murcian speech, many of which are or were usual in other linguistic varieties (Aragonese, Mozarabic, Catalan, Andalusian, etc.):

Vowels

The vowel system of Murcian Spanish is essentially the same of Eastern Andalusian. The open-mid vowels as well as the open front are realizations of (where ⟨C⟩ stands for any consonant other than or ) in the syllable coda. Due to vowel harmony, the close-mid and the open central (hereafter transcribed without the diacritic) are banned from occurring in any syllable preceding that with. This change is sometimes called vowel opening, but this is completely inaccurate for, which is not only more back than but also lower than it. Thus, the contrast between mañanas and the singular form mañana 'morning' surfaces as a contrast of vowel quality:, rather than the presence of terminal in the former word. Some authors have questioned whether the opening of the high vowels is significant (cfr., e.g., Zubizarreta, 1979, Poch / Llisterri, 1986, Sanders, 1994), while others argue that, although the opening is less than in the case of middle and low vowels, it is entirely relevant (cfr., e.g., Alonso / Canellada / Zamora Vicente, 1950, Mondéjar, 1979, Alarcos, 1983). In any case, the opening of these final high vowels also triggers vowel harmony.

Other characteristics

The diminutive suffix is -icho, which is likely related to -ico.