Re: Odp: The relationship between Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese

From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 751
Date: 2000-01-03

As for the linguistic situation in Iberia, I believe we have to see the situation before the reconquista. The Arabs had conquered most of the peninsula except the northern territories, where there was a gradient of languages form west to east. AFAIK there were 3 main centres where the reconquista started: in the West, Galicia>Portugal; in the East, Catalonia>Valencia; and the largest one in the centre Castilia>Andalucia. These are still the 3 main Iberian languages: Portugese, Spanish, Catalan. The political situation (separation of Portugal & Spain) made Portugese & esp.Spanish the most important languages. This also explains why most of southern Spain speaks a rather uniform Spanish, whereas the differences are much larger in northern Spain. Spaniards will tell you the most beautiful Spanish (they like to call their own language Castiliano) is spoken in Valladolid in Castilia la Vieja (the land of the castles, where the reconquista started).
 
Marc
 
+++++++++++
Gerry here:  So you are saying that Galicians made their language more
like "Spanish" because they were embarassed by how "vulgar" it appeared
to be.  And that the Portuguese did not try to make their language sound
more like "Spanish".  QUESTION: What language do the folks in Catalonia
think they speak and how does it differ from Spanish?
Gerry

MIQUEL CABAL GUARRO wrote:
> 
> The easiest way to explain why is it possible to understand
> Galician (with knowledge of Spanish) but not Portuguese
> concerns Sociolinguistics: Galicia, now an (they say)
> autonomous region of Spain, has been linguistically
> devastated by Spanish-speakers and by Galicians who see
> their language as something rude, vulgar and prefer to use
> Spanish as a common vehicle language. Galician modern
> phonetics, syntax and morphology are deeply, let's say,
> "spanished". This process of linguistic annihilation has not
> happened to Portuguese, which remains more "classical".
> In Catalonia we are fighting against this linguistically
> devastating influence of Spanish with a greater success than
> they have in Galicia.
> I apologize for my English.
> 
> Happy New Year to everybody.
> 
Gerry,
I suppose what Miquel suggests is that it took the Galicians too long to take pride in their own language and to realise that it was not really inferior to Castilian in any way. As a result, Galician has undergone Castilianisation, losing some of the features either shared with standard Portuguese or uniquely Galician. Miquel uses rather strong terms ("annihilation", "devastate", "fight") to describe this situation -- well, his emotional involvement is entirely understandable. I'd prefer to discuss these things impassively, though my inner voice always tells me to sympathise with speakers of endangered languages.
 
Miquel will no doubt answer your QUESTION, but lest you should consider him biassed as a local patriot of Catalonia, let me comment as an impartial foreigner: the language of Catalonia is Catalan -- a most respectable Romance language with its very own literary tradition going back to the end of the 12th century. It rose to the dignity of a fully fledged literary language in the 15th century, which was the golden age of Catalan poetry. Linguistically, Catalan was pretty close to Provençal in the Middle Ages; since then it has partially yielded to the influence of Castilian Spanish and become more "Hispanic"; however, it has never lost its cultural independence or its distinctive character. After a long period of decline, Romanticism brought about its revival as a literary language (La Renaixença) in the 19th century. It is now recognised as one of the official languages of Spain (this status was denied to it under Franco's dictatorship, which tended to suppress all forms of regionalism) and you will find it listed as a separate Romance language in all linguistic handbooks.
 
If you know any Spanish and/or French, Gerry, try to work this out as an exercise:
 
Alguns catalans, perpètuament girats cap al passat, pensen que el futur de Catalunya està tancat i barrat. Altres catalans creuen que Catalunya és distingeix per la possibilitat d'un continu renaixement: que Catalunya, en una paraula, és eterna. Ni els uns ni els altres no fan el que haurien de fer els catalans: tocar de peus a terra. Els primers, per manca de confiança. Els darrers, per excés d'il·lusió.
 
Piotr

 
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