Origins and history Galician–Portuguese developed in the region of the former Roman province of
Gallaecia, from the
Vulgar Latin (common Latin) that had been introduced by Roman soldiers, colonists and magistrates during the time of the
Roman Empire. 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 and
Iberian origin. In general, the more cultivated variety of Latin spoken by the Hispano-Roman elites in Roman
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, 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 and by the year 800 Galician–Portuguese had already become the
vernacular of northwestern Iberia. The first known
phonetic changes in Vulgar Latin, which began the evolution to Galician–Portuguese, took place during the rule of the Germanic groups, the
Suebi (411–585) and
Visigoths (585–711). and the
nasal vowels 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, 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/
Medieval Latin. 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 (), and the ''
(27 June 1214) are most certainly Galician–Portuguese. 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 Galician–Portuguese had a special cultural role in the literature of the Christian kingdoms of
Crown of Castile (
Kingdoms of Castile,
Leon and
Galicia, part of the medieval NW
Iberian Peninsula) comparable to the
Catalan language of the
Crown of Aragon (
Principality of Catalonia and
Kingdoms of Aragon,
Valencia and
Majorca, NE medieval Iberian Peninsula), or that of
Occitan in France and Italy during the same historical period. The main extant sources of Galician–Portuguese
lyric poetry are these: • The four extant manuscripts of the
Cantigas de Santa Maria (written under the patronage of,
Alfonso X the Wise, king of Castile, Leon and Galicia from 1252–1284) •
Cancioneiro da Ajuda •
Cancioneiro da Vaticana •
Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti, also known as
Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional (
Lisbon) • Cancioneiro dun Grande de Espanha • Pergaminho Vindel •
Pergaminho Sharrer • 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, Pero da Ponte, Johan Garcia de Guilhade, Johan Airas de Santiago, and Pedr' Amigo de Sevilha. The main
secular poetic genres were the
''cantigas d'amor (male-voiced love lyric), the
cantigas d'amigo (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). The
Castilian king
Alfonso X 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 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 until it was named "Portuguese" in King Dinis' reign. "Galician–Portuguese" and ("Old Portuguese") are modern terms for the common ancestor of modern Portuguese and modern Galician. Compared to the differences in
Ancient Greek 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 separated from the
Kingdom of Leon to establish the
Kingdom of Portugal. 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 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 and
Porto, were within the County of Portugal and have remained within Portugal. Further north, the cities of
Lugo,
A Coruña and the great medieval centre of
Santiago de Compostela remained within Galicia. Galician was the main written language in Galicia until the 16th century, but later it was displaced by
Castilian Spanish, which was the official language of the
Crown of Castille. 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, 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, followed by the appearance 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 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 who argue that both are
dialects of a common
language rather than two separate ones. The
Fala language, spoken in a small region of the Spanish autonomous community of
Extremadura, underwent a similar development to 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==