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2.3. The Galician-Portuguese language

In the eleventh century, with the gradual reconquest of the land formerly controlled by the Christians of the region, the Arabs were expulsed to the south of the peninsula, where the Mozarabic dialects that mixed Latin with Arabic were spoken.


Map of reconquest

Map of the Christian Reconquest of Portuguese lands

With the Reconquest, groups of people from the north settled themselves in the south of the country, thereby establishing the nation of Portugal. This occurred in much the same way that the people from the houses of Leon and Castile to the east settled the regions further south, and come to occupy the territory that would later constitute the lands of the Spanish state.

The Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula brought about the consolidation of the spoken and written forms of Galician-Portuguese throughout Lusitania. The first non-Latin literary texts and official documents from the region were written in Galician-Portuguese, including the following collections of medieval poems known as the Cancioneiros, or songbooks:


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