Galician/Introduction

Welcome to Wikibooks' Galician language textbook. This book should help you to learn the basics of Galician, even if you start out with no knowledge of the language.

What is the Galician language?

Galician linguistic areas.

Galician, or Galego, is a romance language spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community in the Northwest of Spain recognised as historical nationality in 1978 Spanish Constitution. With a common base with Portuguese, as both languages have developed from the Galician-Portuguese branche of Western Ibero-Romances, is one of the four official languages of the Kingdom of Spain since 1981, when the Statute of Autonomy was passed in referendum.

Galician is spoken by more than 2 million people, mainly in Galicia, but also in another autonomous communities of Spain, Europe and Latin America because of diaspora, with many having left their homeland in the 1950s and 1960s.

Political and social situation

The situation between Portuguese and Galician is surprisingly similar to that of Bulgarian and Macedonian. Portuguese speakers (whether be in Portugal, Brazil or in southern Africa) will insist that Galician is a dialect of their own language, while most of the rest of the Iberian peninsula will tell you otherwise. The arguments include: written Galician resembles Spanish in many ways, but the differences between spoken Portuguese and spoken Galician are very blurry. They can speak and understand one another without the need of a translator.

Aims of this book

The goal of this book is to teach the reader about the Galician language.