Galician language

Map showing the historical retreat and expansion of Galician (Galician and Portuguese) within the context of its linguistic neighbors between the year 1000 and 2000

Modern Galician and Portuguese originated from a common medieval ancestor designated variously by modern linguists as Galician-Portuguese (or as Medieval Galician, Medieval Portuguese, Old Galician or Old Portuguese). This common ancestral stage developed from Vulgar Latin in the territories of the old Kingdom of Galicia, Galicia and Northern Portugal, as a Western Romance language. In the 13th century it became a written and cultivated language with two main varieties,[8] but during the 14th century the standards of these varieties, Galician and Portuguese, began to diverge, as Portuguese became the official language of the independent kingdom of Portugal and its chancellery, while Galician was the language of the scriptoria of the lawyers, noblemen and churchmen of the Kingdom of Galicia, then integrated in the crown of Castile and open to influence from Spanish language, culture, and politics. During the 16th century the Galician language stopped being used in legal documentation, becoming de facto an oral language spoken by the vast majority of the Galicians, but having just some minor written use in lyric, theatre and private letters.

It was not until the 18th century that linguists elaborated the first Galician dictionaries, and the language did not recover a proper literature until the 19th century; only since the last quarter of the 20th century is it taught in schools and used in lawmaking. The first complete translation of the Bible from the original languages dates from 1989. Currently, at the level of rural dialects, Galician forms a dialect continuum with Portuguese in the south,[9][10] and with Astur-Leonese in the east.[11] Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by Robert A. Hall Jr., 1989) is very high between Galicians and northern Portuguese.[1]

Statute of Galicia, 1936

The current linguistic status of Galician with respect to Portuguese is controversial in Galicia, and the issue sometimes carries political overtones. There are linguists who deal with modern Galician and Portuguese as norms or varieties of the same language.[12] Some authors, such as Lindley Cintra,[9] consider that they are still co-dialects of a common language in spite of differences in phonology and vocabulary, while others,[13][14] argue that they have become separate languages due to differences in phonetics and vocabulary usage, and, to a lesser extent, morphology and syntax. Fernández Rei in 1990 stated that the Galician language is, with respect to Portuguese, an ausbau language, a language through elaboration, and not an abstand language, a language through detachment.[15]

With respect to the external and internal perception of this relation, for instance in past editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Galician was defined as a Portuguese dialect spoken in northwestern Spain. On the other hand, the director of the Instituto Camões declared in 2019 that Galician and Portuguese were close kin, but different languages.[16] According to the Galician government, universities and main cultural institutions, such as the Galician Language Institute or the Royal Galician Academy, Galician and Portuguese are independent languages that stemmed from medieval Galician-Portuguese,[17] and modern Galician must be considered an independent Romance language belonging to the group of Ibero-Romance languages having strong ties with Portuguese and its northern dialects. The standard orthography has its roots in the writing of relatively modern Rexurdimento authors, who largely adapted Spanish orthography to the then mostly unwritten language. Most Galician speakers do not regard Galician as a variety of Portuguese, but as a different language,[18][19] which evolved without interruption and in situ from Latin, both languages maintaining separate literary traditions since the 14th century.

Portuguese Early Modern Era grammars and scholars, at least since Duarte Nunes de Leão in 1606, considered Portuguese and Galician two different languages [20] derived from old Galician, understood as the language spoken in the Northwest before the establishment of the Kingdom of Portugal in the 12th century. The surge of the two languages would be the result of both the elaboration of Portuguese, through the royal court, its internationalization and its study and culture;[21] and of the stagnation of Galician.[22][23]

Vindel's parchment, containing music and lyrics of several 13th-century cantigas by Martin Codax

The earliest internal attestation of the expression Galician language ("lingoajen galego") dates from the 14th century.[5] In Spanish "lenguaje gallego" is already documented in this same century, circa 1330;[24] in Occitan circa 1290, in the Regles de Trobar by Catalan author Jofre de Foixà: "si tu vols far un cantar en frances, no·s tayn que·y mescles proençal ne cicilia ne gallego ne altre lengatge que sia strayn a aquell" [If you want to compose a song in French, you should not admix Provençal nor Sicilian nor Galician nor other language which is different from it].[5]

Galician is spoken by some three million people, including most of the population of Galicia and the numerous Galician communities established elsewhere, in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Biscay), in other European cities (Andorra la Vella, Geneva, London, Paris), and in the Americas (New York, New Jersey, Buenos Aires, Córdoba/Argentina, Montevideo, Mexico City, Havana, Caracas, San Juan in Puerto Rico, São Paulo, Managua, Mayagüez, Ponce, Panama City).

Galician is today official, together with the Spanish language, in the autonomous community of Galicia, where it is recognized as the autochthonous language (lingua propia), being by law the first language of the local administrations and governments. It is supposed by law to be taught bilingually, alongside Spanish, in both primary and secondary education, although the accomplishment of this law is allegedly doubted. It is also used at the three universities established in Galicia, having also the consideration of official language of the three institutions. Galician has also legal recognition in the Bierzo region in León, and in four municipalities in Zamora. The other languages with official status elsewhere in Spain are Spanish, Catalan (or Valencian), Basque and Aranese. Galician has also been accepted orally as Portuguese in the European Parliament, being used by some Galician representatives, among others: José Posada, Camilo Nogueira and Xosé Manuel Beiras.

Controversy exists regarding the inclusion of Eonavian (spoken in the western end of Asturias, bordering Galicia) into the Galician language, as it has some traits in common with Western Asturian (spoken in the middle west of Asturias). There are those defending these linguistic varieties as dialects of transition to the Astur-Leonese group on the one hand, and those defending it as clearly Galician varieties on the other (actually both views are compatible).[31] The recent edition of the cartularies of Oscos in Old Common Council of Castropol and cartularies of Obona, Cornellana, Corias and Belmonte in middle west of Asturias have shown a huge difference in the medieval speech between both banks of the Navia river.[32][33][34] An examination of the old documents of the Eonavian monastery of Oscos, written from the late 12th to early 14th century to 16th century, shows a clear identification of this language with the Galician-Portuguese linguistic group; while contemporary parchments elsewhere in Asturias are written in Spanish.[35] The two most important traits of those commonly used to tell apart Galician-Portuguese and Asturian-Leonese varieties are the preservation of the mid-open vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/, which became diphthongs in Asturian-Leonese, and the loss of intervocalic /n/, preserved in the latter language.[36]

One of the oldest legal charters written in Galician, the constitutional charter of the Bo Burgo (Good Burg) of Castro Caldelas, 1228

Mediaeval Galician inscription in a 14th-century house, in Noia: "ESTAS CASAS MANDOU FAZER VASCO DA COSTA, ERA DE MCCCLXXVII" These houses were ordered by Vasco da Costa, era 1377 (1339 AD)

Latinate Galician charters from the 8th century onward show that the local written Latin was heavily influenced by local spoken Romance, yet is not until the 12th century that there is evidence for the identification of the local language as a language different from Latin itself.[37] During this same 12th century there are full Galician sentences being inadvertently used inside Latin texts, while its first reckoned use as a literary language dates to the last years of this same century.[38][39]

The linguistic stage from the 13th to the 15th centuries is usually known as Galician-Portuguese (or Old Portuguese, or Old Galician) as an acknowledgement of the cultural and linguistic unity of Galicia and Portugal during the Middle Ages, as the two linguistic varieties differed only in dialectal minor phenomena.

This language flourished during the 13th and 14th centuries as a language of culture, developing a rich lyric tradition of which some 2000 compositions (cantigas, meaning 'songs') have been preserved—a few hundred even with their musical score—in a series of collections, and belonging to four main genres: cantigas de amor, love songs, where a man sings for his ladylove; cantigas de amigo, where a woman sings for her boyfriend; cantigas de escarnio, crude, taunting, and sexual songs of scorn; cantigas de maldecir, where the poet vents his spleen openly; and also the Cantigas de Santa María, which are religious songs.[40]

The oldest known document is the poem Ora faz ost'o Senhor de Navarra by Joam Soares de Paiva, written around 1200. The first non-literary documents in Galician-Portuguese date from the early 13th century, the Noticia de Torto (1211) and the Testamento of Afonso II of Portugal (1214), both samples of medieval notarial prose.

Its most notable patrons—themselves reputed authors—were king Dom Dinis in Portugal, and king Alfonso X the Learned in Galicia, Castile and León, who was a great promoter of both Galician and Castilian Spanish languages. Not just the kings encouraged literary creation in Galician-Portuguese, but also the noble houses of Galicia and Portugal, as being an author or bringing reputed troubadours into one's home became a way of promoting social prestige; as a result many noblemen, businessmen and clergymen of the 13th and 14th centuries became notable authors, such as Paio Gomes Charinho, lord of Rianxo, and the aforementioned kings.

Aside from the lyric genres, Galicia developed also a minor tradition on literary prose, most notably in translation of European popular series, as those dealing with King Arthur written by Chretien de Troyes, or those based on the war of Troy, usually paid and commissioned by noblemen who desired to read those romances in their own language. Other genres include history books (either translation of Spanish ones, or original creations like the Chronicle of St. Mary of Iria, by Rui Vasques), religious books, legal studies, and a treaty on horse breeding.[41] Most prose literary creation in Galician had stopped by the 16th century, when printing press became popular; the first complete translation of the Bible was not printed until the 20th century.

As for other written uses of Galician, legal charters (last wills, hirings, sales, constitutional charters, city council book of acts, guild constitutions, books of possessions, and any type of public or private contracts and inventories) written in Galicia are to be found from 1230 to 1530—the earliest one probably a document from the monastery of Melón, dated in 1231[42]—being Galician by far the most used language during the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, in substitution of Latin.

Diglossia and influence of the Spanish language

Galician-Portuguese lost its political unity when the County of Portugal obtained its independence from the Kingdom of León, a transition initiated in 1139 and completed in 1179, establishing the Kingdom of Portugal. Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Galicia was united with the Kingdom of León, and later with the Kingdom of Castile, under kings of the House of Burgundy. The Galician and Portuguese standards of the language diverged over time, following independent evolutionary paths. Portuguese was the official language of the Portuguese chancellery, while Galician was the usual language not only of troubadours and peasants, but also of local noblemen and clergy, and of their officials, so forging and maintaining two slightly different standards.

Cantigas de Santa Maria, 13th century

During the reign of Alfonso X, Spanish became the official language of the chancellery of the Kingdom of Castile. However, in Galicia and neighboring regions of Asturias and León in 1200–1500, the local languages remained the usual written languages in any type of document, either legal or narrative, public or private. Spanish was progressively introduced through Royal decrees and the edicts of foreign churchmen and officials. This led, from the late 15th century on, to the end of legal documents in Galician; the last ones were issued around 1530.[43] Also, from 1480 on, notaries of the Crown of Castile were required to obtain their licenses in Toledo, where they had to prove their mastery of Spanish.[43]

14th-century inscription, in Galician language: 'ESTA : IMAGEE : HE : AQVI : POSTA : POR: ALMA : D(E) : I(O)HA(N) : TVORUM' 'This image is here in exposition for the soul of Joham Tuorum'.

In spite of Galician being the most spoken language, during the 17th century the elites of the Kingdom began speaking Spanish, most notably in towns and cities. The linguistic situation in Galicia became one of diglossia, with Galician as the low variety and Spanish as the high one.[45] In reaction to the relegation of the autochthonous language, a series of literary and historical works (always written in Spanish) appeared in the 17th century through 19th century, meant to vindicate the history, language, people, and culture of Galicia.[46] The period from the 16th century to the early 19th century, when Galician had little literary—and no legal—use, is considered the dark age of Galician language. The Galician spoken and written then is usually referred to as Middle Galician.

Middle Galician

Martín Sarmiento

Middle Galician is known mostly through popular literature (songs, carols, proverbs, theatrical scripts, personal letters), but also through the frequent apparition of Galician interferences and personal and place names in local works and documents otherwise written in Spanish. Other important sources are a number of sonnets and other lyric poetry, as well as other literate productions, including the forgery of allegedly mediaeval scriptures or chronicles under diverse pretensions—usually to show the ancient nobility of the forger's family—being these writings elaborated in an archaic looking Galician which nevertheless could not conceal the state of the language during this period.

Middle Galician is characterized by a series of phonetic processes which led to a further separation from Portuguese, and to the apparition of some of the more noteworthy dialectal features, among other phenomenons: emergence of the gheada or pronunciation of /ɡ/ as a pharyngeal fricative; denasalization of nasal vowels in most of Galicia, becoming oral vowels in the east, or a group formed by an oral vowels plus a nasal in the west; reduction of the sibilant system, with the confluence (except in the Baixa Limia region) of voiced and voiceless fricatives, followed by a process of de-affrication which led to different results in the west and in the east.[47]

The most important author during this period of the language was the enlightened scholar Martín Sarmiento, unconditional defender and the first researcher of Galician language (history, evolution, lexicon, etymology, onomastics). His Elementos etimológicos segun el método de Euclides (1766), written in Spanish but dealing with Galician, was in fact one of the first comprehensive studies on sound change and evolution of any European language.[48]

Rexurdimento (Renaissance)

The 19th-century author Eduardo Pondal

During the 19th century a thriving literature developed, in what was called the Rexurdimento (Resurgence), of the Galician language.[49] It was headed by three main authors: Rosalia de Castro, an intimist poet; Eduardo Pondal, of nationalist ideology, who championed a Celtic revival; and Manuel Curros Enríquez, a liberal and anticlerical author whose ideas and proclamations were scandalous for part of the 19th-century society.

An important landmark was the establishment of the Seminario de Estudos Galegos in 1923, devoted to research and study of Galician culture. It was created by a group of students: Fermín Bouza Brey, Xosé Filgueira Valverde, Lois Tobío Fernández, with the collaboration of Ricardo Carvalho Calero, Antón Fraguas and Xaquín Lorenzo Fernández.

Following the victory of Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, the written or public use of the Galician language was outlawed.[50]

Speakers of Galician as a first language in 2001 and 2011, according to the Galician Institute of Statistics

Galician linguistic areas

Galician-speaking areas outside Galicia (yellow)

Publishing of Galician-language material revived on a small scale in the 1950s.[51]

Some authors are of the opinion that Galician possesses no real dialects.[54] Despite this, Galician local varieties are collected in three main dialectal blocks, each block comprising a series of areas, being local linguistic varieties that are all mutually intelligible. Some of the main features which distinguish the three blocks are:

• The resolution of medieval nasalized vowels and hiatus: these sometimes turned into diphthongs in the east, while in the center and west the vowels in the hiatus were sometimes assimilated. Later, in the eastern—except Ancarese Galician—and central blocks, the nasal trait was lost, while in the west the nasal trait usually developed into an implosive nasal consonant /ŋ/.[55][56] In general, these led to important dialectal variability in the inflection in genre and number of words ended in a nasal consonant. So, from medieval irmão 'brother', ladrões 'robbers', irmãas 'sisters' developed eastern Galician irmao, ladrois, irmás; central Galician irmao, ladrós, irmás; western Galician irmán, ladróns, irmáns.[57]

An exception to this rule is constituted by the hiatus in which the first vowel was a nasalized i or u. In those cases, a nasal, palatal /ɲ/ or velar /ŋ/ was usually inserted: ũa 'a / one (fem.)' > unha (Portuguese uma), -ina > -ĩa > -iña (Portuguese -inha). Nevertheless, in Ancarese and Asturian Galician, this process did not take place: A-G vecía, Ancarese vecĩa vs. standard veciña '(female) neighbor' (Port. vizinha), A-G úa, Ancarese ũa vs. standard unha (Port. uma).

• The resolution of hiatus formed by oral vowels had similar developments, most notably those derived from the loss of /l/, which again had important consequences for the declension of words ending in /l/. So, Medieval Galician animaes 'animals' (sing. animal); central and western Galician animás; eastern Galician animais; Asturian Galician animales (/l/ is preserved).[58]
• In the west, /ɡ/ is rendered as a fricative [x ~ ħ ~ h] (gheada), except after a nasal, where it can become a stop [k].[59]
• Stressed vowel metaphony is most notable in the west and center, while in the east it is unknown. It is triggered by a final /o/, which tends to close open-mid vowels, or by a final /a/ which tends to open close-mid ones.
• There are three main sibilant systems, all derived from the medieval Galician one, which was richer and more complex:[60]
  • The common one, extended in the eastern and center regions, presents an opposition /ʃ/ – /s/ – /θ/. In the westernmost parts of this area the opposition of /s/ and /θ/ is lost in postnuclear position, in the coda, both being produced /s/.
  • In the coastal western areas the opposition is /ʃ/ – /s/, /s/ being produced in some regions as a laminal or in some others as an apical. Sometimes this system is even further reduced to just a single /s/. On the other hand, in some areas final /s/ is produced as /ʃ/, as in plenty of Portuguese dialects.
  • In the Limia Baixa region an old six sibilant system is still preserved, with voiced/voiceless opposition: /ʃ/ – /ʒ/; /s̺/ – /z̺/ (apical) and /s̻/ – /z̻/ (laminal).[61]

Each dialectal area is then further defined by these and other more restricted traits or isoglosses:

• Eastern Galician: Asturian area (Eonavian), Ancares area, Zamora area and Central-Eastern area.
• Central Galician: Mindoniense area, Lucu-auriense area, Central Transitional area, and Eastern Transitional area.
• Western Galician: Bergantiños area, Fisterra area, Pontevedra area and Lower Limia area.

Standard Galician is usually based on Central Galician characteristics, but it also incorporates western and eastern traits and features.

Galician allows pronominal clitics to be attached to indicative and subjunctive forms, as does Portuguese, unlike modern Spanish. After many centuries of close contact between the two languages, Galician has also adopted many loan words from Spanish, and some calques of Spanish syntax.

Galician usually makes the difference according to gender and categorizes words as masculine "o rapaz" (the young man) or feminine "a rapaza" (the young woman). This difference is present in the articles "o / a / os/ as" (the), nouns "o can / a cadela" (the dog / the (female) dog), pronouns "el / ela", (he / she) and adjectives "bonitiño / bonitiña" (pretty, beautiful). There is also a neuter set of demonstrative pronouns "isto, iso, aquilo" (this / that). The most typical ending for masculine words is -o, whereas the most typical ending for feminine is -a "o prato / a tixola" (the plate / the frying pan). The difference in the grammatical gender of a word may correspond to a real gender difference in the physical world "xuicioso / xuiciosa" (sensible); the former adjective will qualify a male, and the latter, a female. However, there is no particular reason for objects to be ascribed to a particular grammatical gender or another, it has to do with the gender having been ascribed by tradition and the use of speakers as in the following examples: "o xis / o samba / a mesa / a caricatura" (chalk / the samba / the table / the caricature).

Galician expresses the difference in number with a form for the singular and another for the plural. The most typical suffix to express a plural number is "s", "cantiga / cantigas".

There are two different ways of addressing people: one is the most usual informal pronoun "ti" for the second person singular and "vos" for the second person plural. There are formal ways of addressing directly people "vostede" for the singular and "vostedes" for the plural.

The last review of the official grammar has established that, if there is no risk of confusion, the exclamation and question marks will appear only at the end of the sentence, thus deprecating the general use of Spanish-like inverted question and exclamation marks.

The verb is inflected. There are regular and irregular verbs in the language. All verbs will appear listed by means of their infinitive form in dictionaries, and there are three typical endings for verbs "-ar / -er / ir".

The current official Galician orthography is guided by the "Normas ortográficas e morfolóxicas do Idioma Galego" (NOMIGa),[63] first introduced in 1982, by the Royal Galician Academy (RAG), based on a report by the Instituto da Lingua Galega (ILG). These norms were not accepted by some sectors desiring a norm closer to modern Portuguese (see reintegrationism). In July 2003, the Royal Galician Academy modified the language normative to admit and promote some archaic Galician-Portuguese forms conserved in modern Portuguese, merging the NOMIG and the main proposals of the moderate sectors of reintegrationism; the resulting orthography is used by the vast majority of media, cultural production and virtually all official matters including education.

There still exists a reintegrationist movement that opts for the use of writing systems that range from adapted to whole Portuguese orthography.

• Barallete
• Castrapo
• Fala dos arxiñas, a jargon of Galician masons
• Galician-language literature
• Galicia irredenta
• Languages of Spain
• Leonese language
• List of Galician words of Celtic origin

• Castro, Olga (February 2013). "Talking at cross-purposes? The missing link between feminist linguistics and translation studies". Gender and Language. 7 (1): 35–58. doi:10.1558/genl.v7i1.35. Examines the arguments for and against the use of inclusive language in (literary) translation through an analysis of the "ideological struggle" that emerged from two ideologically disparate rewritings of gender markers into Galician of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon (2003), focusing on the ideological, poetic and economic pressures that (still) define the professional practice of translation.

Galician edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikivoyage has a phrasebook for Galician.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Galician language.

Galician guides:

• lingua.gal – Galician government's portal on the Galician language
• LOIA: Open guide to Galician Language
• Basic information on Galician language (in Galician, Spanish, and English)

Records, phonetic and dialectology:

• Arquivo do Galego Oral – An archive of records of Galician speakers.
• A Nosa Fala – Sound recordings of the different dialects of the Galician language.
• Amostra comparativa – Comparison between Galician, Portuguese and Brazilian-Portuguese pronunciation (with sound files) (reintegrationist Galician)

Corpora:

• Tesouro medieval informatizado da lingua galega. (in Galician)
• Corpus Xelmirez – A corpus on medieval Galician documentation, in Galician, Latin, and Spanish.
• Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega. (in English and Galician)

Dictionaries:

• Royal Galician Academy Dictionary Archived 22 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine (in Galician)
• Appendix:Galician pronouns – on Wiktionary
• English-Galician CLUVI Online Dictionary (official Galician)
• Galician – English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary – The Rosetta Edition. (Official Galician),
• A short English-Galician-Japanese Phraselist (Renewal) incl. sound soft (Official Galician), (in English and Japanese)
• Dicionario de dicionarios do galego medieval – A dictionary of Old Galician dictionaries. (in Galician)
• Dicionario de dicionarios – A dictionary of Galician dictionaries. (in Galician)
• e-Estraviz – Isaac Alonso Estraviz's dictionary (on-line). (reintegrationist norm and official norm)

Texts:

• Gallaeciae Monumenta Historica – An on-line repository of medieval texts (in Galician)
• Cantigas Medievais Galego-Portuguesas – A complete DB, containing the totality of the medieval profane lyric. (in Portuguese)
• Biblioteca Virtual Galega (in Galician)
• Cantigas de Santa Maria

Newspapers in Galician:

• Luns a Venres – free daily newspaper (in Galician)
• Sermos Galiza Archived 25 June 2014 at the Wayback Machine – weekly newspaper and online news portal (in Galician)
• Galiciaé.es – online news portal (in Galician)
• Praza Pública – online news portal (in Galician)
• Diário Liberdade – online news portal (in reintegrationist Galician)
• Novas da Galiza – monthly newspaper (in reintegrationist Galician)
• Galiza Livre – pro-independence online news portal (in reintegrationist Galician)

Other links related to Galician:

• Royal Galician Academy Archived 15 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine (in Galician)
• Instituto da Lingua Galega (in Galician)
• Academia Galega da Língua Portuguesa (reintegrationist Galician)
• Associaçom Galega da Língua – Portal Galego da Língua (reintegrationist Galician)
• Movimento Defesa da Lingua (reintegrationist Galician)