used "Leonese" for the entire linguistic area, including Asturias. This designation has been replaced by Ibero-Romance scholars with "Asturian-Leonese", but "Leonese" is still often used to denote Asturian-Leonese by non-speakers of Asturian or Mirandese. Linguistic description Phonology In Leonese, any of five vowel phonemes, , may occur in stressed position. In the unstressed positions, the distinction between close and mid vowels is neutralized in favor of the archiphonemes and . Grammar Leonese has two genders (masculine and feminine) and two numbers (singular and plural). The main masculine noun and adjective endings are for singular and for plural. Typical feminine endings are for singular and for plural. Masculine and feminine nouns ending in in the singular take for the plural. Adjectives Adjectives agree with nouns in number and gender. Comparative table Historical, social and cultural aspects History The native languages of Leon, Zamora, Asturias, and the Terra de Miranda in Portugal are the result of the evolution of Latin introduced by Roman conquerors in the region. Their colonization and organization led to the Conventus Asturum, with its capital at Asturica Augusta (present-day Astorga, Spain, the centre of Romanization for the indigenous tribes). The city of Astorga was sacked by the Visigoths in the 5th century, and never regained its former prominence. The region remained unified until the eighth-century Islamic invasion. Around the 11th century, it began to be defined as Leonese territory roughly corresponding to the southern conventus. In medieval León, the Romance Galician, Asturian-Leonese, and Castilian languages evolved and spread south. The first known text in Asturian-Leonese is the Nodicia de kesos, written between 974 and 980 AD, an inventory of cheeses owned by a monastery written in the margin of the reverse of a document written in Latin. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Leonese reached its territorial zenith as the administrative language of the Kingdom of León, a literary language ( and the Libro de Alexandre), in the Leonese court, judiciary (with the translation of the Visigothic Liber Iudicum or Liber Iudiciorum into Leonese), administration, and organization. After the 1230 union of Leon and Castile, Leonese had greater written and institutional use, although at the end of the 13th century Castilian began to replace it as a written language. Leonese became an oral, rural language with little literary development. At the beginning of the 20th century, it survived in oral form only in mid-western León and western Zamora