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

Revista Estudios Ingleses 17 (2004)
among the Galician population established a clear-cut division
between speaking and writing. Bilingual competence
covered almost 100 % in speaking. Bilingual advances in written
communication were limited to those with a high cultural
level. Oral bilingual competence is also high in older generations,
especially in rural areas. In an urban environment written
competence grew but oral competence diminished due to
Castilian infl uence and prestige (Rojo, 1994).
There was an initial situation of monolingualism common to
the upper and lower extremes of the social scale in Mediaeval
Galicia, but the upper group (formed by foreigners) spoke
Castilian whereas the native population (lower stratum) spoke
Galician. The intermediate group can be classifi ed as bilingual
because, although before the arrival of Castilian nobles
they spoke Galician, they quickly learnt the prestigious code
which facilitated their social advancement. External circumstances
did not favour a change in the linguistic attributions
of each social group until we fi nally get to the 19 th and 20 th
centuries. The revival of Galician by means of a literary
and administrative group -as in the case of English some
centuries earlier- contributed to the expansion of bilingualism
in the written medium. The defence of the vernacular was not
practised among the rural population, a group that far from
CONTENTS
28