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Viewing The Galician Language - A Languages of the World PrimerThe Galician Language - A Languages of the World Primer
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By T J Leary Galician is a Romance language that grew out of 'Vulgar Latin'. It initially developed in the late first millennium among the Romanized Celts in modern-day Galicia (Spain) and northern Portugal. Galician and Portuguese are considered to have been a single language (Galician-Portuguese) until the Middle Ages, but diverged somewhat over the subsequent centuries, largely because of the political separation. Following the separation, Galician lost much of its literary and academic allure and was somewhat marginalized. Indeed, as with many other minority languages in Spain, it was also heavily repressed and was excluded not only from official use, but also specifically from the field of education. Although it experienced a renaissance in the 19th Century, it was only with the coming of democracy after Franco's death in 1975 that the language once again flourished, aided somewhat due to active promotion by the local regional government and the Real Academia Galega (Official Galician Language Institute). Related Languages Galician is most closely related to the other variants of Galician-Portuguese, namely Portuguese, spoken by around 220 million people worldwide, and Fala, which is spoken by around 10,000 people in pockets of Extremadura (Spain) near the Portuguese border. In terms of vocabulary and grammar, Galician and Portuguese are still much closer than Galician and Spanish, with mutual intelligibility very high. Indeed, such are the similarities that not everybody agrees that Galician should be classed as a separate language. There is a minority movement in Galicia, known as 'Reintegracionismo', that is attempting to have Galician recognized as a variant of Portuguese. The argument is that differences between Galician and Portuguese are no more marked than those between other recognized variants of Portuguese (such as Brazilian Portuguese and African Portuguese). The closeness is demonstrated by the fact that the European Parliament accepts Galician as Portuguese for interpretation purposes. Furthermore, there is little doubt that a person from Northern Portugal would find it easier to understand a Galician speaker than they would some of the Portuguese dialects spoken around the world. Galician is also close to other Iberian languages, and lexical similarity between it and Spanish is extremely high. Outside the Iberian Peninsula, Galician also has significant lexical similarities with Italian, French, and Romanian. Current Status Galician is recognized as one of the four official languages in Spain, with joint official status in Galicia where it is widely used in political and cultural life. Galician is taught in schools and is spoken by over 2.5 million people in Galicia, with a further half million strong immigrant community spread across South America and Europe. The publicly funded Galician-speaking television station, TVG, has also given impetus to the language. About the Author: Stranslations offers professional language translation services in English, French, Spanish, German, and other major European languages. The original version of this article can found at www.stranslations.com. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com |
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