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Comment by ahhwh71717 | Hacker News Reader

I guess not to further muddy the waters but saying Gallego and Catalan come from Castellano is extremely problematic (though people do this, it’s still difficult to square factually)

They all come from Vulgar Latin and depending on how you split it but Portuguese and Gallego come from a common ancestor and one has an easier time understanding Gallego if one speaks Portuguese than if one speaks only Spanish and Catalan would be a post until itself once we start discussing Occitan and Valencian, but it’s also not descended from Spanish (Gallo-Romance)

TLDR I really wish people would stop according Castellano as an official language and a bunch of languages that are as older or older than Castellano as some dialect descending from Castellano.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician-Portuguese

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language

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I didn’t say it came from Castellano! I’m saying they’re all three Spanish languages/dialects. Linguistically I would consider Gallego just as real a language or dialect as Castellano, it just happens that the central Spanish government historically made Castellano into their favored tongue and not Gallego.

Castellano is the official language of the Spanish government from eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy and of course decades of repression of regional languages under eg the Franco regime. I don’t mean official as in “the true language” I mean official as in “the Spanish government/regime/royal dialect for centuries”. To the point many people as you mention equate Castellano with “Spanish” which is just not true - I agree with you

Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment but it's not me that is making Castillian "official" - I think it's bullshit that other Spanish languages aren't treated with more respect it's - the historical reality that it was accorded official status due to the political dominance of Castile and consequently the use of Castillian as a common tongue

How do you make a distinction between the language they speak in Castile(s) and the one that use in other regions and is official in all Spain? You can't.

I speak Spanish but I'm not Castilian and has no relationship with those two regions (Castile-Leon and Castile-La Mancha).

Galician is a language on its own! Indeed one of the most famous kings in medieval history in Spain (Alfonso X) wrote poems in Galician because he just liked the language[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantigas_de_Santa_Maria

Yes one of my favorites also, I’ve watched a couple of series in it and quite like it!

It's interesting that Alfonso X chose Galician as a poetic language instead of the most common one among their subjects (Spanish). He had Galician in a higher standard that Spanish. That's amazing considering the impact he had in the evolution of Spanish.

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