Asturian language in the context of "Municipalities in Spain"

The majority of languages of Spain belong to the Romance language family, of which Spanish is the only one with official status in the whole country. Others, including Catalan/Valencian (in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands) and Galician (in Galicia), enjoy official status in their respective autonomous regions, similar to Basque in the northeast of the country (a non-Romance language isolate). A number of other languages and dialects belonging to the Romance continuum exist in Spain, such as Aragonese, Asturian, Fala and Aranese Occitan.

West Iberian is a branch of the Ibero-Romance languages that includes the Castilian languages (Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish), Astur-Leonese (Asturian, Leonese, Mirandese, Extremaduran (sometimes), Cantabrian), Navarro-Aragonese and the descendants of Galician-Portuguese.

Until a few centuries ago, they formed a dialect continuum covering the western, central and southern parts of the Iberian Peninsula—excepting the Basque and Catalan-speaking territories. This is still the situation in a few regions, particularly in the northern part of the peninsula, but due to the differing sociopolitical histories of these languages (independence of Portugal since the early 12th century, unification of Spain in the late 15th century under the Catholic Monarchs, who privileged Castilian Spanish over the other Iberian languages), Spanish and Portuguese have tended to overtake and to a large extent absorb their sister languages while they kept diverging from each other.

Asturleonese is a Romance language or language family spoken in northwestern Spain and northeastern Portugal, namely in the historical regions and Spain's modern-day autonomous communities of Asturias, northwestern Castile and León, Cantabria and Extremadura, and in Riudenore and Tierra de Miranda in Portugal. The name of the language is largely uncommon among its native speakers, as it forms a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties and therefore it is primarily referred to by various regional glossonyms like Leonese, Cantabrian, Asturian or Mirandese (in Portugal). Extremaduran is sometimes included as well. Asturleonese has been classified by UNESCO as an endangered language, as the varieties are being increasingly replaced by Spanish and Portuguese.

Phylogenetically, Asturleonese belongs to the West Iberian branch of the Romance languages that gradually developed from Vulgar Latin in the old Kingdom of León. The Asturleonese group is typically subdivided into three linguistic areas (Western, Central and Eastern) that form the vertical Asturleonese region, from Asturias, through León, to the north of Portugal and Extremadura. The Cantabrian Montañes in the East and Extremaduran in the South have transitional traits with Spanish (northern Spanish for Cantabrian, southern Spanish for Extremaduran). There are differing degrees of vitality of the language for each region in the area: Asturias and Miranda do Douro have historically been the regions in which Asturleonese has been the best preserved.

Asturias (/æˈstʊəriəs, ə-/; Spanish: [asˈtuɾjas]; Asturian: Asturies [asˈtuɾjes; -ɾjɪs]) officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous community in northwest Spain.It is coextensive with the province of Asturias and contains some of the territory that was part of the larger Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages. Divided into eight comarcas (counties), the autonomous community of Asturias is bordered by Cantabria to the east, by León (Castile and León) to the south, by Lugo (Galicia) to the west, and by the Cantabrian Sea to the north.

Asturias is situated in a mountainous setting with vast greenery and lush vegetation, making it part of Green Spain. The region has a maritime climate. It receives plenty of annual rainfall and little sunshine by Spanish standards and has very moderate seasons, most often averaging in the lower 20s Celsius. Heat waves are rare due to mountains blocking southerly winds. Winters are very mild for the latitude, especially near sea level.

Oviedo (Spanish: [oˈβjeðo] ) or Uviéu (Asturian: [uˈβjew]) is the capital city of the Principality of Asturias in northern Spain and the administrative and commercial centre of the region. With a population of 220,027, it is also the 2nd-largest city in Asturias.

Oviedo is located approximately 24 km (15 mi) southwest of Gijón and 23 km (14 mi) southeast of Avilés, both of which lie on the shoreline of the Bay of Biscay. Oviedo's proximity to the ocean of less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) in combination with its elevated position with areas of the city more than 300 metres above sea level causes the city to have a maritime climate, even though it does not sit directly on the shore.

The upside-down (also inverted, turned or rotated) question mark ¿ and exclamation mark ¡ are punctuation marks used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences or clauses in Spanish and some languages that have cultural ties with Spain, such as Asturian and Waray. The initial marks are mirrored at the end of the sentence or clause by the ordinary question mark, ?, or exclamation mark, !.

Upside-down marks are supported by various standards, including Unicode, and HTML. They can be entered directly on keyboards designed for Spanish-speaking countries.