Galician language
A Romance language of northwestern Spain with official status.
Galician, also known as Galego, is a Western Ibero-Romance language spoken by around 2.4 million people, primarily in the autonomous community of Galicia in northwestern Spain, where it holds official status alongside Spanish. It also has speakers in border zones of Asturias and Castile and León, as well as in migrant communities in Latin America, the United States, Switzerland, and elsewhere in Europe. The language evolved locally from Vulgar Latin and developed from what modern scholars call Galician-Portuguese, with the earliest integral document dating to 1230.
- speakers
- ~2.4 million with at least some competence
- language_family
- Western Ibero-Romance (West Iberian group)
- official_status
- Official in Galicia, Spain (alongside Spanish)
- earliest_written_record
- 1230
- regulatory_body
- Royal Galician Academy
- mutual_intelligibility_with_Portuguese
- Estimated 85% (Robert A. Hall Jr., 1989)
Lore & Background
Modern Galician evolved from Vulgar Latin and developed from Galician-Portuguese, a common medieval ancestor. The earliest document written entirely in the local Galician variety dates to 1230, though Romance elements appear in Latin charters after the High Middle Ages. The first reference to Galician-Portuguese as an international language of culture is from 1290, in the Regles de Trobar by Catalan author Jofre de Foixà, where it is simply called Galician. Dialectal divergences between northern and southern forms of Galician-Portuguese are observable in 13th-century texts, but the two dialects remained similar enough to maintain cultural unity until the mid-14th century, producing the medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric.
Reader's Guide
Galician's significance lies in its status as a living Romance language with a rich medieval literary tradition and a modern revival. After declining as a written language from the 16th century, it recovered a proper literature in the 19th century and has been taught in schools and used in lawmaking only since the last quarter of the 20th century. The language's relationship with Portuguese remains controversial: some linguists and organizations, such as the Galician Language Association, consider them two forms of the same language, while the Royal Galician Academy and most speakers regard Galician as an independent language. The lexicon is predominantly Latin, with Germanic, Celtic, and Arabic influences. The first complete Bible translation from the original languages dates from 1989. Galician forms a dialect continuum with Portuguese in the south and with Astur-Leonese in the east, with high mutual intelligibility between Galicians and northern Portuguese.
Did You Know?
- The earliest document written entirely in Galician dates to 1230.
- The first reference to Galician-Portuguese as an international language of culture is from 1290, in a work by Catalan author Jofre de Foixà.
- Mutual intelligibility between Galician and northern Portuguese is estimated at 85%.
- The first complete translation of the Bible into Galician from the original languages was published in 1989.
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