Will Spanish alone suffice in Galicia?

June 8, 2007 11:35 AM

SpainFilter: How prevalent is the Galician language in Galicia?

I consider myself proficient in Spanish, with eight years of Spanish classes under my belt, but I have no knowledge of Galician.

My family and I will be visiting Galicia later this month for about two weeks. Specifically, we'll be in A Coruña, Pontevedra, Santiago de Compostela, and Isla de la Toja. I will be the interpreter for my family, and my sister will help out too. (But she's only in her third year of Spanish.)

How much, if any, Galician should I learn by then? Will I be able to get by with just Spanish? Would it be helpful to learn some Galician for reading signs, menus, etc.? What are some good resources for learning a bit of Galician before I go?

posted by liesbyomission to writing & language (5 comments total)

You will charm people by speaking even a few words of gallego, but it's not going to be necessary, no. It's not exactly impenetrable if you know Spanish -- so even if there were some writing you wanted to understand that wasn't also in Spanish, it wouldn't be too tough.
posted by veggieboy at 11:52 AM on June 8, 2007

You may already know this, but Galician doesn't have much to do with Spanish—it's basically a dialect of Portuguese. From here:

Galician is more or less mutually intelligible with Portuguese but uses Spanish spelling conventions. In fact, whether Galician and Portuguese are separate languages or dialects of the same language, is a question that has been hotly debated for decades, and is loaded with political and cultural implications.

(N.b.: In Galician, it's galego, not gallego.) Like veggieboy said, it will doubtless be appreciated if you learn a few phrases, at least Bo día for 'hello, good day' and Adeus for 'goodbye.'
posted by languagehat at 12:35 PM on June 8, 2007

You can always try to see how much you understand by listening to radio galicia.

There's also a downloadable galego course provided by the region's authorities or the e-galego course for spanish speakers.
posted by claudiadias at 1:28 PM on June 8, 2007

You will be just fine with castillian. A psychotic galician separatist (if there even is such a thing, I've never met one) might be offended if you refer to castillian as "spanish" (there are many languages that are "spanish" and castillian is just one of them) but other than that, you'll be fine. The odds of meeting someone who speaks only galicianare effectively zero.
posted by buxtonbluecat at 1:33 PM on June 8, 2007

Thanks, everyone! These are all really great answers and just what I was looking for.
posted by liesbyomission at 1:41 PM on June 8, 2007