Native to Spain Extinct 1991 | Glottolog ronc1236 | |
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Language family BasqueEastern NavarreseRoncalese |
Roncalese (in Basque: erronkariera, in Roncalese dialect: Erronkariko uskara) is an extinct Basque dialect once spoken in the comarca of Roncal-Salazar in Navarre, Spain. It is a subdialect of Eastern Navarrese in the classification of Koldo Zuazo. It had been classified as a subdialect of Souletin (otherwise spoken in the department of Soule in France) in the 19th-century classification of Louis Lucien Bonaparte, and as a separate dialect in the early-20th-century classification of Resurrección María de Azkue. The last speaker of the Roncalese, Fidela Bernat, died in 1991.
Roncalese preserves historical nasals which have been lost from other dialects, a fact which has proven valuable in discrediting the aizkora theory (that Basque vocabulary is continuous from the stone age).