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Original Articles

Narrative Fiction in Galiza:Footnote1
[1] I have chosen to use ‘Galiza’ and ‘Galizan’, as opposed to the official English spellings, ‘Galicia’ and ‘Galician’, given that English obtained the name for this community from Spanish. ‘Galiza’ is found in the initial texts written in the Luso tongue, but was gradually replaced by ‘Galicia’ as this kingdom was ruled, practically since the beginning of its existence, by the Leon-Castille crown. Though ‘Galicia’ has been the correct denomination according to o galego oficial (the officially sanctioned orthographic, morphologic and lexical standard for the Galizan language, which was institutionalized in 1982), the new normativa de concordia (July 2003) now accepts ‘Galiza’, but only in literary use. ‘Galicia’ remains the official word for all other uses. My objective behind promoting the use of ‘Galiza’ in English is to draw attention to the linguistic and cultural different-ness of this community (or nation) within the Spanish state. In O galego (im)possível Rodrigues Fagim analyzes the linguistic proximities between Galizan and Portuguese, and alludes to a valuable study by Montero Santalha, which shows the progressive replacement of ‘Galiza’ by ‘Galicia’ in judicial texts beginning in the Middle Ages: ‘O estudo de Montero Santalha documenta Galiza de forma sistemática nos textos literários que vam de meados do [século] XIII a fins do século XV. Polo contrário, naqueloutros de caracter jurídico aparecen 30 Galiza e 7 Galicia no período entre os séculos XIII–XIV. No segundo período, seculos XV–XVI, o panorama e outro: 5 Galiza e 34 Galicia. Isto é, simplesmente, um reflexo fidelíssimo do que sócio-culturalmente se passou naquela altura. Nos séculos seguintes, a Galiza só lhe restou desaparecer’ (Rodrigues Fagim Citation2001, p. 168). In addition to using ‘Galiza’, I must also make clear that in my spelling of words and names in Galizan, I use not the guidelines of o galego oficial, which uses Spanish orthography and accentuation, but those of a normativa dos máximos, which is very similar to Portuguese. This normativa employs Portuguese orthography and punctuation, while preserving words, expressions and verb conjugations that exist in Galizan but not in Portuguese. Whenever quoting a passage or employing words from Pensa nao, I leave the text in its original state and do not adapt it to the normativa dos máximos. For this reason, the reader will find, as one of several examples, the name of the village in the novel spelled as both ‘Sernanselle’ (which is how it appears in the novel) and ‘Sernanselhe’ (with Portuguese orthography) when I use the name without quoting it. Another example is the spelling of ‘Maria’, which in the novel appears as ‘María’, but in the normativa dos máximos does not have the accent mark. For an in-depth study on the conflict between those Galizans who endorse the normativa oficial and those who defend the normativa dos máximos (also known as the conflict between the autonomistas—or isolacionistas—and the lusistas—or reintegracionistas), see my forthcoming book chapter, ‘Portuguese or autonomist ortography for the Galizan language? An analysis of the Citationconflito normativo’ in the volume Contemporary Galician Studies published by the Modern Language Association in 2006–07.
The Long Path between Oblivion and Memory

John Patrick ThompsonCorrespondence[email protected]