Portugal, a former southern
county split from the
Kingdom of Galicia and fief of the
Kingdom of León, was created by
Afonso I of Portugal in 1126 and expanded towards the
Islamic south, like its neighbouring kingdoms. That part of Galicia, named Portugal, became independent while the northern part of the country remained under the
Kingdom of León during the 12th century and early 13th century. Northern Galicia would later be ruled by the
Kingdom of Castile, which would become the core and ethnic base for the future Spain; but the culture was the same on both sides of the political border. Galician-Portuguese culture attained great
prestige during the
Low Middle Ages. In the late 15th century, Castilian domination became more severe,
banishing their language in all official uses, including the
church.
Galician-Portuguese survived
diglossically for the following centuries among the peasant population, but it experienced a strong Spanish
influence and had a different evolution. Meanwhile, the same language (by the
reintegrationist view) remained fully
official in Portugal and was carried across the world by
Portuguese explorers, soldiers and
colonists. During the 19th century a
revival movement arose. This movement defended the Galician language, and created a provisional norm, with a Castilian
orthography and many
loanwords. When autonomy was granted, a norm and orthography (based in
rexurdimento writers) (
Galician literature) for a Galician language was created. This norm is taught and used in schools and
universities of Galicia. But most writers (
Castelao,
Risco, Otero Pedrayo) did not support the traditional Galician forms; some of them based on Spanish orthography even if they recognized the essential linguistic unity, saying that the priority was achieving
political autonomy and being
read by the population. Other writers wrote with a Portuguese-like orthography (e.g. Guerra da Cal and Carvalho Calero). Reintegrationists claim that the official norm (released in 1982) was imposed by the Spanish government, with the covert intent of severing Galician from Portuguese. But this idea is rejected by the
Real Academia Galega, which supports the official norm.
Reintegrationist and Lusist groups are protesting against this so-called language secessionism, which they call Castrapism (from
castrapo, something like "
patois") or
Isolationism. Unlike in the case of
Valencian
Blaverism, isolationism has no impact in the scientific community of linguists, and it is supported by a small number of them but still has clear political support. Galician-Portuguese linguistic unity until the 16th century seems to be consensus, as does both Galician and European Portuguese being closer to each other, and also closer in the 19th century than in the 20th century and now. In this period, while Galician for the most part lost vowel reduction,
velarization of and
nasal vowels, and some speech
registers of it adhered to
yeísmo, all making it phonologically closer to Spanish. For example,
European Portuguese had splits that created two new
vowel phonemes, one of them usually an
allophone only in the case of
vowel reduction and the other phonetically absent in any other variant. Some dialects had a merger of three of its oral
diphthongs and another three of its nasal vowels, and together with
Brazilian Portuguese absorbed more than 5000 loanwords from French as well as 1500 from English. It seems that the debate for a greater integration among
Portuguese-speaking countries had the result of a single writing standard (
1990 Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement), often shunned by some segments of
Portuguese media and population but long waited and cheered by Brazilians despite occasional criticism to some aspects and that changed the spelling of between 0.5% and 1% of the words in both former varieties, with minor respect to major dialect phonological differences. The other debate, whether Galician should use the same standard of Portuguese (
Lusism), a standard with minor differences (
Reintegrationism), a re-approximation of both through another
Lusophone spelling agreement that would give particular regional differences such as that of Galician as well as major diverging dialects of Portuguese (especially in South America) more room (Reintegrationism), or the present standard based on the Spanish orthography, still did not cast official attention of government authorities in any of the involved countries, even if Lusophone support is expected to be strong in any of the first three cases. A point often held by minorities among both Reintegrationists/Lusists and Lusophonists is that Portuguese should have a more conservative and uniform international speech standard that at the same time respects minor phonological differences between its
variants (such as a free choice between the various allophones of the
rhotic consonant , for or for the
voiceless allophone of ) that would further strengthen Lusophone integration, but this is not especially welcomed by any party in Europe. ==In Tagalog==