DAY TEN. A BRIDGE FROM SPANISH TO GALICIAN.

10

I’m writing another entry after having taken a little break from The Blog (some days of absence), in the hopes that you might have some time to catch up!

Well, so, but, anyways, without further ado...

I wish you both a Happy Sunday!  

As I recall, in the States, Sunday has always been a very full day in our household, as we are all churching very hardcore.  I’ve missed going to church while I’ve been here; I feel like going to church somewhere but at the same time am conscious of the uncertainty of the future, and as Manu interviews for jobs I wonder where we will be in the coming weeks.  I wonder if I might end up going to a church around here, if we stay here, or what!  I’m... not sure.

The future can be an uncertain thing at times... and also the present doesn’t seem to be any clearer sometimes.  Work is hard, looking for work is hard, waiting is hard, and rushing can really suck!

In the low times, I often give myself a comfort-fest of sorts, and review in my head over and over the things (specifically the language things) that I do indeed know ------ I review the Spanish verbs I know (querer means ‘to want’, cantar means ‘to sing’, hablar means ‘to speak’, escuchar means ‘to listen’!) ... and I review the nouns I know... los amigos, los libros, la música, la vida...  I find it helpful to concentrate on the things I do know, when there seems to me to be so much I don’t know.

And when I think about Spanish, it’s easy to jump from there to Galician and Portuguese.  I think about the beautiful words I know in English, which I know how to translate into beautiful Spanish words.  And Spanish words are sometimes VERY similar to their Galician counterparts.  I see relationships, connections, and I get so excited!  And so today, on this busy (for many) Sunday, I will think about connections and relationships between languages and share them with you, as you my parents share words about connections and relationships with each other at church and as Lutherans in the big wide world :)  And perhaps when you get the chance, if not today then someday, you will read what I write and enjoy it!

There’s a really cool trick for making a bridge between Spanish and Galician words.  It’s pretty cool: Sometimes a word with j+a/o/u or g+e/i in Spanish corresponds to a word with x+a/e/i/o/u in Galician!  This ‘x’ is pronounced more or less like the ‘sh’ in ‘ship’.

Note: Spanish definite articles la/las & el/los correspond to Galician definite articles a/as & o/os respectively, and they are pronounced as if they were written in Spanish.
Examples:

{{{key: Spanish in italics Galician in bold English in plain text}}}
la lógica ~ a lóxica ~ logic

lógic@ ~ lóxic@ ~ logical

la energía ~ a enerxía ~ energy

energétic@ ~ enerxétic@ ~ energetic

la magia ~ a maxia ~ magic (noun)

mágic@ ~ máxic@ ~ magic (adjective)

fingir ~ finxir ~ to pretend (note: pretender in Spanish/Galician-Portuguese means: hope, expect, try, claim; it does NOT mean to pretend!  False cognate, false friend!)

dirigir ~ dirixir ~ to lead, to direct (in Latin America manejar/dirigir is also ‘to drive’; in Spain, conducir ---which confusingly does NOT mean conduct--- is used for ‘to drive’.  If you use conducir in the Americas, people will be surprised because it sounds very formal there.  As if a Brit were to come to the States and say ‘I put on my trousers, drove the car to the petrol station and then opened the boot and took out my leftover fish and chips to eat!’)

la jirafa ~ a xirafa ~ giraffe ------ Note that in Spanish/Galician, the word is always feminine; you use another word (macha, hembra = male, female [respectively]) to clarify the sex of a giraffe.

la genética ~ a xenética ~ genetics (note that in contast to English, the word is singular in Spanish/Galician)

geológic@ ~ xeolóxic@ ~ geological

Some words aren’t quite this straightforward when translating from Spanish to Galician.  Sometimes you won’t just see a change in the consonant, but also a change in a vowel or two going from Spanish to Galician; sometimes vowels are added; sometimes the j+a/o/u or g+e/i in Spanish becomes a different consonant-plus-vowel in Galician, like Galician ll (pronounced like the ‘j’ in English ‘Joe’, which is how I advise you to pronounce ll/y in  both Spanish and Galician), or like Galician rr (pronounced as in Spanish), or even like Galician i in the form of a semivowel, pronounced like the ‘y’ in English ‘mayor’ (as in the example soia below).

la ingeniería ~ a enxeñaría ~ engineering (noun)

la caja ~ a caixa ~ box

bajar ~ baixar ~ to lower, to go down

la soja ~ a soia ~ soy (remember that the word soy means ‘I am’ in Spanish and is another false cognate!  also note, just for fun, that leche de soja means ‘soy milk’)

joven (plural: jóvenes) ~ xove (plural xoves) ~ young (can also be used as a noun to mean ‘young person’)

coger ~ coller ~ to get (also means many, many other things)

escoger ~ escoller  ~ to choose

empujar ~ empurrar ~ to push

Once upon a time when there weren’t countries in Europe so much as feudal states, the line between Galician and Portuguese hadn’t really been drawn the way it is today, and they were written the same way.  Nowadays, because of more recent historical events, Galician is written with letters that more or less correspond to the letters in Spanish.  This can be a problem for many reasons, for one because there isn’t always a clear way to indicate the presence of certain vowels in Galician (Galician has more vowels than in Spanish).  People have argued that Galician should be written as Portuguese is written, since Galician and Portuguese exist on a dialect continuum (and since that is the way things were originally done).  Nevertheless, the official orthography which you see in supermarkets / on street signs / government documents will be with the official Galician orthography, which more or less parallels that of the Spanish language.

Now you may proceed feeling slightly more educated about the world than you did before!  So long!

PEACE AND LOVE FROM GABU