By Sarah-Claire Jordan
Galician is the language of Galicia, an autonomous community in the northwest of Spain, right above Portugal. It is part of the Ibero-Romance language family, along with Portuguese, Spanish, Asturian, and Aragonese. Like most other languages spoken in Spain that are not Castilian (another name for the Spanish spoken in Spain), Galician has a lot of interesting aspects to it. These six facts about Galician should give you a good overview of the language.
1. Galician shares a lot with Portuguese
Since it shares a border with Portugal, it makes sense that Galician would have many of the same linguistic characteristics. Both Galician and Portuguese share the same linguistic ancestor, known as Old Galician, Old Portuguese, Mediaeval Galician, and Galician-Portuguese. The two languages at one point were part of the same dialect continuum, but now it can be said that they are two separate languages, though very similar.
2. Written Galician dates back to the 12th century
Since it originally comes from Vulgar Latin, along with all other Romance languages, Galician was always written using the Latin alphabet. The first sentences written in Galician were found in documents written in Latin, with the Galician used to make commentary, in the 12th century. Later on, in 1228, the earliest Galician document was written, a legal charter for a municipality of Galicia.
3. Many Galician songs were written in the 13th and 14th centuries
The 13th and 14th centuries were a sort of golden age for the Galician language, which at that time was actually still considered Old Galician. Not only were many pieces of literature written, but also about 2000 songs, with interesting lyrical content, were composed. These songs fell into one of four categories: love songs for women from the male perspective, love songs for men from a female perspective (known as “Cantiga de amigo”), songs with crude and sexual lyrical content, and religious songs.
4. In the 1600s, Galicia was a diglossic area
Despite being part of the Castilian kingdom since the 12th century, Galician remained the most common language of Galicia. In time, however, Castilian became the preferred language of the kingdom, soon leading to the end of the use of Galician for any official or formal affairs. However, it was still spoken in the home, which created a diglossia in Galicia during the 1600s, with Galician being the low variety and Castilian the high variety.
5. Galician was banned by Franco
As with all other languages spoken in Spain that were not Castilian, Galician was totally banned during the dictatorship of Franco from 1939 to 1975. Despite the ban on written and public Galician, however, material in Galician started to be published again on a very small scale in the 1950s.
6. There are three varieties of Galician
They could also be considered dialects, but some linguists think that they don’t differ enough to be considered different dialects. Nonetheless, Galician is divided into three “blocks” depending on linguistic characteristics, and also by region: Eastern Galician, Central Galician, and Western Galician.
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