page_title: Navarro-Aragonese
section_title: Origins and distribution
hierarchical_section_title: Navarro-Aragonese / Origins and distribution
caption_attribution_description: Los orígenes del Monasterio de Suso hay que explicarlos necesariamente a partir de la vida del santo Millán. Es el santo el que da nombre al valle y al pueblo, a las devociones y al monasterio. Millán vivió como un anacoreta en unas cuevas, donde hoy está el monasterio, en las que fue también enterrado en el año 574. The Monastery of Suso was the scene for the appearance of the first words of Castilian or Spanish and also of the first poems in our tongue. It was declared a World Heritage site on 4 December 1997
context_page_description: Navarro-Aragonese is a Romance language once spoken in a large part of the Ebro River basin, south of the middle Pyrenees, although it is only currently spoken in a small portion of its original territory. The areas where it was spoken might have included most of Aragón, southern Navarre, and La Rioja. It was also spoken across several towns of central Navarre in a multilingual environment with Occitan, where Basque was the native language.
  Navarro-Aragonese gradually lost ground throughout most of its geographic areas to Castilian, with its last remnants being the dialects of the Aragonese language still spoken in northern Aragon.
context_section_description: The language was not defined by clear-cut boundaries, but rather it was a continuum of the Romance language spoken on the stretch extending north of the Muslim realms of the Ebro, under the influence of Mozarabic and Basque, towards the Pyrenees. The Muladies Banu Qasi, lords of Tudela in the 9th century, may have mostly spoken a variant of Navarro-Aragonese. Early evidence of the language can be found in place-names like Murillo el Fruto attested as Murello Freito and Muriel Freito (stemming from Latin "Murellus Fractus") and Cascante, Olite or Urzante with a typical restored -e ending after "t" in this area.
  The language is also attested in major towns of Navarre (in Estella and Pamplona too) in a multilingual environment where Basque was the natural language, used by most of the people, Occitan was spoken by the Franks in their ethnic boroughs, while Hebrew was used for written purposes in the aljamas along with Basque and Navarro-Aragonese as vernaculars in their respective linguistic regions. 
  At the westernmost tip of this middle Ebro stretch a Romance variant was developed in La Rioja, recorded in the Glosas Emilianenses dating from roughly 1000 AD. They have been diversely classified from "cradle of Spanish" to a Navarro-Aragonese variant, while it is widely accepted the glosses show more similarities with the latter. However, political events were going to tip the scale in favour of an increasing assimilation to Castilian in the following centuries, especially after the disputed region was annexed to Castile in 1177 at the expense of Navarre. Another focal point for the emergence and expansion of Romance in High Aragon and eastern border of Navarre was the ancient Roman road and Way of St. James crossing the Pyrenees to the south from Gascony and extending west via Jaca through the Corridor of Berdún, while the territory was largely Basque-Romance bilingual back in 1349.
  However, early Navarro-Aragonese speaking communities may have ebbed and become assimilated in some spots on the strength of a predominant Basque-speaking population (overwhelmingly so in Navarre) north away from the Ebro plains, due to demographic, economic and political shifts, e.g. the eastern borders of Navarre in Leire, Sangüesa, Liédena, Romanzado altogether, were densely Basque-speaking in mid and late 16th century. Navarro-Aragonese had a strong Basque substratum and adstratum, the former being in close contact with Basque, which in turn was rapidly losing ground to the Romance language in the Kingdom of Aragon during the High and Late Middle Ages.
caption: The Monastery of San Millan de la Cogolla in La Rioja is home to the oldest records in Navarro-Aragonese
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