Galician language

Galician is the language of Galicia, the region of Spain lying to the north of Portugal. It used to be classified as a Portuguese dialect, because it shares more features in common with that language than with Spanish; however, as Galician was for so long suppresssed, and its speakers required to speak the dominant language, the pronunciation does closely resemble that of Spanish. A feature of the orthography is the frequent use of x, often in initial position, pronounced like English 'sh', corresponding to the soft g in Portuguese. The language can be heard in Portugal as well as in Spain on TV Galicia.