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Llanito
Yanito
Pronunciation	Spanish: [ɟʝaˈnito]Category:Pages with Spanish IPA
Native to	Gibraltar
Ethnicity	Gibraltarians
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Romance Italo-Western Western Iberian West Iberian Castilian[1][2] Spanish Peninsular Spanish Andalusian Spanish Llanito
Early forms	Old Latin Vulgar Latin Proto-Romance Old Spanish Early Modern Spanish
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
IETF	es-GI-spanglisCategory:Language articles with IETF language tag
The majority of Gibraltar's population speaks Llanito.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Llanito or Yanito (Spanish pronunciation: [ɟʝaˈnito]Category:Pages with Spanish IPA) is a form of Andalusian Spanish heavily laced with words from English and other languages, such as Ligurian; it is spoken in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar.^[3] It is commonly marked by a great deal of code switching between Andalusian Spanish and British English and by the use of Anglicisms and loanwords from other Mediterranean languages and dialects.^[4]

Llanito has been described as "Gibraltar's dying mother-tongue".^[5] The English language is becoming increasingly dominant in Gibraltar, with the younger generation speaking little or no Llanito despite learning Spanish in school.^[6][7] LlanitoCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text is a Spanish word meaning 'little plain'. Gibraltarians also call themselves LlanitosCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text.

Etymology

The etymology of the term LlanitoCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text is uncertain, and there are a number of theories about its origin. In Spanish, llanitoCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text means 'little flatland' and one interpretation is that it refers to the "people of the flatlands".^[8] It is thought that the inhabitants of La Línea with important social and economic ties with Gibraltar, were actually the first to be referred to as LlanitosCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text since La Línea lies in the plain and marsh land surrounding The Rock.

Another theory for the origin of the word is that it is a diminutive of the name GianniCategory:Articles containing Italian-language text: gianitoCategory:Articles containing Italian-language text,^[8] pronounced in Genoese slang with the /g/ as /j/.^[9] During the late 18th century 34% of the male civilian population of Gibraltar came from Genoa and GianniCategory:Articles containing Italian-language text was a common Italian forename.^[10] To this day, nearly 20% of Gibraltarian surnames are Italian in origin.^[11] It has also been speculated that the term comes from the English name Johnny.^[12]

It has also been hypothesized that the term originated as a reference to the language of the people, with llanitoCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text originally referring to the "plain language" spoken by ordinary Gibraltarians.^[8]

History

The most influential periods for the formation of Llanito are:^[13]

• 1713. The Treaty of Utrecht yields Gibraltar to the United Kingdom.
• After the Spanish War of Independence and the Peninsular War, British authorities form an education system of British inspiration.
• During the evacuation of Gibraltar within the Second World War, the authorities realise that most of the Gibraltarians lack a sufficient command of English. Subsequently, Spanish is relegated to a foreign language subject in the education system.
• 1969–1982. Spanish governments close "the fence" (the land border) and Spanish workers cannot cross the border into Gibraltar. This reduced the need for Spanish in the workplace and the input of Spanish nannies.^[14]

Language

Andalusian Spanish, from the surrounding Campo de GibraltarCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text, is the main constituent of Llanito. However, Llanito is also heavily influenced by British English. Furthermore, it has borrowed words and expressions from many other languages: for example, it contains over 500 words from the medieval Genoese dialect of Ligurian, as well as some words of Hebrew origin via Judaeo-Spanish.^[15] Its other main language constituents are Maltese, Portuguese, Menorcan Catalan and Darija Arabic.Category:All articles with unsourced statementsCategory:Articles with unsourced statements from June 2024^{[citation needed]} Caló borrowings were once present but have since been lost.^[16]

Llanito often involves code-switching (using different languages for different sentences) and code mixing (using different languages for different words in the same sentence) from Spanish to English.^[17] Some Llanito words are also widely used in the neighbouring Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción (due to the influx of people from La Línea working in Gibraltar over many years).^[18]

It has no official orthography.^[5]

One feature of the language is the pronunciation of Anglicisms with an Andalusian flavour. For example, bacon is pronounced bekiCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text, cake is pronounced kekiCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text (although these particular words are not prevalent today), and porridge is called quecaróCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text (a hispanicisation of the brand Quaker Oats).^[19] Most Gibraltarians, especially those with higher education, also speak standard Spanish with Andalusian pronunciations and standard English of a British English variety.^[20]

Like other Andalusian varieties, Llanito is marked by high rates of final /n/ velarisation, neutralisation and elision of pre-consonantal and word-final /l/ and /r/, and reduction of final /s/. One difference from surrounding dialects is that Gibraltarians tend to maintain this high rate of reduction of final consonants even in very elevated registers, whereas Andalusians would try to adopt a more neutral pronunciation.^[12] Llanito has undergone some degree of lexical restructuring as a result of its reduction of final consonants and the unofficial status of Spanish. For example, túnelCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text 'tunnel' is often pronounced [ˈtune]Category:Pages with plain IPA, and its plural form may be pronounced as [ˈtune(h)]Category:Pages with plain IPA instead of [ˈtunele(h)]Category:Pages with plain IPA.^[12]

According to Italian scholar Giulio Vignoli, Llanito originally contained many Genoese words, which were later replaced by mainly Spanish and some English words.Category:All articles with unsourced statementsCategory:Articles with unsourced statements from June 2024^{[citation needed]}

Llanito has significant Jewish influence, because of a long-standing Jewish population in Gibraltar. They introduced words and expressions from Haketia, a largely extinct Judeo-Spanish language spoken by the Sephardic communities of Northern Morocco such as in Tetuan and Tangiers, and the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa.

Although Llanito is seldom written, a Llanito dictionary, Diccionario YanitoCategory:Articles containing Spanish-language text, was published in 1978 by Manuel Cavilla. In 2001, Tito Vallejo published The Yanito Dictionary. Including Place Names and Yanito Anecdotes.^[21]

Core elements of Llanito vocabulary

Although Llanito is largely based on the colloquial Spanish spoken in the Campo de Gibraltar, there are numerous elements beyond code-switching to English which make it unique. These are as follows.

Linguistic research

Laura Wright, an English professor at the University of Cambridge, and Sophie Macdonald, a Gibraltarian undergraduate she was supervising, began researching the language in 2022. Wright sought a research grant from the Gibraltarian government without success, but induced a minister to put saving Llanito into his election manifesto. She is assisted by local writer M. G. Sanchez.^[5]

Broadcasting

The Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation has broadcast some programmes in Llanito, including Talk About Town, a discussion series in which three presenters discuss local affairs, from the need to replace a street sign to important political affairs.Category:All articles with unsourced statementsCategory:Articles with unsourced statements from June 2024^{[citation needed]}

Pepe's Pot was a cookery programme which also used Llanito.^[25][26]

Film

A documentary film, People of the Rock: The Llanitos of Gibraltar^[27] (2011), discusses Llanito speech characteristics, history and culture. Notable interviews include Pepe Palmero (of GBC's Pepe's Pot), Kaiane Aldorino (Miss World 2009), and Tito Vallejo (author of The Llanito Dictionary).

See also

• Diglossia
• Languages of Gibraltar
• Languages of the United Kingdom
• Spanglish

References

Sources

External links

• Llanito alphabet and pronunciation at Omniglot
• A searchable database of Gibraltarian sayings and street signs
• A weekly comical editorial in exaggerated code-switching Llanito by the daily Panorama (newspaper) Archived 31 October 2020 at the Wayback MachineCategory:Webarchive template wayback links
• Nick Lyne (31 October 2016). "'Andalunglish': the English words Spaniards have borrowed from Gibraltar". El País. Article about a collection of Anglicisms used in Campo de Gibraltar.