Minority Languages and Linguistic Normalization in Galicia
Minority Languages and the Case of Galician
Minority languages are those that have a small number of speakers in a given territory. A minority language refers to linguistic varieties of small extent, but very much present in their own territory.
The Normalization of Galician
As we know, the social confrontation between a hegemonic language and one or more minority languages has two possible outcomes: either the dominant language eliminates the minority language, or legal, political, social, and linguistic measures are established for the recovery of the marginalized language, allowing the subsequent coexistence of the two languages. The process of language substitution can last centuries. The opposite process, normalization, moves toward overcoming the conflict between languages, aiming to redirect it through standardization and recovery.
Normalization seeks to restore the use of a language that, at some point in its history, has lost its status as the community’s common language. This is achieved through dynamic socio-cultural and politico-administrative actions, and a functional redistribution that allows the dominated language to recover its full social strength. Thus, the language regains prestige and actual use at all levels and functions within its linguistic community, potentially even surpassing the levels it had before being displaced by the dominant language. However, certain usage patterns may persist, preventing the complete conclusion of the normalization process. Another concerning trend, although less pronounced in recent years, is the continued use of Galician as the primary language of Galicia.
The Construction of the Standard Galician Variety
The written form of languages derived from Latin oscillated between two basic trends: one more closely tied to the language of the people, and another more educated and elitist. These two guidelines are always present in the spelling of Portuguese in the 19th century.
In the first third of the 20th century, Galician began to regain important areas of use, although it still lacked a unified cultivated variety. The Seminario de Estudos Galegos (Galician Studies Seminar) proposed a solution during this period. In 1936, editorial activity shifted into exile, but the geographical separation did not lead to serious differences in writing; Galician emigrants followed the same spelling standards.
In the 1950s and 60s, the proposal for the standard was called the “Galaxia standard,” named after the rules that the Vigo-based publisher applied to the books it published. After several detailed recalibrations, official Galician advanced towards full normalization under a standard, modern, and unified service.
Similar to spelling and morphology, the lexicon also underwent several adjustments on its way to becoming standard. There was a conscious intervention in the Galician literary lexicon, particularly noticeable in the prose of the urban-based *Nós* group. Among speakers with Spanish as their native language, the influence of Spanish verb forms is present, but it is in the vocabulary where the influence of Spanish is older and more noticeable. There are Castilian words with centuries of existence in Galician.
A Galician dialect variety of Spanish-speaking individuals operates with a sound system and grammar heavily influenced by Spanish, and it ignores compound verb forms. Spanish speakers who speak this variety are generally aware of the incorrect expressions.