Portuguese is spoken in several places in Spain. One of those places is the town of Al Almedilha in Salamanca Province, where it is spoken right on the border with Portugal. This area was part of Portugal until the 1100’s when the kingdom of Leon conquered it for Spain. Nobody is very sure about what this language is. Linguists are uncertain whether this lect is Galician, Portuguese or Extremaduran.
Intelligibility with Portuguese is not known, but speakers got subtitles in a Galician documentary. It is strikingly similar to the Fala Galician spoken in the nearby Xalima Valley. But Fala is intelligible with Galician, so then why the subtitles for Galicians listening to La Almedilha? The implications are that this lect is not fully intelligible with Galician. Galician speakers say this lect is not Galician. Portuguese speakers who hear this say it sounds like the Portuguese spoken in far northeastern Portugal.
However, older reports from 1962 said that this was a Senabrese Leonese dialect with some Portuguese influences. In that case, it would be similar to Mirandese, Rio de Onorese and Guadramiles, and it may be more similar to . Mirandese than anything else. It would be interesting to see how intelligible this lect is to Mirandese speakers.
Actually what this looks like more than anything else is the remains of the old Galician-Portuguese language that is still spoken in the Baxia Limao and Tras os Montes region of far northeastern Portugal. This language is also called either Old Portuguese, Old Galician or Medieval Galician. It was spoken and written in Portugal and Galicia from 800-1516.
If you speak Portuguese, could you listen to this woman’s speech and tell me whether you can understand it or not?
I understood some of it, but then I do not really understand Portuguese anyway.
