Language Research

Updated (February 2007)

Portugal, a country with constitutional democracy, is characterized by a remarkably homogenous population. For centuries, it had virtually no ethnic, tribal, racial, religious or cultural minorities. Almost all of the 10 million inhabitants speak Portuguese; almost all are Roman Catholic and identify with the Portuguese culture and the nation.

However, a small Mirandese-speaking population (not exceeding 12,000 people) is concentrated in the villages of the Miranda do Duoro municipality, in the northeastern part of the country and close to the border with Spain. This is the only linguistic minority in the country.

Mirandese is a romance language, related to Asturian-Leonese, and for several centuries it was preserved only as an oral transmission language. In fact, it has virtually no monolingual speakers and its use is either domestic or restricted to cultural and religious events.

Its recognition as an official language in the area is fairly recent and so are the efforts to create an orthographic convention in order to establish unifying criteria for writing in this language.

In compliance with the Constitution, Portugal officially recognized the linguistic rights of the Mirandese community in 1999 (Law No. 7/99) - the right to preserve and promote the Mirandese language "for cultural patrimony, as an instrument of communication and as support to the identity of Terra da Miranda". This law has opened the door to the introduction of the Mirandese language into education, and allowed the institutions of the Council of Miranda do Douro to issue bilingual documents. In the same year, Normative Document No. 34/99 was adopted. It has established the requisites for the educational needs of the teaching of Mirandese in the schools of Miranda do Douro. Although the regulation does not specify the budget assigned to these projects, it requires the Ministry of Education (central and regional services) to supply the logistic, scientific and technical support necessary for the language's development and survival.

The Mirandese linguistic community, on the other hand, has done little to promote its language. Some local associations organize a few activities, based purely on folk arts and traditions, but promotion of the Mirandese language itself is left largely to the local authorities. They have encouraged its propagation through the compulsory teaching of Mirandese - recognized as the second language in the area - in the senior primary-school classes and in the first three years of secondary school. Currently, however, Mirandese is taught only as an optional subject to a small number of pupils at the Miranda do Duoro secondary school: Mirandese is taught at no other educational establishments. The local authorities in the area also promote Mirandese by publishing works in the language and by specialized linguistic studies; through folk arts and cultural events and by organizing a festival of song; through funding theatre productions; and by using Mirandese in some official speeches.

The lack of interest in Mirandese among its own speakers, primarily amongst the young, has nevertheless resulted in a decline in the language use. Young people, in fact, regard Mirandese as an archaic and underdeveloped language, little suited to the needs of modern communication. Moreover, the fact that the Mirandese tradition is more oral than written and the fact that there is no abundance of Mirandese literature only help to reinforce such attitudes. Finally, its linguistic similarity to Portuguese contributes to Mirandese being regarded popularly as merely a dialect of Portuguese.

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