Language maintenance and change: fricative sibilants in Galician

Abstract

The language of rural communities is under great pressure to change, both by the presence of the standard language as, in the case of Galicia, of the Spanish language. Among the linguistic changes involved, some concern the phonetics and the phonology and go in the direction of convergence with standard Galician and, in part, with Spanish. In this paper we will explore one of these rural varieties, which presents a set of sibilant different from Galician Standard and Spanish, through the analysis of the sibilants of two groups of speakers from nearby places, with people from two age groups in each place, we will try to determine whether some of the changes described in previous studies take place, to what extent and in what direction are detected, and whether it exists a perceived resistance to change in the members of the youngest groups.