Centuries ago, the merchants of a town in Segovia decided that no one would understand them. They ended up creating a unique language

It does not reach 3,700 inhabitants and it is almost an hour from Segovia capital and 90 minutes from the center of Madrid, but Cantalejo (Castilla y León) hides a fascinating treasure, one of those that cannot be valued in euros or any other currency. For centuries this small town in the Duratón region has been the epicenter of a unique dialect: the gallerya jargon once used by threshing floor merchants and which, according to some experts, draws on words taken from other languages, such as Basque, Galician, French or Arabic.

Now he keeps a pulse so as not to disappear.

What is the gagaría? The “jargon of the Cantalejo thrillers.” Or at least this is how he defines it the ‘Dictionary of Current Spanish’ of the BBVA Foundation. However, to fully understand the history and relevance of the gacería (or briquero) more nuances must be taken into account. Its richness of lexicon means that it is often presented more as a ‘dialect’a ‘linguistic variant’ or even a language.

Its use has also transcended artisans and threshing floor merchants to extend to other areas. Nowadays there are websites where is documented the vocabulary and expressions of the slang and even published works in the slang, including a hobby book and a translation from ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, whose briquero title would be ‘The cocky pitoche’.

Its footprint also expands beyond the municipal area of ​​Cantalejo, with echoes in other neighboring towns in Castilla y León.

More than 300 words. As Professor Sara Engra explains in an article On the subject, the gazería presents some interesting peculiarities. At a linguistic level, in terms of word structures and intonation, it conforms to Spanish norms. Also its syntax. What differentiates it is its lexicon.

“It is limited to replacing Spanish words with (mostly) borrowings from other languages,” explains the linguist, who gives as an example ‘The gazebo is garnished by the briqueros of Vilorio Sierte’which would be translated as ‘The gacería is spoken by the inhabitants of Cantalejo’. The structure of the sentence, the use of verbs or plurals is similar to Spanish, the lexicon changes.

What makes slang so amazing is your vocabulary and how you have formed it. The web Cantalejo.comwhich is dedicated to collecting words and disseminating the characteristics of speech, assures that the briquero is made up of 353 terms, almost all nouns, although there are also 40 verbs and a handful of adjectives, such as ‘serte’, ‘gazo’, ‘pitoche’ either ‘sievo’which in Spanish mean, ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘little’ and ‘old’. Other sources raise their lexicon to about 500 words.

From Basque to Arabic. Beyond its greater or lesser richness of vocabulary, the most striking thing about the gacería is the origin of those more than 300 words that make up its slang. Engra remembers that there are terms from Basque, Galician and Catalan, but also others imported from Arabic or even Galicianisms.

The linguist specifies that in some of the words of Cantalejo’s slang another phenomenon can be seen: metathesiswhich basically consists of changing the place of one or more sounds or syllables of a word, as may be the case of ‘miraglo’ instead of miraculo or ‘murciégalo’ for bat.

If we review the lexicon of the gacería we can see that there are terms that derive from Spanish through this ‘deformation’. It is not his only strategy for creating words. Another, just as interesting, is to recover rarely used words and use them to indirectly refer to a new reality. Engra cites a specific case: significant (“carrying a sign”) is changed to ‘sinifaro’which means ‘civil guard’. Other peculiarities of speech are its intonation and gestures.

The origins. The authors do not always agree on the details of the origin and antiquity of the gacería, although they do tend to agree on several details. The first, which dates back centuries. The second, the key role played by the inhabitants of Cantalejo who traveled through Spain to sell threshes and cattle.

Engra, for example, slide which served as a code, a ‘secret’ speech shared by the Cantalejans that allowed them to “encrypt conversations and hide information” when negotiating with merchants from other regions.

The gaceria would therefore be like a code created and nurtured by the residents of Cantalejo who traveled around Spain to trade their goods. When they wanted to exchange information with each other, safe from other people’s ears, they resorted to their own jargon that was indecipherable to merchants from other areas. Regarding its origins, it is usually pointed to 13th centuryalthough there are who points rather to the 16th, 18th or 19th century, with its peak well into the 20th century.

a living speech. “When our ancestors toured Spain and went through Galicia, the Basque Country, Extremadura… they heard different dialects, words that they did not understand, so they brought many of them with them. In the workshops they were later unified, forming phrases. And thus the gacería was born,” explains to The Newspaper Ana Rosa Zamarro, mayor of Cantalejo and leading voice in the defense of slang. “They used it to warn each other during sales deals.”

With the changes in agriculture and the depopulation of rural areas, the gacería has been losing ground, which does not mean that Cantalejo has forced its speech.

A jargon for the 21st century. Zamarro assures that continues to be heard on the street and in recent years steps have been taken to guarantee its future, which includes since the publication of hobby books or to the translation of classic works. Even the local public school works to pass it on to the new generations. The objective: that Cantalejo (and the province of Segovia and Castilla y León) does not lose one of its great linguistic treasures.

Images | Wikipedia1 and 2 and From Tuma

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