Aragonese, a language deemed endangered by the UNESCO "Redbook" on endangered languages, is a Romance language that was once spoken throughout Spain. Today this language is limited mainly to the historical province of Aragón and certain parts of Navarra (Salminen). With an estimated total of thirty thousand speakers out of an ethnic group of two million, the use of Aragonese, or fabla in colloquial terms, is slowly diminishing and possibly disappearing (Ethnologue). These days it remains a mother-tongue in only a few areas of Aragon as it is replaced by Castilian, the more dominant language of the area.
             Aragon is a community located in the northeastern section of Spain. Its surroundings include France to the north, Valencia to the south, Castile-La Mancha, Castile-Leon, La Rioja, and Navarre to the west. Zaragoza, the capital, is one of the largest provinces in Aragon, in addition to the provinces of Huesca and Teruel. Spoken in a province of Spain, Aragonese consists of many words similar to the Castilian language-more commonly known as Spanish.
             Aragonese is considered a Romance language and therefore shares many similarities with other romance languages derived from Latin such as Spanish and Catalan. It is classified by the Ethnologue as a Pyrenean language, under the subcategory of Pyrenean-Mozarabic which belongs to the family of Western languages, further belonging to the Italo-Western category. Phonetically, Aragonese sounds similar to Spanish, but Aragonese maintains a few traits, unlike Spanish. In Aragonese, the initial
             "F" is kept while in Spanish it is dropped (Aragonese Language). For example, the word "filiu" in Aragonese, meaning son, is "hijo" in Spanish. In Aragonese, "filiu" is pronounced "fillo" which is very similar to "hijo," but contains the letter "F." Also, unlike Spanish, Aragonese keeps the Latin "B" used in the past imperfect endings of verbs of the 2nd and 3rd conjugations (Aragonese Language). The...