I can speak Spanish fairly well, not perfectly, and my understanding of it is adequate though not perfect by any means. This short video is narrated in Senabrese Leonese, which is still pretty widely spoken in northwestern Zamora, Spain on the Portuguese border near the border with southwestern Leon. Some Senabrese lects have heavy Galician, Castillian and even Portuguese influence.
At least one of them is considered an excellent representative of the Leonese language as spoken in the 1100’s and 1200’s. There are also some so-called Galician dialects spoken in this region, however, they are apparently not intelligible with Galician proper. The Senabrese Galician and Senabrese Leonese have much in common with each other and are essentially the same language.
Honestly, I really did not have the faintest idea of what this fellow was talking about. I kept turning off the Senabrese captions to be fair, but to tell the truth, the captions weren’t even helping much because I could hardly make sense of written Senabrese!
At one time, Asturo-Leonese was the most widely spoken language in Spain. Around 1000, Castillian began to expand south out of the Cantabria region and over time, it overwhelmed Asturo-Leonese, with Leonese being hit particularly hard. Extremaduran is a Western Leonese lect that got isolated down in Extremadura by expanding Castillian, and Mirandese is a Senabrese dialect that got isolated over in Portugal 1,200 years ago and has since come under heavy Galician influence. Mirandese is no longer fully intelligible with Leonese, even with the Senabrese Leonese it grew out of. At the moment, Mirandese is best characterized as a Senabrese Leonese lect transitional to Galician.
That Castillian actually grew out of Asturo-Leonese is fascinating because it implies that Castillian is an Asturo-Leonese dialect and not the other way around. In the same way, Portuguese is actually a dialect of Galician and not the other way around because Portuguese grew out of Galician.
Leonese is apparently not completely intelligible with Asturian. Instead the intelligibility is ~85%.
Leonese, even Senabrese Leonese, is in quite bad shape, however, unlike other Leonese lects, Senabrese still has child speakers.
If you speak Spanish or Portuguese, see if you can figure out what this guy is saying.
