Galician Language - Encyclopedia Britannica

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External Websites

• Omniglot - Galician
• University of Glasgow - Enlighten Publications - Galician-Portuguese and the Politics of Language in Contemporary Galicia (PDF)
• O Portal da Lingua Galega - Basic Data on Galician Language
• Nature - Urbanity and the dynamics of language shift in Galicia

Galician language Ask Anything Homework Help Also known as: Galego, Gallego, Northern Portuguese Written and fact-checked by Britannica Editors Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Britannica Editors History Britannica AI Ask Anything Table of Contents Table of Contents Ask Anything

Galician language, Romance language with many similarities to the Portuguese language, of which it was historically a dialect. It is now much influenced by standard Castilian Spanish. Galician is spoken by some four million people as a home language, mostly in the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain—where almost 90 percent of the population spoke Galician at the turn of the 21st century—but also in adjacent regions of Portugal (notably Trás-os-Montes).

Galician: Galego (Show more) Castilian Spanish: Gallego (Show more) Related Topics: Spanish language Portuguese language Galician literature (Show more) See all related content

In Castile, where standard Spanish (Castilian) originated, Galician was the conventional language of the courtly lyric until roughly 1400, but it lost ground in the 15th century, and Castilian replaced Galician as the official language of Galicia in 1500. Dialect poetry in Galician has flourished since the 18th century, with an upsurge in the 19th century.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.