Noun: bable
Gender: m
Hyphenation: ba‧ble
Sample Sentences
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Pa dalgunos el bable ye enoxosu
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Y pa muchos quiciaes revesosu (To some, Asturian is irritating
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And for many maybe convoluted) [1889, Tedoro Cuesta, A mió má la d'el cielu:]
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¡Ay bable, llengua materna!
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¿Por qué fusti abandonada? (Oh Asturian, [my] mother tongue!
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Why have you been abandoned?) [1923, Carlos de la Concha, Los suaños del probe Lin:]
Nouns inflected like bable
nitróxenu,
istrorrumanu,
bencenu,
beriliu,
xarazu,
afuega'l pitu,
militarismu,
estranxeru,
bambara,
xermaniu,
basaltu,
contentu,
mercuriu,
zusmiu,
iterbiu,
antioyos,
dos puntos,
rebelgos,
monoteísmu,
sexismu, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. First attested by Carlos González de Posada, in Memorias históricas de Asturias (1794), who cites it as a synonym of "Asturian language", the name became very popular in the 19th century all the way to the Surdimientu (1970s), only beginning to carry a despective meaning around the 1980s. Possibly of onomatopoeic origin, similar to Spanish balbucir, English babble. Others have suggested Latin fābŭla, with a change of f- to b- (which is common in Meridional dialects), thus a Doublet of fala.
2. In any case, the word remained exclusively used in intellectual or literary circles and was never used by the speakers themselves, who predominantly use asturianu (along with other names in local dialects), as seen in the 1930s ALPI survey. See: English Nouns '
babble', Latin Nouns '
fābŭla'.
Translations