The standard variety of Portuguese is indeed quite different
PHONETICALLY from both Galician and Castilian, though PHONOLOGICALLY
it clusters with Galician. Mutual comprehensibility is a tricky
business. Extraliguistic (emotional, ideological) factors are often
involved and may bias people's evaluation. Some Galician speakers
assured me they could communicate with Portuguese speakers without
much difficulty, while they found many varieties of Spanish
(especially southern) quite incomprehensible. Of course Spanish is
anything but monolithic, and a Galician's problems with Andalusian
would certainly be more acute than a Castilian speaker's problems
with Galician, especially if the Galician idiolect in question were
Castilian-influenced.
Galician is a distinct language ex definitione, as having an official
standard form, but the question whether a given local variety is
Galician or Portuguese may be as difficult as the classification of a
transitional dialect in the "Rhenish Fan" as Dutch or German. I've
been told (by a Galician non-linguist) that dialects spoken south of
the Minho also played a role when standard Galician was created
during the "Rexurdimiento" period.
Piotr
--- In cybalist@egroups.com, "David James" <david@...> wrote:
> I think I'm correct in saying that the vocabulary and grammar of
> Galician is virtually identical to Portuguese, but strangely it
> sounds more like Spanish at least to me. Spanish speakers have few
> difficulties understanding Galician, but Galician speakers find
> Portuguese difficult. That is what Galicians have told me. Isn't
the
> dialect of the Minho district of northern Portugal called Galego?
> Perhaps our Portuguese specialists can help.
> Regards