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Galician ( or ; (:ɡaˈleɣo)) is an Indo-European language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch. It is spoken by some 2.4 million people, mainly in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is official along with Spanish. The language is also spoken in some border zones of the neighbouring Spanish regions of Asturias and Castile and León, as well as by Galician migrant communities in the rest of Spain, in Latin America, the United States, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe. Modern Galician is part of the West Iberian languages group, a family of Romance languages that includes the Portuguese language, which developed locally from Vulgar Latin and evolved into what modern scholars have called Medieval Galician or Galician-Portuguese. Dialectal divergences are observable between the northern and southern forms of Galician-Portuguese in 13th-century texts but the two dialects were similar enough to maintain a high level of cultural unity until the middle of the 14th century, producing the medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric. The divergence has continued to this day, producing the modern languages of Galician and Portuguese. The lexicon of Galician is predominantly of Latin extraction, although it also contains a moderate number of words of Germanic and Celtic origin, among other substrates and adstrates, having also received, mainly via Spanish, a number of nouns from the Arabic of Al Andalus. The language is officially regulated in Galicia by the Royal Galician Academy. However, independent organisations such as the Galician Association of Language and the Galician Academy of the Portuguese Language include Galician as part of the Portuguese language, as the Galician-Portuguese variant. == Classification and relation with Portuguese == Modern Galician and its sibling, Portuguese, originated from a common medieval ancestor designated variously by modern linguists as Galician-Portuguese or Mediaeval Galician or Old Galician or Old Portuguese. This common ancestral stage developed in the territories of the old Kingdom of Galicia, which covered the territories of modern day Galicia and northern Portugal. In the century it became a written and cultivated language. In the past Galician and Portuguese formed a dialect continuum. For many scholars this continuum still exists today at the level of rural dialects.〔Lindley Cintra, Luís F. Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971. 〕〔' Today, from a point of view which is exclusively linguistic, both banks of the Minho river speak the same language, since the Minhoto and Trás-os-Montes dialects are a continuation of the Galician varieties, sharing common traits that differentiate them from the dialect of Central and Southern Portugal; but at the level of the common language, and in a sociolinguistic perspective, in the west of the peninsula there are two modern languages, with differences in pronunciation, morphosyntax and vocabulary', ''"Na actualidade, desde o ponto de vista estrictamente lingüístico, ás dúas marxes do Miño fálase o mesmo idioma, pois os dialectos miñotos e trasmontanos son unha continuación dos falares galegos, cos que comparten trazos comúns que os diferencian dos do centro e sur de Portugal; pero no plano da lingua común, e desde unha perspectiva sociolingüística, hai no occidente peninsular dúas línguas modernas, con diferencias fonéticas, morfosintácticas e léxicas"''. 〕 Others point out that modern Galician and Portuguese have diverged to such an extent during the past seven centuries that they now constitute two closely related but separate languages. Historically, the Galician-Portuguese language originated from Vulgar Latin as a Western Romance language in the lands now in Galicia, Asturias and northern half of Portugal, which belonged to the mediaeval Kingdom of Galicia, itself comprising approximately the former Roman territory of ''Gallaecia'' as modified during the two centuries of the Suevic Kingdom of Galicia. The standards of the language began to diverge in the century, as Portuguese became the official language of the independent kingdom of Portugal and its chancellery, whilst Galician was the language of the scriptoria of the lawyers, noblemen and churchmen of the Kingdom of Galicia, then integrated in the crown of Castile and open to influence from Castilian language, culture, and politics. During the 16th century the Galician language stopped being used in legal documentation, becoming de facto an oral language, with just some use in lyric, theatre and private letters. The linguistic status of Galician with respect to Portuguese is controversial, and the issue sometimes carries political overtones. There are linguists who deal with modern Galician and modern Portuguese as norms or varieties of the same language. Some authors, such as Lindley Cintra, consider that they are still co-dialects of a common language, in spite of superficial differences in phonology and vocabulary, while others, such as Pilar Vázquez Cuesta, argue that they have become separate languages due to major differences in phonetics and vocabulary usage, and, to a lesser extent, morphology and syntax.〔〔Vázquez Cuesta, Pilar («Non son reintegracionista» ), interview given to ''La Voz de Galicia'' on 22 February 2002 (in Galician).〕 Fernández Rei in 1990 stated that the Galician language is, with respect to Portuguese, an ''ausbau'' language, a language through elaboration, and not an ''abstand'' language, a language through detachment. With respect to the external and internal perception of this relation, for instance in past editions of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', Galician was defined as a Portuguese dialect spoken in northwestern Spain. However, most Galician speakers do not regard Galician as a variety of Portuguese, but as a different language, as modern Galician evolved without interruption and in situ from Mediaeval Galician. Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 85% by Robert A. Hall, Jr., 1989) is very high between Galicians and Portuguese.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Galician language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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