Ibero-Romance Languages

Castilian Spanish / Catalan / Galician / Portuguese

Castilian: has y as a single word — frequent use of final –d

Catalan: has i as a single word — frequent use of final –t

Catalan is the official language of Andorra, which is not a member of the European Union

Castilian and Catalan: both use ll to represent the sound [λ].

However, in Catalan a very distinctive mid-height stop is used to identify a double ‘l’ pronounced as two ‘l’s (e.g. excel·lents).

Castilian has a tilde on ñ but not on vowels, in contrast to Portuguese.

Where Castilian has ñ, Catalan has ny.

Both Castilian and Catalan make use of ¡…! and ¿….? for emphasis and questions, though this is optional in Catalan.

Catalan has grave accents, and makes use of dieresis on i (e.g. reïna = resin) and on u following g and q (e.g. eloqüència) to show that the vowel is pronounced separately.

à, è, ï, ç, l.l – gü: aigües – qü: eloqüencia

Portuguese: common use of final m (unlike Castilian) — circumflex accents ê, â, ô — no double l — tilde on the vowels ã and õ — the equivalent sound to ñ in Spanish is written nh in Portuguese, while Galician has both ñ and nh.

ê, â, ô, ã, õ – no: II – -m: bom

Brazilian Portuguese differs slightly in spelling and grammar from European Portuguese.

Galician (or Galego): looks at first sight like Portuguese, but is a Spanish regional language ― frequent use of ‘x’ for a soft ‘g’ sound ― use of ll (unlike Portuguese) ― use of ñ alongside nh (unlike Portuguese).

Documents in Galego are sometimes misidentified as Spanish because of the Member State of origin.

© European Union, 2016