Asturian-American Migration Forum

Ceu: pronounced THEH-oo. Also pronounced as ceo and cedo. Alverbiu (adverb). Early; at dawn; in or during the first part of a period of time, a course of action, a series of events; before the usual time.
Usage examples:
Los mious primos baxaran ceu pula mañana pa garrar el camín de Rebol.lar. (My cousins walked down early in the morning to take the road to Rebol.lar.)
L.levanteime ceu pa dir trabayar a Cangas. (I woke up early to get to work in Cangas.)
Nolo chegou bien ceu ya nos inda tabamos apingayando. (Nolo arrived really early and we were still having our catnap.)
Cona nevadona, Nati vieno ceu del mercau de Tineu. (Because of the snow blizzard, Nati got home early from the market in Tineu.)
Folk wisdom:
Anque se enfureza el bobu, bien ceu lu come el llobu. (No matter how ferocious the dim-witted person appears, the wolf will quickly down him.)
La castaña que vien ceo ha probala San Mateo. (Early chestnuts are apt for eating only for Saint Matthew.)

Thanks, Is, you're doing a great job with this! Where do you get the interesting folk sayings from?

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¡Gracias, Is, está fantástico lo que pones aquí! ¿De dónde viene estos refranes interesantes?

The online dictionary of the Asturian language by Xose Lluis Garcia Arias can be found at http://mas.lne.es/diccionario/.

Type in your words in Asturian and it will take you to the definition pages, including paragraphs on usage and folk sayings. It is hosted by the daily newspaper ‘La Nueva España’.

An additional perk is that the author/publisher was careful to indicate how word usage and pronunciation can shift. There is a key under the definition indicating word usage county by county: Ac (Asturias central), Am (Amieva), An (Allande)…

In the case of the word ‘ceu’, it looks like this word today is common only from ‘Ac’ (central Asturias) to ‘Eo’ (the border with Galicia’s Lugo province). It may have reached as far as Ribeseya centuries ago, but it seems to have been lost in eastern Asturias.