Galician Language: History, Dialects and Features
Galician, the mother tongue of about 2 million people, is spoken in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in Galicia and the border areas of Asturias, Castile and León, and along the Latin-derived strip that extends south along the Atlantic coast to the entire Portuguese territory.
Historical Development
Galician was very important in Portuguese literature, and in the 12th century it was the literary language of the medieval period. From the 14th century onwards, the Castilian language imposed itself, and Galician lost its prestige. It resumed a distinct place with the Rexurdimento of the 19th century and the Constitution of 1978, which recognized it as an official language.
Dialectal Division
The Galician language presents its first dialectal differentiation into three zones: Eastern, Central and Occidental. The Occidental variety, in particular, tends towards the Portuguese Galician-Portuguese continuum.
Speakers of Castilian who use Galician show a characteristic intonation and tend to raise many vowels, turning them into i and u, and to use the diminutive suffix -iño.
Dialects and Latin Origins
The dialects of Latin origin remained during the Asturian-Leonese period, when the Arab advance in the Pyrenees led to the formation of nuclei of resistance. In this era, the Navarrese dialect formed part of the Pyrenean areas, while the Asturian-Leonese language extended over a very reduced territory.
Several features of Galician remain: the conservation of initial -f-, the plural in -s, the feminine ending -a and the final -o vowels. The diminutive in -iño is used in the central area and along the Pyrenees, following the Aragonese model. Here, the language does not reach the stage of standardization that would avoid the sdrújula accent, using the suffix -ico and the particle used in the Galician prayers.
Dialect or Language?
Dialect: a linguistic system derived from a language that does not meet the necessary conditions to be considered a language in its own right. Differential features include: subordination to another language, a dialect that is not sufficiently differentiated from the language it depends on, and the lack of normalization, which does not allow the establishment of a stable grammar, vocabulary or a standard pronunciation for speakers without a dialect.
A dialect can become a language when it has a literary tradition and speakers who write in it, using the language in general contexts.
Neologisms and Word Formation
New lexical elements can be introduced through several mechanisms: semantic change, meaning shifts, the creation of acronyms formed from the initial letters of different words, and frequent use in terms that have become established.
Acronyms-type words are formed from other words by taking part of their initial letters.