English and Galician in the Middle Ages - Publicaciones ...

CONTENTS
Revista Estudios Ingleses 17 (2004)
English Galician
Social resentment Yes Yes
Linguistic resentment No Yes
Written literature Yes No
FUTURE EMERGENCE DECAY
Table 1. Attitudes of both speech communities
The social resentment in the English case did not prevent the
use of this tongue in a small number of literary works and
this fact helped to keep English alive. The common Germanic
origin that both English and Norman shared may have triggered
off this situation of non-linguistic resentment. In Galicia,
however, social and linguistic resentment resulted in a generalised
prejudice against Galician language and culture.
2. The emergence of English and the decay of Galician
The originally similar situation of English and Galician will
result in a different linguistic panorama for each community.
These two divergent situations will be analysed by comparing
the evolution of the main social strata, namely, the nobility, the
middle stratum (note 5) and the church in each case.
16