SPEAK OF VILLAFÁFILA

In each area, as it turns out in Villafáfila, it has a certain way of speaking, even words are preserved – collected in the DRAE – ignored in the big cities, and I am not referring to the classic words linked to agricultural tasks. Obviously, there are some very common vulgarisms also in other Spanish regions. Here are some peculiarities of speech in this region:

• The “a” (the so-called a-prosthetic) is put before in many verbs: acambizar-change; screen-screen; overwhelm-overwhelm; surround-surround

• It is widely used to be left to leave. Where did you put the jacket?

• “It is” has in many verbs a sense of separation –quite common in other areas of Zamora and León–, such as sterronar, esformigar, esbarroncar, escabezar, esparramar. In these cases and many others, “es” is used for “des”.

• “e” is easily used for “i” (emptying: it is also said to empty) and for “a”, as ceranda por zaranda.

• In the imperative leave me, hit her, tell her, talk to her, etc. the esdrújula is eliminated and becomes acute: “dejamé”, “chocalá”, “diseló”, “hablalé”, etc. In a recitation of his poems, Claudio Rodríguez also transforms some esdrújula into acute. He says in the poem "Cantata of fear" ( Personal anthology, accompanied by CD, Visor, Madrid 2000): "Open that door, close it..." Obviously, in the text it is written "close it".

• “Don't let him speak” instead of “don't let him speak”.

• Older people generally abbreviate the third person plural of the preterite indefinite: “trajon” for they brought, “ dijon” for they said.

• The "d" is eliminated in some passive participles and in words ending in "ado": "sentao" for sitting, "acabao" for finished, as in so many Spanish areas. But there are words that would be corny to use with an “ado” ending, such as “tenao”, “sobrao”, “sojao”, “carrao”, “platao”, “prao”, “barcao”, “puñao”, etc.

• "ado" is also abbreviated with a single "o" in expressions such as "already paid", instead of already paid. It should be noted, however, that this word had already been included as a passive participle of the verb pay in the twenty-first edition of the Dictionary of the Spanish Language.

• The "hais" is used more than the "hais"; others tend to say “we have” instead of “we have”. Juan de Valdés in the Diálogo de la lengua uses “avemos”.

• There are those who still use the ending "ay" instead of "ad" in the imperative: "wait" instead of wait, "anday" instead of andad, "quitay" instead of remove, etc.

• It is usually said “from” by “from the”: “from the prao pacá” (from the meadow to here or to here). Agglutinations of this nature in “pol” instead of “por el”, “pal” instead of “para el” are frequent. And the apocopes: “ca” instead of “casa”, “to” instead of “everything” (“to put”), “na” instead of “nothing”, mu” instead of “very”. .

• “give him” for give him; "Give him five pesetas."

• The preposition "en" is put before in some gerunds, to signify the immediate action: in arriving (on arrival, while it is already arriving), genuine Castilian expression, as can be seen in epic romances.

• The use of the verb to fall as transitive is common; This is how you say “you dropped the oil” instead of “you dropped the oil”. This same verb is also used by Claudio Rodríguez as transitive in Don de la ebbriedad: ... “because not only the wind blows them down...”; in this case, it refers to the leaves. As Luis García Jambrina very well observes, quoting Julio Borrego Nieto, falling here does not mean throwing, with the intervention of the will, but letting fall involuntarily. (Cf. Gift of drunkenness, Spells, edition of Luis García Jambrina, Ed. Clásicos Castalia, Madrid 1998, note p., 87.)

• "Entodavía" and "entavía" for yet.

• "The more" for the more.

• "The more" for the more.

• "Asinque" for so.

• "So what" or "what" for as long as.

• "Against" for how much or how many. “Against less we are”, “against more I told you so”. In Soria "against" means "next to".

• "I" for "me". "Twenty isn't enough for me," she tells herself in a popular couplet.

• “Vos” for you, conjugating above all the verb seem: “Does it look nice to you?”

• "For" with the meaning of "in", in phrases like "I haven't seen it anywhere" (I haven't seen it anywhere).

• The contraction desta, deste, desto (of this, of this, of this) is usual, such as: "this is done", "one of these days"...

• It is quite generalized to use "de que" for "since" or "as soon as".

• It is common to conjugate the second person plural of the present indicative of some verbs with an ending in "emos": "We meet" instead of we meet, "let's leave" instead of we leave, etc.

• An "s" is normally added to the second person singular of the preterite indefinite: "vinistes" instead of viniste, etc., a very common use in the Spanish classics.

• "There" is usually used without an accent, in expressions such as "go over there", "walk over there"; in this case it might be necessary to transcribe “ay” or “ai”.

• Some people use the article before the possessive “my”: for example, “la mi casa”, “las mis mantas”. This construction is very common in the Middle Ages and in the romances; The one collected by Ramón Menéndez Pidal in Flor Nueva de Romances Viejas suffices as an example: 

...four hundred are mine,
those who eat my bread...
Here, here, my two hundred,
those who eat my bread...

• Also very abundant in El conde Lucanor. Better known and current is the Romance of the brown wolf , which begins like this:

While I was in my shack painting my staff...

• Cesáreo Fernández Duro says of the article "the" that "vulgarly precedes possessive pronouns, and the same in the feminine gender... General idiom in the old as taught by the Sunday Prayer. I think it refers to the Our Father, where it used to be said: "Our daily bread, give us today..." Currently, it is prayed: "Give us today our daily bread".

• It is quite common to use the filler "do you hear?" in conversations, to reaffirm what is said.

• Diminutives ending in "ico" are very frequent: ajico, majico, early, small, shoe, small, guerrica, agustico, etc. This exclamation is very common among the women of La Lampreana: “Jesus, reign sovereign”. Fernández Duro already picks up this modality, who says of ico, ica: "general endings of diminutives". In the famous Bolero de Algodre it is said:

...Whoever dances bolero
be careful,
oh, oh, oh.
Be careful
that on the third
salty and olé song
it is well paid.

• Likewise, these diminutives appear in many Castilian romances. In the Romance of the beautiful Melisenda it is said, for example:

...my teeth so small,
small as salt...

• In the romance Song of a Gentle Lady and a Rustic Shepherd it is said:

I have the neck of a heron,
the eyes of an
esparver, the sharp tits,
that the brial want to break...