The peculiar linguistic features of Andalusian developed from vulgar Latin in parallel to Castillian Spanish as the vernacular language of the population during the period of Arab and Berber domination Al-Andalus, and it is therefore as distinct not just in form but in origin from standard Spanish as Galician is from Portuguese. They say that only accidents of history (the fact that Andalusia was mostly annexed to the Kingdom of Castille immediately after the expulsion of the Arabs) have caused Spanish and Andalusian to be considered the same language.
The context for the movement to classify Andalusian as a language is the development of regional cultural revivals paralleling the regained autonomy of several Spanish regions. Over the years since the return of democracy to Spain, several previously suppressed languages have been allowed to flourish in Spain, such as Asturian and Catalan. Andalusian nationalists hope to achieve the same.
The most visible characteristic of the Andalusian language revival movement is the use of a strictly phonetic script that is visually very distinct from standard Spanish.
One method in actual commercial use for transcribing popular songs, flamenco lyrics, or whatever other texts which aim to reflect the actual speech features of the Andalusian region is called the Norma Ortográfica Andaluza (or NOA) which is based on the standard Andalusian of folklore in use throughout the Andalusian region and wherever it has been carried by flamenco performers.
This system is different from the standard Castillian spelling mostly in the representation of the 10 Andalusian vowels: five which it shares with Castillian (a, e, i, o, u), and five which are termed open or aspirated which are proper to the Andalusian accent, and are represented with a grave accent (`): (à, è, ì, ò, ù) and are mostly used in situations where an "s" has been aspirated before another consonant, (and the omission of certain other consonants as well). This aspiration often results in a duplication or a lengthening of the following consonant.
For example:
Lò jóvenè ècelentè han venío de la universidá.
Los jóvenes excelentes han venido de la universidad.
When such an aspirated vowel also happens to carry the accent in a word and would usually be marked with an acute accent, the two accents, (grave and acute) merge into a circumflex accent over the vowel (â, ê, î, ô, û).
Galician (or Galego, the name of the Galician language in Galician), our language, still maintains some traces of the former habitants of Galicia: those of pre-indeuropean origin and the Celts.
Therefore we can find in contemporanean Galician words like "amorodo", "lastra" "veiga", etc. and Celtic words such as "berce", "bugallo", "cróio"... which arrived to our language directly or through Latin. The Celtic heritance in Galician language can be also and specially found in the present toponimy: Barra, Brión, Carnota...
The Romans arrived to Galicia (I BC) very much later than they did to the rest of the Iberian Peninsula (III BC). Thus romanization begun late. This process leads to the assimilation of the Celts to the language of conquerors. Latin becomes the language of Galician people, although this was a quite slow process, achieved by marriages and several administratives advantages such as gaining roman citizenship, lands distribution, etc.
This process of romanization also successed in other places. This explains why Romance languages evolved from the language spoken at that time, vulgar latin.
After the 5th century peoples of germanic race and language arrived to Galicia. They could not assimilate the language of the Galician-Romans. The same happens whith arabs and the new arrivals of Celts from Britany (in 7th century). These contacts gave Galician language a number of loanwords of both Germanic ("laberca", "espeto", "roupa", etc) and arab origin, although the last ones were less and arrived more indirectly (Mamede, "laranxa", "aceite", "azucre"...)
Ever since the restoration of democratic institutions, there has been a process to re-establish the use of Catalan. It is now a co-official language, along with Spanish, in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, and is widely used an everyday language throughout Catalonia, Valencia, Andorrra and the Balearic Islands. Catalan is used as a medium of instruction in many schools, it is also used extensively in the media and in government.
Catalan alphabet A a B b C c Ç ç D d E e F f G g H h
a be ce ce
trencada de e efa ge hac
I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q
i jota ke ela ema ena o pe cu
R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z
erre esse te u ve
baixa ve
doble ics,
xeix i grega zeta
Pronunciation
Sample text
Tots els éssers humans neixen lliures i iguals en dignitat i en drets. Són dotats de raó i de consciència, i han de comportar-se fraternalment els uns amb els altres.
Listen to a recording of this text by Margarita Gracia Sanz from Valencia
Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)