lang_description: "Galician (/ɡəˈlɪʃən/ or /ɡəˈlɪsi.ən/; galego [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.",
classification: null,
dialect_varieties: "Eastern Galician: Asturian area (Eonavian), Ancares area, Zamora area and Central-Eastern area.
Central Galician: Mindoniense area, Lucu-auriense area, Central Transitional area, and Eastern Transitional area.
Western Galician: Bergantiños area, Fisterra area, Pontevedra area and Lower Limia area.",
public_comment: null,
private_comment: null,
source_id: null,
speakers: [
],
language: {
code_id:10510,
featured: 0,
cached_documentation_score:-1,
google_group_url: null,
simplified_level: null,
coordinates: "",
updated_at: "2015-08-21 04:45:59",
speaker_attitude: "Galicia is a classic example of diglossia, as the majority language Galician is regarded by most native speakers as inferior to the State language, Spanish, or Portuguese. Since the sixteenth century the upper layers of the Galician society, i.e. the town gentry, the civil servants and the Church, used Spanish as their main or only language whereas the vast majority of the population, made up of peasants and fishermen, continued to speak Galician. This entrenched a perception of Galician as a language of inferior people that prevented social promotion. Thus, when urbanization spread in earnest in the mid twentieth century the new middle classes and urban blue collar cohorts started to adopt Spanish in a diglossic context, Galician at home and Spanish at work. This is a situation that persists to a slightly lesser degree to this day even as both languages are official and the Galician language now enjoys a relatively strong industrial culture and media.
To make things more complicated a similar relationship exists between spoken Galician or Leonese and the literary standard that was developed when Galician became official language in 1983, as native speakers resent the fact the standard lacks naturality, does not include widely assumed phonetic or lexical features of the spoken language such as gheada (pronouncing "g" as the English "h" as in /halicia/ instead of Galicia) as well as reintroducing Galician words that have long been replaced in the spoken language by their Spanish and in some cases English equivalents. Therefore it is not uncommon to find native Galician speakers that for instance speak colloquial Galician at home, Spanish at work and standard Galician in public events or when liaising with the Public Administration.",
government_support: "Official status in the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.",
institutional_support: "A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística
Associaçom Galega da Língua
ProLingua
Queremos Galego",
_other_languages_used: null,
domains_of_use: "Diglossia is a common phenomenon, since Galician speakers may tend to use Spanish in more formal situations.",