Galician is an Indo-European language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch. It is spoken mainly in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Spanish.
Like the other Romance languages, Galician comes from Latin and for this reason it shares a common ancestor with Portuguese called Galician-Portuguese by modern scholars. It was only in the 13th century when it became a written and cultivated language with two main varieties, Galician and Portuguese, which started to diverse considerably during the 14th century.
Portuguese became the official language of the independent Kingdom of Portugal while Galician was the language of the lawyers and churchmen of the Kingdom of Galicia, then integrated in the crown of Castile and therefore open to influence from Spanish language.
During the 16th century Galician stopped being used in legal documentation becoming only an oral language. It was only until the 18th century that the first Galician dictionaries were elaborated and recovered a proper literature in the 19th century. Only since the last quarter of the 20th century Galician is taught in schools and used in lawmaking.
There is a mutual intelligibility estimated at 85% between Galician and northern Portuguese. The current linguistic status of Galician with respect to Portuguese is controversial. There are linguists who deal with modern Galician and Portuguese as norms or varieties of the same language, considering that they are co-dialects of a common language in spite of differences in phonology and vocabulary, others argue that they have become separate languages due to these differences.
I will give you some example. Galician lacks of some sounds that exist in Portuguese, such as the /v/ video , /z/ zebra and /sh/ shoe. There is no nasalization in Galician like in Portuguese.
Regarding the orthography, Galician shares some similar rule with Spanish like for the plural nouns. The name ending in -z change the -z in c as in luz, luces whereas in Portuguese is luzes with a z. Or the -l that stays in the plural noun like vil, viles but in Portuguese is vil, vis. The accentuation is also similar to Spanish. It occurs in all vowels.
This language is officially regulated by the Royal Galician Academy. Today, the most common language for everyday use in the largest cities of Galicia is Spanish, as a result of a long process of language shift. However, Galician is still the main language in rural areas.
I believe that because of these similarities between Spanish and Portuguese, even if there is intelligibility, I would consider it as a proper language. And what about you? Let me know your opinion!
