Galician and prescriptivism

When you talk about linguistics and grammar, one of the classic issues that arises is the question of whether grammar should be prescriptive or descriptive. In other words, should grammar, as a discipline, prescribe, instruct, and regulate how people speak, or should it merely attempt to describe how people actually do speak?

In the Anglo-American context I feel like most people come down on the descriptivist side. You often hear stuff like, “well, remember, grammar should be descriptive, not prescriptive,” as if it’s just common sense. I guess there are a few reasons for this. (1) English has millions of speakers who are fairly educated and also communicate with each other a great deal; therefore, there’s little danger that the language will be polluted or degraded beyond repair. (2) Modern English, as a language, is Germanic but has a massive amount of Romance vocabulary coming from the Norman invasion. So there are more things that are legitimate. (3) A certain democratic spirit. People view prescriptive grammar as authoritarian and elitist.

Personally, I have become more and more wary of the descriptivist viewpoint, since it seems that every time I hear “well, remember, grammar should be descriptive, not prescriptive,” it is a sure sign I am about to hear some grammatical monstrosity justified.

Anyway, the situation with Galician is completely different. The language underwent centuries of subjugation to Castilian Spanish. In the 19^th century there began a process of recuperation of the language. Under Franco in the 20^th century the language was once again repressed. Since the establishment of the constitutional monarchy the language has official status. The vicissitudes of history meant that the language didn’t develop a written standard until fairly late. Even now they sometimes decide to change how to write certain things. And some people believe the current spelling system is too Castilianized and that Galician should be written with a more Portuguese-style orthography. Galician-speakers today can be quite preoccupied with the Castilian influence on their language. One young woman I know at my school, whose first language is Galician, is actually in a Galician language course, because, as she says, “I commit a lot of Castilianisms.”

One dictionary of use I have tells you at the beginning,

A small circle symbol indicates that the word does not appear in the Orthographic Vocabulary of the Galician Language, so its use is definitively unjustifiable; An asterisk indicates a word that, although it doesn’t appear in the OVGL, might enjoy some special exception.

Here are some definitions from the section on doubts:

ATURDIR. This is a Castilianism that ought to be replaced by the patrimonial Galician form ATORDAR, which means to cause confusion.

CALAMAR (English: squid or calamari). This is a Castilianism that ought to be avoided. The patrimonial Galician form for this mollusk is LURA or ALURA. Curiously, the two words refer to the ink that the animal uses for defense. The Galician language term LURA derives from the Latin word LURA meaning a bag for ink; the Castilian language term CALAMAR is an Italianism, deriving from CALAMARO, meaning inkpot, which itself comes from the Latin CALAMUS, meaning a reed or plume used for writing.

NOMINAR. This is a learned word that doesn’t exist in Galician and is considered a barbarism (i.e. a foreign word) when it is utilized to mean “designate, choose, proclaim, propose.” The word NOMINAR does exist in Castilian, but only with the meanings “to say the name of a person or thing” and “to designate someone for a post or appointment” (the latter definition does not appear in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy). The other meanings listed above are taken from English (TO NOMINATE, which can mean to name someone to a position but also to propose someone for that position) or French (NOMMER, which means to name someone to a position but also to choose).