Indo-European · ISO 639-3 glg · gl
Galician Language Galego
Galician is an Indo-European language spoken by about 3.5 million people in 2 countries. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Galician is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Italic
- Latino-Faliscan
- Latinic
- Imperial Latin
- Romance
- Italo-Western Romance
- Western Romance
- Shifted Western Romance
- Southwestern Shifted Romance
- West Ibero-Romance
- Galician Romance
- Galician
Writing system
Latin script
Related languages
About the Galician language
Galician (Galego) is spoken by about 3.5 million people, which makes it the 227th most spoken language in the world — just behind Bangala (3.5 million) and ahead of Pattani Malay (3.4 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Galician Romance group within the Italic branch.
Where is Galician spoken?
Galician is used in 2 countries. The largest communities live in Spain (3.3 million) and Portugal (14,290).
Share of the population that speaks Galician: Spain 7% (3.3 million) and Portugal 0.1% (14,290).
Galician is not a national official language anywhere. It also has regional official status in Spain.
Writing system and status
Galician is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Portuguese, Papiamento, Spanish, Asturian, Catalan, Occitan (post 1500) and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 gl, ISO 639-3 glg.
Frequently asked questions about Galician
How many people speak Galician?
Where is Galician spoken?
What language family does Galician belong to?
What is Galician called in Galician?
Is Galician an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.