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

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 752
Date: 2000-01-03

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Verhaegen
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2000 11:42 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: The relationship between Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese

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
 
A good point, Marc. This historical background accounts very nicely for Catalan's tending towards different "centres of gravity" over time.
 
Piotr