Asturian-American Migration Forum

Months in Asturian

The following list of English, Castellano and Asturianu words for the months is in the order English, Castellano: Asturianu 1, Asturianu 2, etc. The various Asturian words represent some of the regional variation gleaned from my dictionaries. In each case, the first Asturian word listed is the one I think I have encountered most often in my reading, although I have not kept any formal record. I would welcome additions and corrections from native speakers or from any others who know more than I do.

January, enero: xineru, xinero, xiniru, xineiru

February, febrero: febreru, febrero, jebreru, febreiro, firbeiru

March, marzo: marzu, marzo, marciu, morciu

April, abril: abril

May, mayo: mayu, mayo, moyu

June, junio: xuniu, xuno, xunu, San Xuan, San Juan, xuño, xuneto

July, julio: xunetu, xuneto, xunico, xullo, xuliu, julio, mes de l'herba, xunetsín. xuniolín

August, agosto: augustu, payares (Personally, I think this is a dictionary error)

September, setiembre: setiembre, siteimbri, San Miguel

October, octubre: ochubre, ochobre, otubre, outubre, mes de castañes, San Francisco

November, noviembre: payares, samartín (basically a reference to the feast of St. Martin on November 11 and the accompanying pig slaughtering), mes d'us Santus

December, diciembre: avientu, aviento, deciembre, diciembre, mes de Navidá

Bob, you're going to teach me some Asturianu yet!

I did a search on "payares" and found several instances of it used as a month.

Here's one from a page on Asturies.com. Hmm. Now that I look more carefully, even the page is called "ll_payares.htm". The cached page is available at: http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:O0 ... &ie=UTF-8:

19/11/99 (Redacción Asturies.com) Conceyu Xoven, Facendera pola Llingua y La Caleya, entamen los prósimus díes 19, 20 y 21 de payares de 1.999 les I XORNADAS LLÏONESAS D'ESTUDIUS LLINGÜÍSTICUS nos que se van poner dos cursos;

There were also a number of people with the surname "Payares," and at least one town, which also had an alternate spelling of "Pajares."

I was surprised to see that June and July had some of the same entries. Is there an error there? Maybe there's a sense of these two months being a big chunk in the middle of the growing season?

June, junio: xuniu, xuno, xunu, San Xuan, San Juan, xuño, xuneto

July, julio: xunetu, xuneto, xunico, xullo, xuliu, julio, mes de l'herba, xunetsín. xuniolín

Xuniu for June and xunetu for July were the first names for those months in asturianu that I encountered. The others I found later, or simply copied them from one of my dictionaries. Some represent regional variations (which I did not bother to reference). I don't think that xuneto was ever used to refer to both June and July in the same town at the same time. Many of the words listed for July appear etymologically unrelated to the castellano word for July, and more related to the castellano word for June.

You may be right about one long growing season. Also, I don't think that all of the month names not derived from vulgar Latin month names have always necessarily had their modern meaning. Semantic shifts are pretty common in the evolution of languages. Certainly avientu for December doesn't imply that the entire month is Advent or that part of November is not.

Hopefully, the members of this forum will ultimately teach one another some asturianu. I can read modern asturianu reasonably well, but I am certainly no expert, and my writing skills in asturianu leave much to be desired.

First of all, sorry for my english, i´m triying to improve it. I´m from Asturias (from Avilés exactly). I only want to explain that "Pajares" is a mountain that make our limit whit "Castilla y León" (another comunity) and for a thousands of years it was one of the few corridors to go to the rest of Spain. "Payares" (wiyh y) means November, the month of the "ablanes" (Hazelnuts), the "sidra" (cider) and the month of the multicolor forest (greens, reds, browns, yellows, etc...)

Afayaivos (welcomes) to Asturies.

Juan,

Many thanks for the information you posted in the forum concerning payares and pajares. Can you tell us where the mountain is located?

Your mention of the autumn leaf colors reminded me that weekend trips to view the beautiful fall leaf colors here in New England is so popular that we even have a special name for such tourists, leaf peepers. I thought this might be of interest to you and our other friends in Asturias.

Bob Martinez

As I hope you know, Asturies is separate of the rest of Spain for highs mountains ("la cordillera Cantabrica"). And for thousands of years, this mountains only could be passed through "puertos" (smaller mountains than others). One of this "puertos" (that means "docks" in english) is "Pajares" (another are Somiedo, Pontón, Tarna,...). You can see Pajares in this image:

http://www.uniovi.es/Asturias/Aire/116.jpg

This fotograph was taken for a friend of mine, Nardo Villaboy, a great photograph that has a lot of books, one of them about the first city of United States and founded by Asturians: Sant Aghustine of the Florida.

Saludos from Asturies.