Galician-Portuguese ( gl, galego-portugués or ', pt, galego-português or ), also known as Old Portuguese or as Medieval Galician when referring to the history of each modern language, was a
West Iberian Romance language spoken in the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
, in the northwest area of the
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
. Alternatively, it can be considered a historical period of the
Galician and
Portuguese language
Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and ...
s.
Galician-Portuguese was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and by the
Douro River
The Douro (, , ; es, Duero ; la, Durius) is the highest-flow river of the Iberian Peninsula. It rises near Duruelo de la Sierra in Soria Province, central Spain, meanders south briefly then flows generally west through the north-west part of ...
in the south, comprising Galicia and northern Portugal, but it was later extended south of the Douro by the ''
Reconquista
The ' (Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid ...
''.
It is the common ancestor of modern
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
Galician,
Eonavian
Galician–Asturian or Eonavian (autonym: ; ast, eonaviegu, gallego-asturianu; gl, eonaviego, galego-asturiano) is a set of Romance dialects or ''falas'' whose linguistic dominion extends into the zone of Asturias between the Eo River and Na ...
, and
Fala varieties, all of which maintain a very high level of
mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
. The term "Galician-Portuguese" also designates the subdivision of the modern West Iberian group of Romance languages.
Language
Origins and history
Galician-Portuguese developed in the region of the former Roman province of
Gallaecia
Gallaecia, also known as Hispania Gallaecia, was the name of a Roman province in the north-west of Hispania, approximately present-day Galicia, northern Portugal, Asturias and Leon and the later Kingdom of Gallaecia. The Roman cities included ...
, from the
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
(common Latin) that had been introduced by Roman soldiers, colonists and magistrates during the time of the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...
. Although the process may have been slower than in other regions, the centuries of contact with Vulgar Latin, after a period of bilingualism, completely extinguished the native languages, leading to the evolution of a new variety of Latin with a few Gallaecian features.
Gallaecian and
Lusitanian influences were absorbed into the local Vulgar Latin dialect, which can be detected in some Galician-Portuguese words as well as in placenames of
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
and
Iberian origin. In general, the more cultivated variety of Latin spoken by the Hispano-Roman elites in Roman
Hispania
Hispania ( la, Hispānia , ; nearly identically pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian) was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania ...
had a peculiar regional accent, referred to as ''Hispano ore'' and ''agrestius pronuntians''. The more cultivated variety of Latin coexisted with the popular variety. It is assumed that the
Pre-Roman languages spoken by the
native people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
, each used in a different region of Roman Hispania, contributed to the development of several different dialects of Vulgar Latin and that these diverged increasingly over time, eventually evolving into the early Romance languages of Iberia.
An early form of Galician-Portuguese was already spoken in the
Kingdom of the Suebi
The Kingdom of the Suebi ( la, Regnum Suevorum), also called the Kingdom of Galicia ( la, Regnum Galicia) or Suebi Kingdom of Galicia ( la, Galicia suevorum regnum), was a Germanic post-Roman kingdom that was one of the first to separate from ...
and by the year 800 Galician-Portuguese had already become the
vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
of northwestern Iberia.
The first known
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
changes in Vulgar Latin, which began the evolution to Galician-Portuguese, took place during the rule of the Germanic groups, the
Suebi
The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names ...
(411–585) and
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...
(585–711).
And the Galician-Portuguese "inflected infinitive" (or "personal infinitive") and the
nasal vowels
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced witho ...
may have evolved under the influence of local Celtic languages (as in Old French). The nasal vowels would thus be a phonologic characteristic of the Vulgar Latin spoken in Roman
Gallaecia
Gallaecia, also known as Hispania Gallaecia, was the name of a Roman province in the north-west of Hispania, approximately present-day Galicia, northern Portugal, Asturias and Leon and the later Kingdom of Gallaecia. The Roman cities included ...
, but they are not attested in writing until after the 6th and 7th centuries.
The oldest known document to contain Galician-Portuguese words found in northern Portugal is called the ''Doação à Igreja de Sozello'' and dated to 870 but otherwise composed in
Late
Late may refer to:
* LATE, an acronym which could stand for:
** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia
** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law
** Local average treatment effect, ...
/
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned ...
. Another document, from 882, also containing some Galician-Portuguese words is the ''Carta de dotação e fundação da Igreja de S. Miguel de Lardosa''. In fact, many Latin documents written in Portuguese territory contain Romance forms. The ''Notícia de fiadores'', written in 1175, is thought by some to be the oldest known document written in Galician-Portuguese.
The ''Pacto dos irmãos Pais'', discovered in 1999 (and possibly dating from before 1173), has been said to be even older, but despite the enthusiasm of some scholars, it has been shown that the documents are not really written in Galician-Portuguese but are in fact a mixture of Late Latin and Galician-Portuguese phonology, morphology and syntax. The ''
Noticia de Torto'', of uncertain date (c. 1214?), and the ' (27 June 1214) are most certainly Galician-Portuguese.
The earliest poetic texts (but not the manuscripts in which they are found) date from c. 1195 to c. 1225. Thus, by the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th there are documents in prose and verse written in the local Romance vernacular.
In Galicia the oldest document showing traces of the underlying Romance language is a royal charter by king
Silo of Asturias
A silo (from the Greek σιρός – ''siros'', "pit for holding grain") is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store fermented feed known as silage, not to be confused with a grain bin, which is used t ...
, dated to 775: it uses substrate words as ''arrogio'' and ''lagena'', now ''arroio'' 'stream' and ''laxe'' 'stone', and presents also the elision of unstressed vowels and the lenition of plosive consonants; actually, many Galician Latin charters written during the Middle Ages show interferences of the local Galician-Portuguese contemporary language. As for the oldest document written in Galician-Portuguese in Galicia, it is probably a document from the monastery of Melón dated to 1231, since the ''Charter of the Boo Burgo of Castro Caldelas'', dated to 1228, is probably a slightly later translation of a Latin original.
Literature
![Martim Codax Cantigas de Amigo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Martim_Codax_Cantigas_de_Amigo.jpg)
Galician-Portuguese had a special cultural role in the literature of the Christian kingdoms of
Crown of Castile
The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accessi ...
(
Kingdoms of Castile,
Leon
Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to:
Places
Europe
* León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León
* Province of León, Spain
* Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again f ...
and
Galicia, part of the medieval NW
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
) comparable to the
Catalan language
Catalan (; autonym: , ), known in the Valencian Community and Carche as ''Valencian'' (autonym: ), is a Western Romance language. It is the official language of Andorra, and an official language of three autonomous communities in eastern Spa ...
of the
Crown of Aragon
The Crown of Aragon ( , ) an, Corona d'Aragón ; ca, Corona d'Aragó, , , ; es, Corona de Aragón ; la, Corona Aragonum . was a composite monarchy ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of B ...
(
Principality of Catalonia
The Principality of Catalonia ( ca, Principat de Catalunya, la, Principatus Cathaloniæ, oc, Principat de Catalonha, es, Principado de Cataluña) was a Middle Ages, medieval and early modern state (polity), state in the northeastern Iberian P ...
and
Kingdoms of Aragon,
Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, Valencia and the Municipalities of Spain, third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is ...
and
Majorca
Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest island in the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain and located in the Mediterranean.
The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Bal ...
, NE medieval Iberian Peninsula), or that of
Occitan Occitan may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain.
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France.
* Occitan language
Occitan (; o ...
in France and Italy during the same historical period. The main extant sources of Galician-Portuguese
lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.
It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...
are these:
* The four extant manuscripts of the ''
Cantigas de Santa Maria
The ''Cantigas de Santa Maria'' (, ; "Canticles of Holy Mary") are 420 poems with musical notation, written in the medieval Galician-Portuguese language during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile ''El Sabio'' (1221–1284). Traditionally, they ar ...
'' (written by, and/or under the patronage of,
Alfonso X the Wise
Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, es, el Sabio; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death in 1284. During the election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be king of Germ ...
, king of Castile, Leon and Galicia from 1252–1284)
* ''
Cancioneiro da Ajuda
The ''Cancioneiro da Ajuda'' (, ; "Ajuda Songbook") is a collection of Galician-Portuguese lyric poems probably dating from the last quarter of the 13th-century. It is the oldest of the Galician-Portuguese ''cancioneiros'' with secular music.
...
''
* ''
Cancioneiro da Vaticana
The ''Cancioneiro da Vaticana'' (, ; ''Vatican Songbook'') is a compilation of troubadour lyrics in Galician-Portuguese. It was discovered c. 1840 in the holdings of the Vatican Library and was first transcribed by D. Caetano Lopes de Moura in 18 ...
''
* ''
Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti
The ''Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional'' (, ; "The National Library Songbook"), commonly called ''Colocci-Brancuti'', is a compilation of Galician-Portuguese lyrics by both troubadours and ''jograes'' (non-noble performers and composers) . The ...
'', also known as ''Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional'' (
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
)
* Cancioneiro dun Grande de Espanha
* Pergaminho Vindel
*
Pergaminho Sharrer
The Pergaminho Sharrer (; gl, Pergamiño Sharrer {{IPA-gl, peɾɣaˈmiɲʊ ˈʃarɪɾ}; "Sharrer Parchment") is a mediaeval parchment fragment containing seven songs by King Denis of Portugal, with lyrics in the Galician-Portuguese language and ...
* Os 5 lais de Bretanha
* Tenzón entre Afonso Sánchez e Vasco Martíns de Resende
The language was used for literary purposes from the final years of the 12th century to roughly the middle of the 14th century in what are now Spain and Portugal and was, almost without exception, the only language used for the composition of lyric poetry. Over 160 poets are recorded, among them
Bernal de Bonaval
Bernal(do) de Bonaval(le), also known as Bernardo (de) Bonaval, was a 13th-century troubadour in the Kingdom of Galicia (in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in parts of modern Portugal and Spain) who wrote in the Galician-Portuguese langua ...
, Pero da Ponte, Johan Garcia de Guilhade, Johan Airas de Santiago, and Pedr' Amigo de Sevilha. The main
secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
poetic genres were the
''cantigas d'amor'' (male-voiced love lyric), the ''
cantigas d'amigo
''Cantiga de amigo'' (, ) or ''cantiga d'amigo'' (Galician-Portuguese spelling), literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peni ...
'' (female-voiced love lyric) and the
''cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer'' (including a variety of genres from personal invective to social satire, poetic parody and literary debate).
All told, nearly 1,700 poems survive in these three genres, and there is a corpus of over 400 ''cantigas de Santa Maria'' (narrative poems about miracles and hymns in honor of the
Holy Virgin
Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother o ...
). The
Castilian king
Alfonso X
Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, es, el Sabio; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death in 1284. During the election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be king of Germ ...
composed his ''cantigas de Santa Maria'' and his ''cantigas de escárnio e maldizer'' in Galician-Portuguese, even though he used
Castilian for prose.
King Dinis of Portugal, who also contributed (with 137 extant texts, more than any other author) to the secular poetic genres, made the language
official
An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...
in Portugal in 1290. Until then, Latin had been the official (written) language for royal documents; the spoken language did not have a name and was simply known as ''lingua vulgar'' ("ordinary language", that is Vulgar Latin) until it was named "Portuguese" in King Dinis' reign. "Galician-Portuguese" and ''português arcaico'' ("Old Portuguese") are modern terms for the common ancestor of modern Portuguese and modern Galician. Compared to the differences in
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
dialects, the alleged differences between 13th-century Portuguese and Galician are trivial.
Divergence
As a result of political division, Galician-Portuguese lost its unity when the
County of Portugal
The County of Portugal ( pt, Condado de Portugal, Condado Portucalense, Condado de Portucale; in documents of the period the name used was Portugalia) refers to two successive medieval counties in the region around Braga and Porto, today corresp ...
separated from the
Kingdom of Leon
Kingdom commonly refers to:
* A monarchy ruled by a king or queen
* Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy
Kingdom may also refer to:
Arts and media Television
* ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama s ...
to establish the
Kingdom of Portugal
The Kingdom of Portugal ( la, Regnum Portugalliae, pt, Reino de Portugal) was a monarchy in the western Iberian Peninsula and the predecessor of the modern Portuguese Republic. Existing to various extents between 1139 and 1910, it was also kno ...
. The
Galician and Portuguese versions of the language then diverged over time as they followed independent evolutionary paths.
As Portugal's territory was extended southward during the Reconquista, the increasingly-distinctive Portuguese language was adopted by the people in those regions, supplanting the earlier
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
and other Romance/Latin languages that were spoken in these conquered areas during the Moorish era. Meanwhile, Galician was influenced by the neighbouring Leonese language, especially during the time of kingdoms of Leon and Leon-Castile, and in the 19th and 20th centuries, it has been influenced by Castilian. Two cities at the time of separation,
Braga
Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (in ...
and
Porto
Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...
, were within the County of Portugal and have remained within Portugal. Further north, the cities of
Lugo
Lugo (, ; la, Lucus Augusti) is a city in northwestern Spain in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Galicia (Spain), Galicia. It is the capital of the Lugo (province), province of Lugo. The municipality had a population ...
,
A Coruña
A Coruña (; es, La Coruña ; historical English: Corunna or The Groyne) is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. A Coruña is the most populated city in Galicia and the second most populated municipality in the autonomous community and s ...
and the great medieval centre of
Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, in northwestern Spain. The city has its origin in the shrine of Saint James the Great, now the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, as the destination of the Way of St ...
remained within Galicia.
Galician was the main written language in Galicia until the 16th century, but later it was displaced by
Castilian Spanish
In English, Castilian Spanish can mean the variety of Peninsular Spanish spoken in northern and central Spain, the standard form of Spanish, or Spanish from Spain in general. In Spanish, the term (Castilian) can either refer to the Spanish langua ...
, which was the official language of the
Crown of Castille
The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accessi ...
. Galician slowly became mainly an oral language, preserved by the majority rural or "uneducated" population living in the villages and towns, and Castilian was taught as the "correct" language to the bilingual educated elite in the cities. During most of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, its written use was largely reduced to popular literature and theatre and private letters. From the 18th century onward grew the interest for the language by the studies of illustrious writers such as
Martin Sarmiento Martin may refer to:
Places
* Martin City (disambiguation)
* Martin County (disambiguation)
* Martin Township (disambiguation)
Antarctica
* Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land
* Port Martin, Adelie Land
* Point Martin, South Orkney Islands
Austral ...
, who studied the evolution of Galician from Latin and prepared the foundations for the first dictionary of Galician, José Cornide, and father Sobreira. In the 19th century a true literature in Galician emerged during the
Rexurdimento
The ''Rexurdimento'' ( Galician for Resurgence) was a period in the History of Galicia during the 19th century. Its central feature was the revitalization of the Galician language as a vehicle of social and cultural expression after the so-calle ...
, followed by the apparition of journals and, in the 20th century, scientific publications. Because until comparatively recently, most Galicians lived in many small towns and villages in a relatively remote and mountainous land, the language changed very slowly and was only very slightly influenced from outside the region. That situation made Galician remain the vernacular of Galicia until the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its most spoken language till the early 21st century. The
draft of the 1936 Galician Statute of Autonomy considered an official status for (Modern) Galician in the region but it never came into force, as Galicia fell to Rebel control upon the early stages of the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
.
The linguistic classification of Galician and Portuguese is still discussed today. There are those among Galician independence groups who demand their reunification as well as Portuguese and Galician
philologists
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...
who argue that both are
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
s of a common
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
rather than two separate ones.
The
Fala language
Fala ("Speech", also called ''Xalimego'') is a Western Romance language commonly classified in the Galician-Portuguese subgroup, with some traits from Leonese, spoken in Spain by about 10,500 people, of whom 5,500 live in a valley of the no ...
, spoken in a small region of the Spanish autonomous community of
Extremadura
Extremadura (; ext, Estremaúra; pt, Estremadura; Fala: ''Extremaúra'') is an autonomous community of Spain. Its capital city is Mérida, and its largest city is Badajoz. Located in the central-western part of the Iberian Peninsula, it ...
, underwent a similar development as Galician.
Today Galician is the regional language of Galicia (sharing co-officiality with Spanish), and it is spoken by the majority of its population, but with a large decline of use and efficient knowledge among the younger generations, and the phonetics and lexicon of many occasional users is heavily influenced by Spanish. Portuguese continues to grow and, today, is the sixth most spoken language in the world.
Phonology
:
1 eventually shifted to in central and southern Portugal (and thus in Brazil) and merged with in northern Portugal and Galicia.
:
2 and probably occurred in
complementary distribution
In linguistics, complementary distribution, as distinct from contrastive distribution and free variation, is the relationship between two different elements of the same kind in which one element is found in one set of environments and the other ele ...
, just like in several
Catalan dialects
The Catalan dialects feature a relative uniformity, especially when compared to other Romance languages; both in terms of vocabulary, semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology. Mutual intelligibility between its dialects is very high, estima ...
.
:
3 The written tilde (''ã'' ''ẽ'' ''ĩ'' ''õ'' ''ũ'' ''ỹ'' in the medieval sources) can be analyzed as a nasal consonant phoneme (usually , sometimes depending on position) following the marked vowel, with any nasalization of the vowel being a phonetic secondary effect.
and were
apico-alveolar
An apical consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to postalveolar, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with laminal cons ...
, and and were
lamino-alveolar
A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact
with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...
. Later, all the affricate sibilants became fricatives, with the apico-alveolar and lamino-alveolar sibilants remaining distinct for a time but eventually merging in most dialects. See
History of Portuguese
The Portuguese language developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin spoken by Roman Empire, Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. Old Portuguese, also known as Medieval Galician, began to diverge from other Romanc ...
for more information.
As far as it is known, Galician-Portuguese (from 11th to 16th centuries) had possibly a 7-oral-vowel system (like in most of Romance languages) and a 5-nasal-vowel system . The vowels were raised to in unstressed syllables, even in final syllables (like in modern Spanish); e.g. ''vento'' , ''quente'' .
However, the distribution (including ) is still dubious and under discussion; some either stating that these two vowels were allophones and in complementary distribution (like in Spanish and Modern Galician, only treated as ), ''Alemanha, manhã'' ; or stating they were not allophones and under distribution like in European Portuguese nowadays, ''Alemanha, manhã'' .
Sample text
Here is a sample of Galician-Portuguese lyric:
Oral traditions
There has been a sharing of folklore in the Galician-Portuguese region going back to prehistoric times. As the Galician-Portuguese language spread south with the
Reconquista
The ' (Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid ...
, supplanting Mozarabic, this ancient sharing of folklore intensified. In 2005, the governments of Portugal and Spain jointly proposed that Galician-Portuguese oral traditions be made part of the
Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The work of documenting and transmitting that common culture involves several universities and other organizations.
Galician-Portuguese folklore is rich in oral traditions. These include the ''cantigas ao desafio'' or ''regueifas'', duels of improvised songs, many legends, stories, poems, romances, folk songs, sayings and riddles, and ways of speech that still retain a lexical, phonetic, morphological and syntactic similarity.
Also part of the common heritage of oral traditions are the markets and festivals of patron saints and processions, religious celebrations such as the ''magosto,'' ''entroido'' or
Corpus Christi, with ancient dances and tradition – like the one where
Coca
Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine.
The plant is grown as a cash crop in the Argentine Northwest, Bolivia, Al ...
the
dragon
A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...
fights with
Saint George
Saint George (Greek: Γεώργιος (Geórgios), Latin: Georgius, Arabic: القديس جرجس; died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to tradition he was a soldier ...
; and also traditional clothing and adornments, crafts and skills, work-tools, carved vegetable lanterns, superstitions, traditional knowledge about plants and animals. All these are part of a common heritage considered in danger of extinction as the traditional way of living is replaced by modern life, and the jargon of fisherman, the names of tools in traditional crafts, and the oral traditions which form part of celebrations are slowly forgotten.
A Galician-Portuguese "baixo-limiao" lect is spoken in several villages. In Galicia, it is spoken in
Entrimo
Entrimo is a municipality in Ourense (province) in the Galicia region of north-west Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' ( ...
and
Lobios
Lobios (in Galician; es, Lovios) is a municipality in the province of Ourense in the Galicia region of north-west Spain, bordering Portugal to the south. The estimated population in 2021 was 1,672.
Drowned villages
The village of Aceredo ( ...
and in northern Portugal in
Terras de Bouro
Terras de Bouro () is a municipality in the district of Braga in Portugal. The population in 2011 was 7,253, in an area of 277.46 km². It is bordered to the north by Ponte da Barca and Spain, to the east by Montalegre, to the south by Vieira ...
(lands of the
Buri) and
Castro Laboreiro
Castro Laboreiro is a village and a former civil parish in the municipality of Melgaço in the Viana do Castelo District, Portugal. In 2013, the parish merged into the new parish Castro Laboreiro e Lamas de Mouro. It is in the mountain range of t ...
including the mountain town (county seat) of Soajo and surrounding villages.
See also
About the Galician-Portuguese languages
*
Cantiga de amigo
''Cantiga de amigo'' (, ) or ''cantiga d'amigo'' (Galician-Portuguese spelling), literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peni ...
*
Eonavian
Galician–Asturian or Eonavian (autonym: ; ast, eonaviegu, gallego-asturianu; gl, eonaviego, galego-asturiano) is a set of Romance dialects or ''falas'' whose linguistic dominion extends into the zone of Asturias between the Eo River and Na ...
*
Fala language
Fala ("Speech", also called ''Xalimego'') is a Western Romance language commonly classified in the Galician-Portuguese subgroup, with some traits from Leonese, spoken in Spain by about 10,500 people, of whom 5,500 live in a valley of the no ...
*
Galician language
*
History of Portuguese
The Portuguese language developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin spoken by Roman Empire, Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. Old Portuguese, also known as Medieval Galician, began to diverge from other Romanc ...
*
Portuguese language
Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and ...
*
Reintegrationism
Reintegrationism ( Galician and pt, reintegracionismo; , ) is the linguistic and cultural movement in Galicia which advocates for the unity of Galician and Portuguese as a single language. In other words, the movement postulates that Galician a ...
About Galician-Portuguese culture
*
Culture of Portugal
The culture of Portugal is a very rich result of a complex flow of many different civilizations during the past millennia. From prehistoric cultures, to its Pre-Roman civilizations (such as the Lusitanians, the Gallaeci, the Celtici, and the ...
*
Lusitanian mythology
Lusitanian mythology is the mythology of the Lusitanians, an Indo-European speaking people of western Iberia, in what was then known as Lusitania and Gallaecia. In present times, the territory comprises most of Portugal, Galicia, Extremadura and ...
References
Bibliography
Manuscripts containing Galician-Portuguese ('secular') lyric (cited from Cohen 2003
ee below under ''critical editions'':
* A = "Cancioneiro da Ajuda", Palácio Real da Ajuda (Lisbon).
* B = Biblioteca Nacional (Lisbon), cod. 10991.
* Ba = Bancroft Library (University of California, Berkeley) 2 MS DP3 F3 (MS UCB 143)
* N = Pierpont Morgan Library (New York), MS 979 (= PV).
* S = Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), Capa do Cart. Not. de Lisboa, N.º 7-A, Caixa 1, Maço 1, Livro 3.
* V = Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, cod. lat. 4803.
* Va = Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, cod. lat. 7182, ff. 276rº – 278rº
Manuscripts containing the ''Cantigas de Santa Maria'':
* E = Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo (El Escorial), MS B. I. 2.
* F = Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Florence), Banco Rari 20.
* T = Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo (El Escorial), MS T. I. 1.
* To = Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), cod. 10.069 ("El Toledano")
Critical editions of individual genres of Galician-Portuguese poetry (note that the ''cantigas d'amor'' are split between Michaëlis 1904 and Nunes 1932):
* Cohen, Rip. (2003). ''500 Cantigas d' Amigo'': Edição Crítica / Critical Edition (Porto: Campo das Letras).
* Lapa, Manuel Rodrigues (1970). ''Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer dos cancioneiros medievais galego-portugueses''. Edição crítica pelo prof. –. 2nd ed. Vigo: Editorial Galaxia
st. ed. Coimbra, Editorial Galaxia, 1965with "Vocabulário").
* Mettmann, Walter. (1959–1972). ''Afonso X, o Sabio. Cantigas de Santa Maria''. 4 vols
Glossário", in vol. 4 Coimbra: Por ordem da Universidade (republished in 2 vols.
Glossário" in vol. 2Vigo: Edicións Xerais de Galicia, 1981; 2nd ed.: ''Alfonso X, el Sabio, Cantigas de Santa Maria'', Edición, introducción y notas de –. 3 vols. Madrid: Clásicos Castália, 1986–1989).
* Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Carolina. (1904). ''Cancioneiro da Ajuda''. Edição critica e commentada por –. 2 vols. Halle a.S., Max Niemeyer (republished Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional – Casa de Moeda, 1990).
* Nunes, José Joaquim. (1932). ''Cantigas d'amor dos trovadores galego-portugueses''. Edição crítica acompanhada de introdução, comentário, variantes, e glossário por –. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade (Biblioteca de escritores portugueses) (republished by Lisboa: Centro do Livro Brasileiro, 1972).
On the biography and chronology of the poets and the courts they frequented, the relation of these matters to the internal structure of the manuscript tradition, and myriad relevant questions in the field, please see:
* Oliveira, António Resende de (1987). "A cultura trovadoresca no ocidente peninsular: trovadores e jograis galegos", ''Biblos'' LXIII: 1–22.
* (1988). "Do Cancioneiro da Ajuda ao Livro das Cantigas do Conde D. Pedro. Análise do acrescento à secção das cantigas de amigo de O", ''Revista de História das Ideias'' 10: 691–751.
* (1989). "A Galiza e a cultura trovadoresca peninsular", ''Revista de História das Ideias'' 11: 7–36.
* (1993). "A caminho de Galiza. Sobre as primeiras composições em galego-português", in ''O Cantar dos Trobadores''. Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, pp. 249–260 (republished in Oliveira 2001b: 65–78).
* (1994). ''Depois do Espectáculo Trovadoresco. a estrutura dos cancioneiros peninsulares e as recolhas dos séculos XIII e XIV''. Lisboa: Edições Colibri (Colecção: Autores Portugueses).
* (1995). ''Trobadores e Xograres. Contexto histórico''. (tr. Valentín Arias) Vigo: Edicións Xerais de Galicia (Universitaria / Historia crítica da literatura medieval).
* (1997a). "Arqueologia do mecenato trovadoresco em Portugal", in ''Actas do 2º Congresso Histórico de Guimarães'', 319–327 (republished in Oliveira 2001b: 51–62).
* (1997b). "História de uma despossessão. A nobreza e os primeiros textos em galego-português", in ''Revista de História das Ideias'' 19: 105–136.
* (1998a). "Le surgissement de la culture troubadouresque dans l'occident de la Péninsule Ibérique (I). Compositeurs et cours", in (Anton Touber, ed.) ''Le Rayonnement des Troubadours'', Amsterdam, pp. 85–95 (Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft) (Port. version in Oliveira 2001b: 141–170).
* (1998b). "Galicia trobadoresca", in ''Anuario de Estudios Literarios Galegos'' 1998: 207–229 (Port. Version in Oliveira 2001b: 97–110).
* (2001a). ''Aventures i Desventures del Joglar Gallegoportouguès'' (tr. Jordi Cerdà). Barcelona: Columna (La Flor Inversa, 6).
* (2001b). ''O Trovador galego-português e o seu mundo''. Lisboa: Notícias Editorial (Colecção Poliedro da História).
For Galician-Portuguese prose, the reader might begin with:
* Cintra, Luís F. Lindley. (1951–1990). ''Crónica Geral de Espanha de 1344''. Edição crítica do texto português pelo –. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa de Moeda (vol. I 1951
952; reprint 1983 vol II 1954
epublished 1984 vol. III 1961
epublished 1984 vol. IV 1990) (Academia Portuguesa da História. Fontes Narrativas da História Portuguesa).
* Lorenzo, Ramón. (1977). ''La traduccion gallego de la Cronica General y de la Cronica de Castilla''. Edición crítica anotada, con introduccion, índice onomástico e glosario. 2 vols. Orense: Instituto de Estudios Orensanos 'Padre Feijoo'.
There is no up-to-date historical grammar of medieval Galician-Portuguese. But see:
* Huber, Joseph. (1933). ''Altportugiesisches Elementarbuch''. Heidelberg: Carl Winter (Sammlung romanischer Elementar- und Händbucher, I, 8) (Port tr.
y Maria Manuela Gouveia Delille''Gramática do Português Antigo''. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1986).
A recent work centered on Galician containing information on medieval Galician-Portuguese is:
* Ferreiro, Manuel. (2001). ''Gramática Histórica Galega'', 2 vols.
nd ed. Santiago de Compostela: Laiovento.
* An old reference work centered on Portuguese is:
* Williams, Edwin B. (1962). ''From Latin to Portuguese''. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1st ed. Philadelphia, 1938).
Latin Lexica:
* ''Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus''. Lexique Latin Médiévale-Francais/Anglais. A Medieval Latin-French/English Dictionary. composuit J. F. Niermeyer, perficiendum curavit C. van de Kieft. Abbreviationes et index fontium composuit C. van de Kieft, adiuvante G. S. M. M. Lake-Schoonebeek. Leiden – New York – Köln: E. J. Brill 1993 (1st ed. 1976).
* ''Oxford Latin Dictionary''. ed. P. G. W. Glare. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1983.
Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin:
* Weiss, Michael. (2009). ''Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin''. Ann Arbor, MI: Beechstave Press.
On the early documents cited from the late 12th century, please see Ivo Castro, ''Introdução à História do Português. Geografia da Língua. Português Antigo''. (Lisbon: Colibri, 2004), pp. 121–125 (with references).
External links
Latin – Portuguese document, a.D. 1008Ponte nas ondasPergaminhos: colecção da Casa de SarmentoGalician-Portuguese Intangible HeritageGalician-Portuguese Intangible Heritage -Videos
{{Romance languages
Languages attested from the 9th century
Galician language
Medieval languages