Galician

Definition: Galician

Galician

Noun

1. The dialect of Portuguese (sometimes regarded as a dialect of Spanish) spoken in Galicia northwestern Spain.

Date "Galician" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1615. (references)

Etymology: Galician \Ga*li"cian\, adjective. [Compare to Spanish expression Galiciano, Gallego, from the Latin expression Gallaecus, Gallaicus, from Gallaeci people in Western Spain.]. (Websters 1913)

Crosswords: Galician

English words defined with "Galician": Gallego. (references)

Galician (Galego) is a language variety of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia (in the Galician language, Galicia or Galiza), an autonomous community in northwestern Spain. Historically, the Portuguese language originated in Galicia (the Roman Gallaecia) and branched out in the 14th century after the Reconquista brought it southwards. Modern Galician is seen by many (mainly in Portugal) as a dialect of Portuguese. The Encylopedia Britannica says it is a Portuguese dialect spoken in northwestern Spain, often incorrectly considered a dialect of Spanish. For the Instituto da Lingua Galega, Galego is a Romance Language which belongs to the group of Ibero-Romantic Languages. However, in some aspects the Portuguese dialects are more conservative than the Galician ones, which for the most part lost the voiced fricatives /z/, /v/, etc.

It is understood by most of the people in Galicia and among the many Galician immigrants in the rest of Spain (Madrid, Biscay), Iberoamerica (Buenos Aires) and Europe. For some authors, the situation of language domination in Galicia could be called "diglossia", with Galician in the lower part of the continuum and Spanish language on the top, while for others the conditions for diglossia established by Ferguson are not met.

In the Middle Ages, Galego-português (Galician-Portuguese) was a language of culture, poetry and religion throughout not only Galiza and Portugal but also Castile (where Castilian was used mainly for prose). After the separation of Portuguese and Galician, Galician was considered provincial and was not widely used for literary or academic purposes until the mid 1800s, and during the Franco regime in Spain it was heavily repressed. With the advent of democracy, Galician has been brought into the institutions, and it is now co-official with Spanish. A heavily Castilianized version of Galician is taught in schools. However, for the most part there has been no serious attempt on the part of the Spanish and Galician institutions to reverse language assimilation and loss.

Its orthography, introduced in 1982 (and made law in 1983) by the Real Academia Galega (based on a report by the "Instituto da Lingua Galega") is strongly based on Castilian. It remains a source of contention, however, as many citizens would rather have the institutions recognize Galician as a Portuguese variety and therefore opt for the use of the Portuguese writing system, perhaps with some adaptations.

The Spanish state recognized Galician as one of Spain's four "official languages" (lenguas españolas) (the others being Castilian - also called Spanish - Catalan and Basque). Though this is viewed by most as a positive step toward language maintenance, officialness does not guarantee language transmission among the youngest generations. Language and cultural activism has to struggle not only against growing assimilation to Spanish but also against cultural globalization.

Galician-language literature

Alfonso X of Castile
Rosalia de Castro

Sources on Galician in the Internet

Wikipedia in Galician

Wikipedia in Galician (it uses old software)

See also Galician nationalism, Galician literature, Fala dos arxinas

Domain	Title
Books	Carmen, the Autobiography of a Spanish Galician Woman (reference) Mishka, Pishka, & Fishka, and other Galician tales (reference) Spanish, Catalan, and Galician Literary Authors of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth (reference) The Science of Judaism and Galician Haskalah (History of Jewish Literature, v. 10) (reference) To Battle: The Formation and History of the 14th Galician Waffen-Ss Division (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Subject	Topic	Quote
Economic History	Spain	Languages: Spanish (official), Catalan-Valenciana 17%, Galician 7%, Basque 2%. Education: Years compulsory--to age 16. Literacy--97%. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

"Galician" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Galician" is used about 10 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	100%	10	111,207

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Language		Translations for "Galician"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Afrikaan		Galicies. (various references)

Asturian		Gallegu. (various references)

Cebuano		Galasyano. (various references)

Chinese		� 利西亚人. (various references)

Danish		galizisk krebs (galician crayfish), galizisk flodkrebs (Galician crayfish). (various references)

Dutch		Gallicisch. (various references)

Esperanto		galica. (various references)

Faeroese		galisiskt. (various references)

Finnish		kapeasaksirapu (Galician crayfish). (various references)

French		galicien. (various references)

Frisian		Galisysk. (various references)

Galician		galego, galega. (various references)

German		galizisch, galizier (Galician crayfish), galicisch, galicier. (various references)

Greek		ποταμογαρίδα του �"ούναβη (Galician crayfish). (various references)

Italian		galiziano. (various references)

Pig Latin		aliciangay.(various references)

Portuguese		lagostim do Danúbio (Galician crayfish). (various references)

Provencal		galéc. (various references)

Samoan		Kalisia. (various references)

Spanish		gallego (chub, cowardly, freeloader, graining, skelly). (various references)

Swedish		sumpkräfta (Galician crayfish), donauflodkräfta (Galician crayfish), östlig flodkräfta (Galician crayfish). (various references)

Turkish		galicia'ya ait, galicia'lı kimse. (various references)

Ukranian		галісі�"ць, галичанин. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Language	Period	Translations
Latin	500 BCE-Modern	Astacus leptodactylus, Potamobius leptodactylus. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Misspellings
	"Galician" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Alishan, Gaelicin, Galavima, Galesia, Galica, Galicao, galiciani, galicians, Galizien, Gallacio, gallican, Gallichan, Gallocia, Galucci, Glaucia. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

Words rhyming with "Galician" (pronounced 'Ga*li"cian'): Academician, Acoustician, Apician, Arithmetician, Ascian, Atomician, Cilician, Cistercian, Confucian, Dacian, Dialectician, Dogmatician, Electrician, Geometrician, Gynaecian, Gynecian, Hebrician, Heteroscian, Hydrostatician, logician, magician, Magnetician, Marcian, mathematician, Mechanician, Metaphysician, Metrician, Mnemonician, Monoecian, Musician, Neoplatonician, Obstetrician, Optician, Ordovician, Peripatecian, Periscian, Phaeacian, Phenician, Phoenician, Phonetician, Physician, Practician, Pyrotechnician, Simplician, statistician, Sulpician, Symmetrician, tactician, technician, Thracian, Traducian. (additional references)

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-a-c-g-i-i-l-n"
	-2 letters: agnail, ailing, lacing, nilgai.
	-3 letters: aalii, acing, acini, again, alang, algin, align, canal, cilia, clang, cling, icing, iliac, lagan, lanai, liana, liang, ligan, linac, linga.
	-4 letters: agin, alan, alga, anal, anga, anil, cain, clag, clan, gain, gala, glia, ilia, inia, laic, lain, lang, ling, nail.
	-5 letters: aal, aga, ail, ain, ala, ana, ani, can, cig, gal, gan, gin, lac, lag, lin, nag, nil.
	Words containing the letters "a-a-c-g-i-i-l-n"
	+2 letters: acclaiming, calamining, canalising, canalizing, glaciating, glaciation, magnifical.
	+3 letters: acclimating, acidulating, actualizing, antilogical, calibrating, callipygian, cavaliering, enigmatical, glaciations, lancinating, vacillating.
	+4 letters: articulating, blackmailing, calumniating, cantillating, capitalising, capitalizing, capitulating, caramelising, caramelizing, catabolizing, deglaciation, diagnostical, facilitating, gigantically, interglacial, magnifically, malignancies, misbalancing, radicalising, radicalizing, recanalizing, scandalising, scandalizing.
	+5 letters: abiogenically, acclimatising, acclimatizing, agonistically, anglicization, antigenically, cannibalising, cannibalizing, cartilaginous, changeability, deglaciations, desacralizing, enigmatically, fascinatingly, gallicization, hallucinating, inorganically, intercalating, intergalactic, interglacials, intragalactic, matriculating, mineralogical, misallocating, miscataloging, parfocalizing, recalibrating, syllabicating, vacillatingly.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.