What does «lengua mozárabe» mean in Spanish?
- Mozarabic is an extinct Romance language that was spoken in the Muslim territories of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. It remains poorly documented, mainly in place names and in some words mentioned in medieval documents that were written in other languages. It may sometimes have been written in Arabic script, but this is not accepted by all scholars. Mozarabic was increasingly weakened by the dominance of Arabic and, because of the Reconquest, was progressively replaced or absorbed by the advance of other Romance languages from the northern Christian areas of the peninsula (Portuguese, Asturian-Leonese, Spanish, Aragonese and Catalan). The language disappeared rapidly after the 15th century. But some authors think that it had already disappeared in the second half of the 12th century, being completely replaced by Arabic, before the arrival of the Romance languages from the north.