A dialectal map of the Galician language

When the Real Academia Galega attempted to create a standard variety of Galician, the difficult question arose as to which variety or varieties it should base its work on. Since the failed attempt to catalogue linguistic information on all the languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula in the Atlas Lingüístico de la Península Ibérica, several attempts have been made to map the Galician dialects. As part of his field research carried out between 1951 and 1963, Alonso Zamora Vicente identified two sub-dialects of Galician, which he described as continental (charactarised by the absence of gheada, the use of ceceo and the ending -ao in words derived from the Latin ending -anus) and atlantic (with gheada, seseo and the ending -an) (cf. Sousa 2023, p. 120).

Ricardo Carballo Calero built on this work and identified a third isogloss in his research between 1966 and 1979, which split the continental dialect group into two parts. This new Eastern dialect is characterised by verb forms with nasal endings (cantein as opposed to cantei, ‘I sang’), the solution -ut- for Latin -ukt- and -ult-, and the retention of the palatal lateral approximant [ʎ] (cf. Sousa 2023, p. 121).

However, the most detailed dialect map was undoubtedly the one created by Francisco Fernández Rei, who compiled the Atlas Lingüístico Galego. He criticised the use of the term dialecto, as he emphasised the inner unity of Galician, and coined the term blocs lingüísticos instead (cf. Monteagudo Romero and Bouzada Fernández 2003, p. 147). Based on Carballo’s division into western, central and eastern, Fernández divides these into áreas (areas), subáreas (sub-areas) and microsubáreas (micro-sub-areas), to each of which he assigns an alphanumeric code:

Fig. 1: Dialectal blocks of Galician, based on Sousa 2023:132.

I: Western
◼ I-A: Berganiñá
◼ I-B: Fisterrá I-B1: Xallas I-B2: Tambre I-B3: Bembibre I-B4: Compostelá
◼ I-C: Pontevedresa I-C1: Ulla-Umia I-C2: Verdugo & Minho
◼ IN: Limia

II: Central
◼ II-D: Mindoniense II-D1: Mindoniense Occidental II-D2: Mindoniense Oriental
◼ ID-E: Lucu-auriense II-E1: Lucense II-E2: Auriense
◼ II-F: Central de transición II-F1: Occidental II-F2: Meira
◼ II-G: Oriental de transición II-G1: Oímbra & Vilardevós

III: Eastern:
◼ III-H Austuriana III-H1 A Veiga-Os Oscos-Ibias III-H2 Salave-Coaña-Boal
◼ III-I Ancaresa
◼ III-L Zamorana III-L1 O Porto III-L2 A Mezquita-Lubián
◼ III-M Oriental central III-M1 A Fonsagrada-Courel-Bierzo III-M2 Valdeorras-Viana