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Language code: gl

Technical information about ISO 639 language code gl

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Galician language, designated by the gl code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

gl

Name

Official

Galician

Native

Galego

Family
Romance
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
Western GalicianCentral GalicianEastern Galician
Related languages
PortugueseMirandeseAsturianLeoneseSpanish
Key facts
Developed from the medieval Galician-Portuguese language once shared with PortugueseKeeps distinctive nasal vowels and palatal consonants that differentiate it from SpanishTwo competing orthographic norms exist—the official ILG-RAG system and the reintegrationist spelling closer to PortugueseGalician-Portuguese troubadour songbooks (Cantigas) are among the earliest secular lyric poetry in Western EuropeThe language favors the simple past tense where Spanish would use the present perfect
Sample phrase

Ola, como estás?

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Galician is a member of the Indo-European family of languages, falling within the Romance subgroup. It is co-official with Spanish in Galicia, Spain, and is written using the Latin script (Galician alphabet). It is estimated that there are over 2.5 million native speakers globally.

Language presence globally

Speakers

Spain

2.5M

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Galician speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Related locale codes

gl-ES – Galician (Spain)

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