Evolution of Written Galician: From 19th Century to Present
Evolution of Written Galician: From the 19th Century to the Present
The Renaissance: Popularizing Galician
This period encompasses both early writers and those belonging to the Rexurdimento. It’s characterized by the presence of Castilianisms, dialectalisms, and vulgarisms, reflecting popular oral language. Writers often resorted to Castilian to address the lexical limitations of a language primarily confined to colloquial and family settings for centuries. They aimed for an interdialectal approach, incorporating vocabulary and features from various Galician varieties. Initially, they wrote without a standardized model. Eduardo Pondal marked a shift by drawing inspiration from Portuguese literature and employing cultisms derived from Latin and Greek. He adopted Spanish as a spelling model, despite challenges posed by unique Galician phonemes like half-open and half-closed vowels, which were not represented in writing. Nineteenth-century writing utilized apostrophes and scripts to denote contractions and vowel combinations common in spoken language.
From the Beginning of the 20th Century to 1936: Galician Differentialist
During the period of the Iramandades da Fala, the Seminario de Estudos Galegos, and the Xeración Nós, writers sought to purify Galician from Castilian influence. This led to hipergaleguismo, or an overly purist approach. Some Castilianisms persisted, adapted to Galician phonetics. The use of Galician expanded across genres and themes, with writers drawing inspiration from Old Galician and Portuguese. The dissemination of medieval Galician texts contributed to the increased use of archaisms. The drive to distance Galician from Spanish resulted in replacing terms with Galician equivalents or adopting Portuguese counterparts. Borrowings from other languages, such as Italian, French, and English, as well as Latin and Greek cultisms, also emerged. The Real Academia Galega, founded in 1906, aimed to create a dictionary and grammar, but the first monolingual dictionary wasn’t completed until 1913. This dictionary, however, remained unfinished, stopping at the entry for “cativo” in 1928. The Irmandades da Fala and the Seminario de Estudos Galegos laid the groundwork for a standardized written Galician, publishing their respective standards in 1933.
Nós magazine adopted the Seminario‘s standards, which held significant influence due to the magazine’s prominence. The main standards included:
- Rejection of the Greek i (Y).
- Use of the graphemes ll and ñ.
- Choice of x.
- Use of h according to etymology.
- Maintenance of consonant clusters in learned words.
- Abandonment of the apostrophe and reduced use of the hyphen.
- Plural in -ns for polysyllabic words ending in stressed -n or -l in the singular.
Change in Written Galician Since the 19th Century
Cantares Gallegos was the first book written in Galician since the Middle Ages. Galician writing has evolved through different models, allowing us to identify the specific period of a text based on its linguistic features. According to Henrique Fernández and Benigno Monteagudo, the evolution of written Galician can be divided into the following stages: popularizing Galician, differentialist Galician, proto-standard Galician, and standard Galician.
Since the Spanish Civil War to the Present Day: Galician Protestándar
This period spans from the Civil War until the 1970s. The initial phase, with Galician writing primarily in exile, represents a continuation of the previous stage, exhibiting similar linguistic features. After the restrictions imposed by the war and dictatorship, a recovery began in 1950 with the establishment of Editorial Galaxia. The texts published by this publishing house shaped Galician writing for over two decades, demonstrating an intention to avoid excessive dialectalisms and archaisms. In 1965, the first Galician literature classes were taught at the University of Santiago de Compostela. In 1970, the Real Academia Galega published its first grammar rules, followed a year later by spelling and morphological rules. In 1971, the Instituto da Lingua Galega was founded at the University of Santiago de Compostela, playing a crucial role in the study of Galician. Notable dictionaries include J.L. Franco Grande’s dictionary in 1968 and Eladio Rodríguez González’s dictionary in 1959, both Galician-Spanish dictionaries.
Standard Galician
This stage coincides with Galician achieving co-official status with the enactment of the Statute of Autonomy (1981), marking a turning point in the language’s history. In 1982, the spelling and morphological rules prepared by the Real Academia Galega and the Instituto da Lingua Galega were declared official. In 1986, members of the Instituto da Lingua Galega published a Galician grammar, expanded in 2002. In 1990, the Real Academia Galega and the Instituto da Lingua Galega published the Diccionario da Lingua Galega, expanded in 1997. Based on the 1982 standards, modifications were introduced in 1995 and 2003 to establish the current standard, known as normative harmonization. Through negotiations and concessions, an official standard accepted by the majority of Galician society has been achieved.