Galician

Portuguese and Galician were one language, and the poetry of medieval Iberia was written in it even by Castilian kings.

What sets it apart

• Galician-Portuguese was the prestige language of lyric poetry across Iberia in the thirteenth century. Castilian kings wrote their songs in it.
• The split came when one half went to sea and the other stayed inland. Portuguese sailed; Galician did not.
• A Galician and a northern Portuguese speaker can hold a conversation each in their own language without much strain.
• It has a verb form Spanish lacks: an infinitive that conjugates for person, shared with Portuguese.
• It is co-official in Galicia and used by around two million people, most of them bilingual in Spanish.

What it opens

The language Portuguese grew out of, still sung on the Atlantic corner of Spain. Speak it and both Spanish and Portuguese move within arm's reach. Santiago's pilgrims hear it sung; A Coruña's seafood tastes better ordered in it. Poetry has been written in Galician since the 1200s.

Words with no translation

All the untranslatable words →

Next to its neighbours

Where Galician parts company with the languages closest to it, and what each one would cost you from here.

Galician vs Spanish → Galician vs French → Galician vs Portuguese →

Galician in the archive, next to the other sixty-six →