How does one tell that the language you are hearing is Galecian and not Castellano? Any tricks?

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Dtmont
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How does one tell that the language you are hearing is Galecian and not Castellano? Any tricks?

Postby Dtmont » Mon Mar 11, 2019 8:02 pm

So to my ears Galician sounds exactly like Castellano. Are there any tell tale sounds that can easily give it away?
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nooj
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Re: How does one tell that the language you are hearing is Galecian and not Castellano? Any tricks?

Postby nooj » Mon Mar 11, 2019 8:09 pm

Sure.

/ʃ/, which only exists in certain dialects of Rio de Plata Spanish in Uruguay and Argentina, but exists in Galician. And I doubt you'd confuse Galician with Uruguayan Spanish!

Galician also has a bigger vowel inventory (seven) than Spanish (five).

Galician (in stressed position) distinguishes between these phonemes /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/, whereas Spanish has /i e a o u/. You will hear ɛ and ɔ as contextual allophones in dialects in Andalusia, but I don't think anyone would confuse Andalusian Spanish with Galician. Just the intonation alone is totally different.
Last edited by nooj on Mon Mar 11, 2019 9:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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David1917
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Re: How does one tell that the language you are hearing is Galecian and not Castellano? Any tricks?

Postby David1917 » Mon Mar 11, 2019 8:13 pm



The first language in this video is Galician. For me, the giveaway that it was not Spanish was the small presence of some nasal sounds, and the sch (x) sound - basically, sounds that are more closely associated with Portuguese. It's definitely tough! When I first watched this video I was like, "It's Portug... wait... no, it's not Spanish, but... Catalan? Some dialect?"
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Re: How does one tell that the language you are hearing is Galecian and not Castellano? Any tricks?

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Mar 12, 2019 12:27 am

Dtmont wrote:So to my ears Galician sounds exactly like Castellano. Are there any tell tale sounds that can easily give it away?


You'll quickly hear words like "si" & "non" and "grazas", "e" instead of "yo" and "o", "a", "os" and "as" as articles. "ti" and "vos" as second person pronouns.
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