Galician in Serious Decline?

A study carried out by the Real Academia Galega (an instititution dedicated to the study of Galician language and culture) and funded by the Xunta (Galician govt.), claims that Galician has gone from being the main language used by around 60% of the Galician population to only 20% in just twelve years.

Although the results of the study have just been released, it covers the period between 1992 and 2004. It is claimed that the study is the most extensive sociolinguistic analysis carried out in a Romance language in terms of the number of people interviewed.

According to Carlos Callón, the president of the Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística(Linguistic Standardisation Board): "Galician has never been in a worse situation than it is today."

The study also finds that in this twelve year period, the number of people who never speak Galician has risen from 13% to just over a quarter of the population. Meanwhile those who use Galician as their first language has dropped from 30.5% to 16%.

The study found that those who define themselves as bilingual tend to use more Spanish. According to Callón, this shows that “there isn’t bilingualism” but “an unequal diglossic situation”. It was also found that 85% of subjects were taught in Spanish and that 11% of under-18’s who had always lived in Galicia claimed they were only given classes in Spanish.

The study confirmed what is already known - that Galician continues to be more associated with rural areas. Ferrol was the most Spanish-speaking city (85% of the population) with Vigo and A Coruña not far behind (both 81.9%). Santiago and Lugo were the most Galician-speaking cities with (41.9%) and (40.5%) respectively, opting for Galician.

The findings of the study have been questioned for reasons, such as a disproportionate number of city dwellers being interviewed and the fact that people over 54 years of age were not included in the survey this time.

Compiled from articles in the Xornal de Galicia and El País in March 2009