Bable

Pleasingly, Bable is used as a synonym for Astur-Leonese, aka Leonese etc. The name was apparently popularised by someone called Xovellanos in the C18th and taken from someone else I’ve never heard of called González Posada. Its origin is (still apparently) unknown but its use is widespread and it appears in the inevitable references to language in the Asturian statute of autonomy (“4:1 Bable will enjoy protection”). Gogol would surely have been asked by his editor to be more specific had he written “every cock has its Spain, tucked away under its feathers” and the rest of Diary of a madman 170 years later. (Babel is of course standard Spanish and I believe Asturian for Babel, so don’t get too pleased all at once.)

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