Galician-Portuguese
Encyclopedia
Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language
spoken in the Middle Ages
, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula
. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south of the Douro by the Reconquista
. It is the common ancestor of modern Galician
, Portuguese
, Eonavian
and Fala
languages, and the extinct Judeo-Portuguese
language.
The term "Galician-Portuguese" also designates the subdivision of the modern West Iberian group which is composed by Galician, Portuguese, and the Fala language.
, from the Vulgar Latin
(common Latin) that had been introduced by Roman soldiers, colonists and magistrates during the time of the Roman Empire
. Although the process may have been slower than in other regions, the centuries of contact with Vulgar Latin, after a period of bilingualism, completely extinguished the native languages, leading to the development of a new variety of Latin with a few Gallaecian features. A Celtic and Lusitanian
influence was thus absorbed into Vulgar Latin, and this can be detected in some Galician-Portuguese words as well as in place-names of Celtic or Iberian
origin (e.g. Bolso). In general, the more cultivated variety of Latin spoken in Roman Hispania
by the elite of educated Hispano-Romans already seems to have had a peculiar regional accent, referred to as Hispano ore and agrestius pronuntians. The more cultivated variety of Latin coexisted with the popular variety. It is assumed that the Pre-Roman languages
spoken by the native people
, each used in a different region of Roman Hispania, contributed to the development of several different dialects of Vulgar Latin and that these diverged increasingly over time, eventually evolving into the early Romance Languages of the Iberia. It is believed that by the year 600 Vulgar Latin was no longer spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. An early form of Galician-Portuguese was already spoken in the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia
and by the year 800 Galician-Portuguese had already become the vernacular
of the north-west of Iberia. The first known phonetic changes in Vulgar Latin which began the evolution to Galician-Portuguese took place during the rule of the Germanic groups, the Suevi (411–585) and Visigoths (585–711). And the Galician-Portuguese "inflected infinitive" (or "personal infinitive") and the nasal vowels may have evolved under the influence of local Celtic languages (as in Old French
). The nasal vowels would thus be a phonologic characteristic of the Vulgar Latin spoken in Roman Gallaecia
, but they are only attested in writing after the 6th and 7th centuries.
The oldest known document to contain Galician-Portuguese words, found in northern Portugal, called the Doação à Igreja de Sozello and dated to 870, but is otherwise composed in Late Latin
. Another document from 882 also containing some Galician-Portuguese words is the Carta de dotação e fundação da Igreja de S. Miguel de Lardosa. In fact, many Latin documents written in Portuguese territory contain Romance forms. The Notícia de fiadores, written in 1175, is thought by some to be the oldest known document written in Galician-Portuguese. The Pacto dos irmãos Pais, recently discovered (and possibly dating from before 1173), has been said to be even older. But despite the enthusiasm of some scholars, it has been shown that these documents are not really written in Galician-Portuguese but are in fact a mixture of Late Latin and Galician-Portuguese phonology, morphology and syntax. The Notícia de Torto
, of uncertain date (c. 1214?), and the Testamento de D. Afonso II (27 June 1214) are most certainly Galician-Portuguese. The earliest poetic texts (though not the manuscripts in which they are found) date from c. 1195 to c. 1225. Thus by the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th there are documents in prose and verse written in the local Romance vernacular.
are:
The language was used for literary purposes from the final years of the 12th century until roughly the middle of the 14th century in what are now Spain and Portugal and was, almost without exception, the only language used for the composition of lyric poetry. Over 160 poets are recorded, of whom one might mention a few in particular: Bernal de Bonaval, Pero da Ponte, Johan Garcia de Guilhade, Johan Airas de Santiago, and Pedr' Amigo de Sevilha. The main secular poetic genres were the cantigas d'amor (male-voiced love lyric), the cantigas d'amigo
(female-voiced love lyric) and the cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer (including a variety of genres from personal invective to social satire, poetic parody and literary debate). All told, nearly 1,700 poems survive in these three genres. And there is a corpus of over 400 cantigas de Santa Maria (narrative poems about miracles and hymns in honor of the Holy Virgin
). The Castilian
king Alfonso X
composed his cantigas de Santa Maria and his cantigas de escárnio e maldizer in Galician-Portuguese, even though he used Castilian
for prose.
King Dinis of Portugal, who also contributed (with 137 extant texts, more than any other author) to the secular poetic genres, made the language official
in Portugal in 1290. Until then, Latin had been the official (written) language for royal documents; the spoken language did not have a name, being simply known as lingua vulgar ("ordinary language", that is Vulgar Latin) until it was named "Portuguese" in King Dinis' reign. "Galician-Portuguese" and português arcaico ("Old Portuguese"), are modern terms for the common ancestor of modern Portuguese and modern Galician. Compared to the differences in Ancient Greek
dialects, the alleged differences between 13th century Portuguese and Galician are trivial.
separated from the Kingdom of Galicia (a dependent kingdom of Leon) to establish the Kingdom of Portugal
. The Galician
and Portuguese versions of the language then diverged over time as they followed independent evolutionary paths.
As Portugal's territory was extended southward during the reconquista, the increasingly distinctive Portuguese language was adopted by the people in these regions, supplanting the earlier Arabic and other Romance/Latin languages that were spoken in these conquered areas during the Moorish era. Portuguese itself became even more distinctive from its fellow sibling, Galician, as it absorbed influences from the languages it displaced in these new territories to the south. Meanwhile, Galician was influenced by the neighbouring Leonese language, especially during the time of kingdoms of Leon and Leon-Castile, and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it has been influenced by Castilian. Two cities at the time of separation, Braga
and Porto
, were within the County of Portugal, and have remained within Portugal to this day. Further north, the cities of Lugo
, A Coruña
and the great mediaeval centre of Santiago de Compostela
, remained within Galicia.
Galician was preserved in Galicia in the modern era because those who spoke it were the majority rural or "uneducated" population living in the villages and towns, while Castilian was taught as the "correct" language to the bilingual educated elite in the cities. Because until comparatively recently, most Galicians lived in many small towns and villages in a remote and mountainous land, the language changed very slowly and was only very slightly influenced from outside the region. Due to this situation, Galician remained the vernacular of Galicia until the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries and is still widely spoken; most Galicians today are bilingual. Modern Galician was only officially recognized by the Second Spanish Republic in the 1930s as a co-official language with Castilian within Galicia. The recognition was revoked by the regime of Francisco Franco
but was restored after the end of his regime.
The linguistic classification of Galician and Portuguese is still discussed today. There are those, a small minority among Galician nationalist groups, who demand their reunification, as well as Portuguese and Galician philologists
who argue that both are dialect
s of a common language
rather than two separate ones but such views are widely considered eclectic. (See Reintegrationism
, for further information.)
The Fala language
, spoken in a small region of the Spanish autonomous community of Extremadura
, underwent a similar development to Galician.
Galician is the regional language of Galicia (sharing co-officiality with Spanish), and it is spoken by the majority of its population, while Portuguese continues to grow in use, and today is the 5th most spoken language in the world.
/s/ and /z/ were apico-alveolar while /ts/ and /dz/ were lamino-alveolar. Later in the history of Portuguese, all the affricate sibilants became fricatives, with the apico-alveolar and lamino-alveolar sibilants remaining distinct for a time but eventually merging in most dialects. See History of Portuguese for more information.
King Dinis of Portugal (1271–1325)
. The work of documenting and transmitting that common culture involves several universities and other organizations.
Galician-Portuguese folklore is rich in oral traditions. These include the cantigas ao desafio or regueifas, duels of improvised songs, many legends, stories, poems, romances, folk songs, sayings and riddles, and ways of speech that still retain a lexical, phonetic, morphological and syntactic similarity.
Also part of the common heritage of oral traditions are the markets and festivals of patron saints and processions, religious celebrations such as the magosto, entroido or Corpus Christi
, with ancient dances and tradition – like the one where Coca
the dragon
fights with Saint George
; and also traditional clothing and adornments, crafts and skills, work-tools, carved vegetable lanterns, superstitions, traditional knowledge about plants and animals. All these are part of a common heritage considered in danger of extinction as the traditional way of living is replaced by modern life, and the jargon of fisherman, the names of tools in traditional crafts, and the oral traditions which form part of celebrations are slowly forgotten.
The galician-Portuguese "baixo -limiao" is spoken in several villages. In Galicia is spoken in Entrimo
and Lobios
and in northern Portugal in Terras de Bouro
(lands of the Buri
) and Castro Laboreiro
.
West Iberian languages
West Iberian is a branch of the Romance languages which includes Castilian, Ladino, the Astur-Leonese group , and the modern descendants of Galician-Portuguese...
spoken in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south of the Douro by the Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
. It is the common ancestor of modern Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Eonavian
Eonavian
Eonavian or Galician-Asturian, is a term used to refer a set of Romance dialects or falas whose linguistic dominion extends in the zone of Asturias between the Eo and Navia rivers , and which have been variously classified as the...
and Fala
Fala language
Fala is a Romance linguistic variety commonly classified in the Portuguese-Galician subgroup, with some traits from Leonese, spoken in Spain by about 10,500 people, of whom 5,500 live in a valley of the northwestern part of Extremadura near the border with Portugal...
languages, and the extinct Judeo-Portuguese
Judeo-Portuguese
Judaeo-Portuguese, Lusitanic, or "Lusitanico" in Judaeo-Portuguese is the generally extinct Jewish language of the Jews of Portugal.-Description:...
language.
The term "Galician-Portuguese" also designates the subdivision of the modern West Iberian group which is composed by Galician, Portuguese, and the Fala language.
Origins and history
Galician-Portuguese developed in the region of the former Roman province of GallaeciaGallaecia
Gallaecia or Callaecia, also known as Hispania Gallaecia, was the name of a Roman province and an early Mediaeval kingdom that comprised a territory in the north-west of Hispania...
, from the Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
(common Latin) that had been introduced by Roman soldiers, colonists and magistrates during the time of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. Although the process may have been slower than in other regions, the centuries of contact with Vulgar Latin, after a period of bilingualism, completely extinguished the native languages, leading to the development of a new variety of Latin with a few Gallaecian features. A Celtic and Lusitanian
Lusitanian language
Lusitanian was a paleohispanic language that apparently belonged to the Indo-European family. Its relationship to the Celtic languages of the Iberian Peninsula, either as a member, a cousin , or as a different branch of Indo-European, is debated. It is known from only five inscriptions, dated from...
influence was thus absorbed into Vulgar Latin, and this can be detected in some Galician-Portuguese words as well as in place-names of Celtic or Iberian
Iberians
The Iberians were a set of peoples that Greek and Roman sources identified with that name in the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian peninsula at least from the 6th century BC...
origin (e.g. Bolso). In general, the more cultivated variety of Latin spoken in Roman Hispania
Hispania
Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place. Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis....
by the elite of educated Hispano-Romans already seems to have had a peculiar regional accent, referred to as Hispano ore and agrestius pronuntians. The more cultivated variety of Latin coexisted with the popular variety. It is assumed that the Pre-Roman languages
Iberian languages
Iberian languages is a generic term for the languages currently or formerly spoken in the Iberian Peninsula.- Pre-Roman languages :The following languages were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before the Roman occupation and the spread of the Latin language.* Aquitanian * Proto-Basque* Tartessian*...
spoken by the native people
Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula
This is a list of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian peninsula .-Non-Indo-European:*Aquitanians**Aquitani**Autrigones - some consider them Celtic .**Caristii - some consider them Celtic ....
, each used in a different region of Roman Hispania, contributed to the development of several different dialects of Vulgar Latin and that these diverged increasingly over time, eventually evolving into the early Romance Languages of the Iberia. It is believed that by the year 600 Vulgar Latin was no longer spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. An early form of Galician-Portuguese was already spoken in the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia
Suebic Kingdom of Galicia
The Suebic Kingdom of Galicia was the first independent barbarian Christian kingdom of Western Europe and the first to separate from the Roman Empire, as well as the first one to mint coins. Based in Gallaecia, it was established in 410 and lasted as independent state until 584, after a century of...
and by the year 800 Galician-Portuguese had already become the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
of the north-west of Iberia. The first known phonetic changes in Vulgar Latin which began the evolution to Galician-Portuguese took place during the rule of the Germanic groups, the Suevi (411–585) and Visigoths (585–711). And the Galician-Portuguese "inflected infinitive" (or "personal infinitive") and the nasal vowels may have evolved under the influence of local Celtic languages (as in Old French
Old French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
). The nasal vowels would thus be a phonologic characteristic of the Vulgar Latin spoken in Roman Gallaecia
Gallaecia
Gallaecia or Callaecia, also known as Hispania Gallaecia, was the name of a Roman province and an early Mediaeval kingdom that comprised a territory in the north-west of Hispania...
, but they are only attested in writing after the 6th and 7th centuries.
The oldest known document to contain Galician-Portuguese words, found in northern Portugal, called the Doação à Igreja de Sozello and dated to 870, but is otherwise composed in Late Latin
Late Latin
Late Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...
. Another document from 882 also containing some Galician-Portuguese words is the Carta de dotação e fundação da Igreja de S. Miguel de Lardosa. In fact, many Latin documents written in Portuguese territory contain Romance forms. The Notícia de fiadores, written in 1175, is thought by some to be the oldest known document written in Galician-Portuguese. The Pacto dos irmãos Pais, recently discovered (and possibly dating from before 1173), has been said to be even older. But despite the enthusiasm of some scholars, it has been shown that these documents are not really written in Galician-Portuguese but are in fact a mixture of Late Latin and Galician-Portuguese phonology, morphology and syntax. The Notícia de Torto
Noticia de Torto
The "Notícia de Torto" [Notice about - old Portuguese] is a minuta of a notarial document written in the first decades of the 13th century, and though it does not contain any date it has been dated as between 1211 and 1216, the first reigning years of King Alfonso II...
, of uncertain date (c. 1214?), and the Testamento de D. Afonso II (27 June 1214) are most certainly Galician-Portuguese. The earliest poetic texts (though not the manuscripts in which they are found) date from c. 1195 to c. 1225. Thus by the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th there are documents in prose and verse written in the local Romance vernacular.
Literature
Galician-Portuguese had a special cultural role in the literature of the Christian kingdoms of medieval Iberia, comparable to that of Occitan in France and Italy during the same historical period. The main extant sources of Galician-Portuguese lyric poetryLyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
are:
- The four extant manuscripts of the Cantigas de Santa MariaCantigas de Santa MariaThe Cantigas de Santa Maria are 420 poems with musical notation, written in Galician-Portuguese during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio and often attributed to him....
- Cancioneiro da Ajuda
- Cancioneiro da VaticanaCancioneiro da VaticanaThe Cancioneiro da Vaticana is a compilation of troubadour lyrics in Galician-Portuguese. It was discovered c. 1840 in the holdings of the Vatican Library and was first transcribed by Ernesto Monaci in 1875....
- Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti, also known as Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional (LisbonLisbonLisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
)
The language was used for literary purposes from the final years of the 12th century until roughly the middle of the 14th century in what are now Spain and Portugal and was, almost without exception, the only language used for the composition of lyric poetry. Over 160 poets are recorded, of whom one might mention a few in particular: Bernal de Bonaval, Pero da Ponte, Johan Garcia de Guilhade, Johan Airas de Santiago, and Pedr' Amigo de Sevilha. The main secular poetic genres were the cantigas d'amor (male-voiced love lyric), the cantigas d'amigo
Cantiga de amigo
The Cantiga de amigo or Cantiga d'amigo , literally a "song about a boyfriend", is a genre of medieval erotic lyric poetry, apparently rooted in a song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula. What mainly distinguishes the cantiga de amigo is its focus on a world of...
(female-voiced love lyric) and the cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer (including a variety of genres from personal invective to social satire, poetic parody and literary debate). All told, nearly 1,700 poems survive in these three genres. And there is a corpus of over 400 cantigas de Santa Maria (narrative poems about miracles and hymns in honor of the Holy Virgin
Mary (mother of Jesus)
Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...
). The Castilian
Kingdom of Castile
Kingdom of Castile was one of the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. It emerged as a political autonomous entity in the 9th century. It was called County of Castile and was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region...
king Alfonso X
Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X was a Castilian monarch who ruled as the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1252 until his death...
composed his cantigas de Santa Maria and his cantigas de escárnio e maldizer in Galician-Portuguese, even though he used Castilian
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
for prose.
King Dinis of Portugal, who also contributed (with 137 extant texts, more than any other author) to the secular poetic genres, made the language official
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
in Portugal in 1290. Until then, Latin had been the official (written) language for royal documents; the spoken language did not have a name, being simply known as lingua vulgar ("ordinary language", that is Vulgar Latin) until it was named "Portuguese" in King Dinis' reign. "Galician-Portuguese" and português arcaico ("Old Portuguese"), are modern terms for the common ancestor of modern Portuguese and modern Galician. Compared to the differences in Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
dialects, the alleged differences between 13th century Portuguese and Galician are trivial.
Divergence
As a result of political division, Galician-Portuguese lost its unity when the County of PortugalCounty of Portugal
The County of Portugal was the region around Braga and Porto, today corresponding to littoral northern Portugal, from the late ninth to the early twelfth century, during which it was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León.-History:...
separated from the Kingdom of Galicia (a dependent kingdom of Leon) to establish the Kingdom of Portugal
Kingdom of Portugal
The Kingdom of Portugal was Portugal's general designation under the monarchy. The kingdom was located in the west of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and existed from 1139 to 1910...
. The Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
and Portuguese versions of the language then diverged over time as they followed independent evolutionary paths.
As Portugal's territory was extended southward during the reconquista, the increasingly distinctive Portuguese language was adopted by the people in these regions, supplanting the earlier Arabic and other Romance/Latin languages that were spoken in these conquered areas during the Moorish era. Portuguese itself became even more distinctive from its fellow sibling, Galician, as it absorbed influences from the languages it displaced in these new territories to the south. Meanwhile, Galician was influenced by the neighbouring Leonese language, especially during the time of kingdoms of Leon and Leon-Castile, and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it has been influenced by Castilian. Two cities at the time of separation, Braga
Braga
Braga , a city in the Braga Municipality in northwestern Portugal, is the capital of the Braga District, the oldest archdiocese and the third major city of the country. Braga is the oldest Portuguese city and one of the oldest Christian cities in the World...
and Porto
Porto
Porto , also known as Oporto in English, is the second largest city in Portugal and one of the major urban areas in the Iberian Peninsula. Its administrative limits include a population of 237,559 inhabitants distributed within 15 civil parishes...
, were within the County of Portugal, and have remained within Portugal to this day. Further north, the cities of Lugo
Lugo
Lugo is a city in northwestern Spain, in the autonomous community of Galicia. It is the capital of the province of Lugo. The municipality had a population of 97,635 in 2010, which makes is the fourth most populated city in Galicia.-Population:...
, A Coruña
A Coruña
A Coruña or La Coruña is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. It is the second-largest city in the autonomous community and seventeenth overall in the country...
and the great mediaeval centre of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
, remained within Galicia.
Galician was preserved in Galicia in the modern era because those who spoke it were the majority rural or "uneducated" population living in the villages and towns, while Castilian was taught as the "correct" language to the bilingual educated elite in the cities. Because until comparatively recently, most Galicians lived in many small towns and villages in a remote and mountainous land, the language changed very slowly and was only very slightly influenced from outside the region. Due to this situation, Galician remained the vernacular of Galicia until the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries and is still widely spoken; most Galicians today are bilingual. Modern Galician was only officially recognized by the Second Spanish Republic in the 1930s as a co-official language with Castilian within Galicia. The recognition was revoked by the regime of Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
but was restored after the end of his regime.
The linguistic classification of Galician and Portuguese is still discussed today. There are those, a small minority among Galician nationalist groups, who demand their reunification, as well as Portuguese and Galician philologists
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
who argue that both are dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of a common language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
rather than two separate ones but such views are widely considered eclectic. (See Reintegrationism
Reintegrationism
Reintegrationism is the linguistic and cultural movement in Galicia which defends the unity of Galician and Portuguese as a single language. In other words, it postulates that Galician and Portuguese languages did not only share a common origin and literary tradition, but that they are in fact...
, for further information.)
The Fala language
Fala language
Fala is a Romance linguistic variety commonly classified in the Portuguese-Galician subgroup, with some traits from Leonese, spoken in Spain by about 10,500 people, of whom 5,500 live in a valley of the northwestern part of Extremadura near the border with Portugal...
, spoken in a small region of the Spanish autonomous community of Extremadura
Extremadura
Extremadura is an autonomous community of western Spain whose capital city is Mérida. Its component provinces are Cáceres and Badajoz. It is bordered by Portugal to the west...
, underwent a similar development to Galician.
Galician is the regional language of Galicia (sharing co-officiality with Spanish), and it is spoken by the majority of its population, while Portuguese continues to grow in use, and today is the 5th most spoken language in the world.
Phonology
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Labio- dental |
Dental/ Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ɲ | |||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | ɡ | ||||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
β1 | f | s | z | ʃ | ʒ2 | ||||||
| Affricates Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
ts | dz | tʃ | dʒ2 | ||||||||
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
l | ʎ | ||||||||||
| Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular.... |
r | |||||||||||
| Flap Flap consonant In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:... |
ɾ | |||||||||||
- 1 Eventually shifted to /v/ in central and southern Portugal (and hence in Brazil), and merged with /b/ in northern Portugal and Galicia.
- 2 [ʒ] and [dʒ] probably occurred in complementary distributionComplementary distributionComplementary distribution in linguistics is the relationship between two different elements, where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment...
.
/s/ and /z/ were apico-alveolar while /ts/ and /dz/ were lamino-alveolar. Later in the history of Portuguese, all the affricate sibilants became fricatives, with the apico-alveolar and lamino-alveolar sibilants remaining distinct for a time but eventually merging in most dialects. See History of Portuguese for more information.
A strophe of Galician-Portuguese lyric
Provençal poets know how to compose very well and they say it is out of love, but those who compose when flowers bloom and at no other time, I know well that they don't have in their hearts so great a yearning as I must carry for my Lady in mine. |
King Dinis of Portugal (1271–1325)
Oral Traditions
There has been a sharing of folklore in the Galician-Portuguese region, going back to pre-historic times. As the Galician-Portuguese language was spread south by the reconquista, where it was spoken lusitanian mozarabic, this ancient sharing of folklore was intensified. In 2005 the governments of Portugal and Spain jointly proposed that Galician-Portuguese oral traditions be made part of the Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of HumanityMasterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
The Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity was made by the Director-General of UNESCO starting in 2001 to raise awareness on intangible cultural heritage and encourage local communities to protect them and the local people who sustain these forms of cultural...
. The work of documenting and transmitting that common culture involves several universities and other organizations.
Galician-Portuguese folklore is rich in oral traditions. These include the cantigas ao desafio or regueifas, duels of improvised songs, many legends, stories, poems, romances, folk songs, sayings and riddles, and ways of speech that still retain a lexical, phonetic, morphological and syntactic similarity.
Also part of the common heritage of oral traditions are the markets and festivals of patron saints and processions, religious celebrations such as the magosto, entroido or Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi (feast)
Corpus Christi is a Latin Rite solemnity, now designated the solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ . It is also celebrated in some Anglican, Lutheran and Old Catholic Churches. Like Trinity Sunday and the Solemnity of Christ the King, it does not commemorate a particular event in...
, with ancient dances and tradition – like the one where Coca
Cuco
The Coco is a mythical ghost-monster; equivalent to the boogeyman, found in many Hispanic and Lusophone countries. He can also be considered a Hispanic version of a bugbear, as it is a commonly used figure of speech representing an irrational or exaggerated fear...
the dragon
Dragon
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
fights with Saint George
Saint George
Saint George was, according to tradition, a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina and a priest in the Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic , Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox...
; and also traditional clothing and adornments, crafts and skills, work-tools, carved vegetable lanterns, superstitions, traditional knowledge about plants and animals. All these are part of a common heritage considered in danger of extinction as the traditional way of living is replaced by modern life, and the jargon of fisherman, the names of tools in traditional crafts, and the oral traditions which form part of celebrations are slowly forgotten.
The galician-Portuguese "baixo -limiao" is spoken in several villages. In Galicia is spoken in Entrimo
Entrimo
Entrimo is a municipality in Ourense in the Galicia region of north-west Spain....
and Lobios
Lobios
Lobios is a municipality in Ourense in the Galicia region of north-west Spain.It has a population of 2,000....
and in northern Portugal in Terras de Bouro
Terras de Bouro
Terras de Bouro is a municipality in Portugal with a total area of 277.5 km² and a total population of 7,955 inhabitants.The municipality is composed of 17 parishes, and is located in the district of Braga. The present Mayor is António Ferreira Afonso, elected by the Social Democratic Party...
(lands of the Buri
Buri (Germanic tribe)
The Buri were a Germanic tribe mentioned in the Germania of Tacitus, where they initially "close the back" of the Marcomanni and Quadi of Bohemia and Moravia. It is said that their speech and customs were like those of the Suebi...
) and Castro Laboreiro
Castro Laboreiro
Castro Laboreiro is a village in northern Portugal, one of the 18 parishes of the Melgaço munincipality, in the district of Viana do Castelo. It is in the mountain range of the Laboreiro. As of 2001 the area had 726 inhabitants...
.
About the Galician-Portuguese language
- Cantiga de amigoCantiga de amigoThe Cantiga de amigo or Cantiga d'amigo , literally a "song about a boyfriend", is a genre of medieval erotic lyric poetry, apparently rooted in a song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula. What mainly distinguishes the cantiga de amigo is its focus on a world of...
- EonavianEonavianEonavian or Galician-Asturian, is a term used to refer a set of Romance dialects or falas whose linguistic dominion extends in the zone of Asturias between the Eo and Navia rivers , and which have been variously classified as the...
- Fala languageFala languageFala is a Romance linguistic variety commonly classified in the Portuguese-Galician subgroup, with some traits from Leonese, spoken in Spain by about 10,500 people, of whom 5,500 live in a valley of the northwestern part of Extremadura near the border with Portugal...
- Galician languageGalician languageGalician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
- History of Portuguese
- Portuguese languagePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
- ReintegrationismReintegrationismReintegrationism is the linguistic and cultural movement in Galicia which defends the unity of Galician and Portuguese as a single language. In other words, it postulates that Galician and Portuguese languages did not only share a common origin and literary tradition, but that they are in fact...