Reintegrationism

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The term reintegrationism (reintegracionismo) describes a linguistic movement in Galicia, Spain, which aims to reunite Galician and Portuguese into a single language.

Contents 1 Controversy 2 Language 3 Common positions 4 See also 5 External links

[edit] Controversy

Currently, there are two primary views in Galicia (Galiza in portuguese) about the Galician language:

1. The isolationist view considers Galician and Portuguese to be two distinct languages. Isolationists therefore favor differentiated rules of writing and spelling that are almost exactly the Spanish ones. This view is held by the majority of public and Government organizations in Galicia and the Spanish central government.
2. The reintegrationist view considers Galician to be a variant of a Galician-Portuguese linguistic diasystem. Reintegrationists support the use of spelling rules similar to the ones used in Portuguese-speaking countries.

Reintegrationism is a cultural as well as linguistic attitude, whose supporters tend to believe that the Galician dialect (or Galician language) rightfully belongs to Lusofonia, being in fact a variant of the language known worldwide as Portuguese and spoken by more than 200 million people in eight countries. They wish to have stronger cultural and economic as well as linguistic ties with the Portuguese-speaking world.

[edit] Language

For reintegrationists, Galician is part of a linguistic diasystem which currently has two orthographic norms: one from the countries with Portuguese official language, and the other from Galicia. The current Galician norm is known as AGAL. Some believe Galicians should simply use standard Portuguese spelling; this is also the end goal of some who currently defend AGAL as a provisional norm to ease the public transition into the use of standard Portuguese.

Consequently, the reintegrationists think that orthographic standards such as the NOMIGa (Normas Ortográficas e Morfolóxicas do Idioma Galego), arbitrated by the RAG (Real Academia Galega) and ILG (Instituto da Lingua Galega) are inadequate, as these norm tend to consider definitively the Galician accent as "contaminated" by Spanish.

The last reform of the ILG-RAG norms, completed in 2003, conserves characteristics of Galician most prominently similar to Spanish, namely:

• The letter ñ (instead of the Portuguese nh): Galician, Spanish and Breton are some languages with this unique letter although in Galician nh represents a nasal velar whilst for Portuguese is a nasal palatal;
• The digraph ll instead of lh;
• The suffix -ción (see below)
• Considering of both alternatives for suffixes -ería/-aría and -ble/-bel (the first of each equal to Spanish and the second more similar to Portuguese -aria and -vel)

Lexical choices tend to be also in agreement with the ones used in Spanish.

As a transitional norm, the Galician Language Association (AGAL) and other groups use AGAL, a Portuguese-Galician norm very similar to standard Portuguese. AGAL spelling uses standard Portuguese spelling rules such as NH, LH, and the suffixes -aria and -vel, but also uses the termination -çom instead of the Portuguese -ção or the Spanish -ción (sometimes -ssão and -sión).

Other groups, such as the Language Defense Movement (MDL), use both AGAL and the standard Portuguese spelling norms, while the AAG-P (Associação de Amizade Galiza-Portugal) and the IFG-P (Irmandades da Fala da Galiza e Portugal) opt for the common norm for Portuguese as decided in the Lisbon agreement of 1990.

These are not the only groups who use these "reintegrated" norms, and the wider use of such norms has led to them being recognized recently as acceptable in courts of law.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Common positions

Theoretically, the positions of the standards of NOMIGa and AGAL are not so different. Although usually interpreted as having pro-Spanish tendences, NOMIGa stated at the Introduction as a principle that "standard choices must be in harmony with those of other languages, especially to those of Romance languages and especially to those of Portuguese" and later to value "the contribution of Peninsular and Brazilian Portuguese". This being the philosophy behind the standard, both NOMIGa and AGAL share an initial starting point, but it is widely said that the standard is far removed from the usual speech of day-to-day and older Galician speakers. In any case, European and Brazilian Portuguese forms are usually analyzed by both tendences as a primary base from which to establish scientific and technical terminology.

[edit] See also

• Galician-Portuguese
• Galician language
• Portuguese language
• Spanish language
• Spelling reform
• Castrapo
• Lusophilia

[edit] External links

• Associação Galega da Língua (Galician)
• Movimento Defesa da Língua (Galician)
• O conflicto ortográfico do galego no CMI Galiza (Galician)
• Reintegrationist monographic magazine, called Voz Própria: Reintegracionismo lingüístico: identidade e futuro para o galego (in galician-portuguese
• Lindley Cintra, Luís F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses (PDF) Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971. Classical work on Portuguese dialectology, where Lindley Cintra presents Portuguese and Galician as part of a common dialect continuum (in Portuguese).
• Vázquez Cuesta, Pilar «Non son reintegracionista», interview to the newspaper La Voz de Galicia, where the prominent Galician linguist argues against reintegrationism on the grounds that spelling changes are "always dangerous" (in Galician).
• Conference by Professor Martinho Monteiro Santalha, in which he argues for the linguistic unity of Galician and Portuguese - from the minute 04:09 (sound file in Galician)