Study sheet: Galician Diatopic Varieties

📋 Course Outline

1. Galician Dialectal Blocks
2. Western Block Features
3. Central Block Features
4. Eastern Block Features
5. Vigo Phonetic Features
6. Vigo Morphology and Lexicon

📖 1. Galician Dialectal Blocks

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Diatopic varieties : geographical forms of a language that differ according to the territory where they are spoken

📝 Essential Points

• Galician is divided into the Western, Central and Eastern blocks.

• The isoglosses include:

  • cans in the Western block
  • cas in the Central block
  • cais in the Eastern block

💡 Memory Hook

Western, Central and Eastern blocks differ through their isoglosses: cans, cas and cais.

📖 2. Western Block Features

★ Must-know

• The Western block has plural forms in -ns, as in cans and ladrons.

• The cited Western forms include:

  • ghato
  • amigha
  • irman
  • a irman
  • a man
  • chan

Further detail

📌 Western areas may show implosive seseo in lus and explosive seseo in sinco and des, while other Western forms retain non-explosive seseo pronunciations such as mazá and corazón.

• The main Western areas are:
  • Bergantiñá
  • Fisterrá
  • Pontevedresa

💡 Memory Hook

GHS: gheada, -ns plurals and seseo.

📖 3. Central Block Features

★ Must-know

📌 Central speech uses ti in its more western part and tu in its eastern part, while the pronoun forms include il in the area lucu-auriense.

• The Central block generally has plural forms in -s, such as cas and ladros.

• The cited Central forms are:

  • moito
  • noite
  • coiro
  • irmao
  • a irma
  • chao
  • a mao

Further detail

• The Central areas and cited forms are:
  • mindoniense
  • lucu-auriense
  • nosoutros
  • vosoutros
  • iste
  • ise
  • aquil

💡 Memory Hook

Central forms alternate between ti and tu, and between el and il.

📖 4. Eastern Block Features

★ Must-know

• The Eastern plural examples are:

  • cais
  • ladrois
  • animais
  • caracois

• The cited Eastern forms are:

  • cuatro
  • cuando
  • camn
  • paxarn

• The verbal examples are:

  • cantais
  • cantabais
  • colleis
  • collais

Further detail

• The Eastern block uses the pronoun tu and the endings -ao and -ao in forms such as mao and irmao.

• The main Eastern areas are:

  • Asturiana
  • Zamorana
  • Oriental-Central
  • Ancaresa

💡 Memory Hook

Plural -is, diphthong [wa], final -n and verbal -is.

📖 5. Vigo Phonetic Features

★ Must-know

📌 Vigo gheada can be pronounced as the strong velar [x] in un khicho de Vikho or as the aspirated or softer [h] in southern Fragoso, un ghicho de Vigho.

• The speech of Vigo belongs to the Western block, specifically the Pontevedresa area, the Verdugo-Miño macroarea and the Fragoso-Morrazo microsubarea.

• Vigo seseo involves the absence of the voiceless interdental fricative /θ/, with forms such as o selta ghañou sinco sero.

Further detail

📌 In Vigo, the hiatus -oa from OLA may reduce to -ó in forms such as Pereiró and filló, and the diphthong -oi may evolve to -ou in couro, vasoura and lavadouro.

• The transition zone includes:

  • Zamáns
  • Oia
  • Saiáns

• Among younger people in Vigo, gheada and seseo are in retreat.

💡 Memory Hook

Contact with neighbouring varieties produces transitional forms and variation in diphthongs.

📖 6. Vigo Morphology and Lexicon

★ Must-know

• The cited forms include:

  • muito
  • truita
  • coiro
  • vasoira
  • noite

• In Vigo, acute nouns ending in -l form their plural with -s, as in reás and cadrís.

• First-person singular perfect forms of first-conjugation verbs usually end in -ei, as in cheghuei and mirei, but the border with Miñor and Louriñá has -en, as in cheghén and mirén.

• The Vigo obligatory periphrasis uses querer followed by a flexed participle, as in Eses coches querían lavados and As cousas querían mellor explicadas.

Further detail

📌 Vigo distinguishes nós from nosoutros and vós from vosoutros, and uses the demonstratives isto, iso and aquilo.

• Vigo also has the forms imos, ides, iamos and iades, the traer forms trúen and truera, the subjunctive present forms haba and habas, and the second-person singular present forms tès, tes and teis.

• Vigo frequently uses the affective suffix -ote or -ota, gentilic suffixes -exa or -exo, and the verb mirar instead of ver, as in pequenote, sanote, altote, matamanexo and cabralexa.

💡 Memory Hook

Standard-like forms coexist with distinctive forms such as querer plus a flexed participle.

📊 Synthesis Tables

Major Galician Blocks

Block	Plural pattern	Main distinctive features
Western	-ns	Gheada, seseo, -an
Central	-s	Diphthong oi, -ao/-a, ti-tu variation
Eastern	-is	Diphthong [wa], verbal -is, final -n