Lecture: 'PROPOR24 - E se... já soubesses português sem te decatar?'

There is a reality where Galician is tiny, spoken by just under 3 million people in the Comunidad Autónoma de Galicia. A Galician of xoaniñas and escaravellos. This is, if it fits, the reality in which you live. But it is not the only one. Far from it. In this vast multiverse there are endless possibilities.

There is a reality where you can find xoaninyas and escarabellos. And another where shoanignas and escarabeglios fly everywhere. There is yet another reality where the Riebaixense language, with its gheada, its characteristic seseo and its own expressions, is considered a different language from the Chairego. There is also a reality in which a Galician full of joaninhas and escaravelhos has spread around the world and is spoken by 250 million people.

Let's open our minds, forget preconceived ideas and travel together through the multiverse. The galiverse, we could say. No, on second thought, that name is terrible. I forgot that. Using the prefix gali- for everything already smells a bit closed-minded. Multiverse was fine. Let's travel through the multiverse.

Biography

Jon Amil (Vigo, 1988) was born in Vigo in 1988, as indicated in brackets. He graduated in Medicine and is known for his linguistic activism on the Internet. Among his projects over time we can mention Memoria Pixelada, the first website about videogames entirely in Galician, or As MIR e unha noites, the blog in which he narrated his misadventures studying for the MIR exam. However, his most renowned work was @emgalego, AGAL's linguistic consultancy on Twitter, which gathered more than 14,500 followers during the 8 years he directed it. Since June 2023 he has been president of AGAL, which is hardly a position and does not mean that he has any idea of what he is going to do. It's not his fault, it's the fault of those who listen to him.