Using Dictionaries (was Re: Greek question (night?))

Frank Rossi iglesias at axia.it
Sat Apr 3 21:00:21 UTC 1999


[ moderator re-formatted ]

In response to my posting:

>In this discussion it should be kept in mind that Old Portuguese and Old
>Galician, spoken in the NW corner of the Iberian peninsula,  were *the same
>language*, from the time when the South of Portugal with Lisbon was still
>under the Moors and the local people there spoke a Mozarabic dialect until
>quite some time after the independence of Portugal.

>So the question is did Portuguese /u/ preserve the older pronunciation or
>did modern Galician /o/, (which is described as "very closed" by
>phoneticians).

Rick wrote:

>You need to keep in mind that "neo-Galician" essentially uses a largely
Spanish pronunciation.

We agreed on this in previous postings, but this was not because Castilian
completely replaced Galician as it (and Portuguese) replaced Mozarabic in
the "reconquered" areas, but rather because modern Galician (dialects)
developed in parallel with "Spanish", i.e. Castilian (see Pilar Va'zquez
Cuesta, "Grama'tica Portuguesa", Ed. Gredos, Madrid, 1971, chapter on "El
Gallego"), no doubt because they all formed part of the same state, the
Kingdoms of Galicia and Asturias being incorporated in the Kingdom of Leon,
which later united with the Kingdom of Castille.

The term Neo-Galician needs to be defined. Rick is referring, I assume to
the semi-artificial common Galician language that had to be developed when
Galician was recognized as an official language, a situation similar to
Batua for Basque  (comments by Larry and the Basque experts appreciated),
and even Catalan in the last century, before Pompeu Fabra and the Catalan
Studies Institute, was practically reduced to a series of dialects. True
Miguel?

However, the Galician dialects continued to be spoken in the country
without interruption by at least 80% of the total population, even before
the restoration of the official status of Galician, and for these people,
Castilian was always a foreign, albeit closely related language. (A Mexican
friend and colleague of ours once said to my wife: "Oh, yes, but for you
people of Northern Spain in general,  Spanish is a foreign language!")
Also, since we discussed this, I have been told by contacts in Galicia that
the dialects of the Western coast are practically indistinguishable from
Northern Portuguese in their pronunciation (no "zeta", etc.), but strangely
they are more similar to Castilian in their morphology (PAPEL-PAPELES); the
Eastern dialects are the opposite (PAPEL-PAPEIS). The Neo Galician
language, with the backing of the Autonomous Government of Galicia, has
apparently emphasized the "Spanishness" of Galician - and not the contrary
- by using Western morphology and Eastern pronunciation. The Lusophiles in
Galicia who want instead to accentuate the roots of their language, use
more Portuguese oriented spelling conventions, e.g. Espanha, but they are
not in power in the local government and their preferred versions are used,
as far as I know, only in a few magazines, books, etc., precisely because
of the lack of official support.

What I am trying to say is that Neo-Galician for most of the dialect
speakers of Galician is not a "Post-Castilian" language, as they never
spoke Castilian, except as a foreign language. In Alava, on the other hand,
many people have learned Euskera ex novo starting from Castilian. .
For the Castilian native speaking minority in Galicia (less than 16%),
there are two situations:

a) For the Galicians (like my wife Pilar), whose language is objectively
Castilian, but with a Galician substrate that is clearly noticeable in
their pronunciation and other aspects, learning Neo-Galician is a "return
home", as these people (less than 7%) all understand Galician more or less
and are very much attached to their roots, cf. the Irish.
As we (Frank and Pilar) said before, for the Portuguese, the Galician
pronunciation may be very Castilian, but for the other Spaniards it's very
"gallego", i.e., spoken or sung by people or even witches (meigas) or
cloud-riding sorcerers (nubeiros) on broom (toxo) covered heaths with a
background of bagpipe (gaita) music in thick Atlantic mists (bretema) or
fine drizzle (orvallo) :)

b) For the other Spanish speakers who live in Galicia, although their
numbers are limited (less than 9%), and it is to  be hoped this does not
apply to the Basque and Catalan speakers among them, Neo-Galician may seem
a diabolic invention of Galician nationalists to diminish the glory of
Spain - Una, Grande, Libre - as they used to say in the times of Franco,
but the language is probably here to stay and will probably draw closer to
Portuguese. (I have been told, for example, that a lot of Galicians are now
subscribing to Brazilian magazines, etc., and this gives them a whole new
outlook on the world).

It is also interesting to note that, of the three non Castilian official
languages in Spain (Galician, Basque and Catalan), Galician is the one with
the highest levels of speakers of the language :

91.02% understand Galician
84.19% speak Galician

(1991 census data)

against:

94% understand Catalan
68% speak Catalan

in Catalunya-Catalun~a alone

(1991 census data)

88.2% understand Catalan
61,6% speak Catalan

in Catalunya, Comunitat Valenciana (Catalan speaking areas) and Illes
Balears (1986 data)

and

30.09% understand Euskera
22.38% speak Euskera

in the Comunidad Auto'noma Vasca-Euskal Autonomi Erkidekoa (Basque Country)
only.

(1991 data).

I gave the figures for Navarra-Nafarroa in an earlier posting, but for
completeness I repeat them below:

10.22% speak Euskera
understand Euskera 16.4%

The situation has apparently improved considerably for all three non
Castilian languages since then.

Finally, and this is the point, it is probable that not only the Galician
dialects, but also standard (Lisbon) Portuguese also changed considerably
from the original "galego-portugue's" brought from the North by the
"reconquistadores", as can be inferred by the fact that the Northern
Portuguese dialects are in many ways still closer to Galician than to
standard Portuguese, again as discussed in recent posts.

Regards

Frank Rossi
Bergamo, Italy
iglesias at axia.it



More information about the Indo-european mailing list