![]() Interestingly, more than twenty years on, vox pops with people on the streets of Catalan cities on the topic of independence often see this exact point still raised. A comparison was made with Switzerland, where German (albeit with the above curiosity that its spoken form is a long way from the written standard) is by far the predominant language but three other languages have equal national status and all four may be used in the federal parliament. I recall clearly that my hosts did not really favour independence for Catalonia but did expect Spain to evolve into a state where Catalan would be considered a national language on the same basis as Castilian Spanish it was specifically pointed out that while Castilian Spanish could be spoken in the Catalan legislature, Catalan could not be spoken in the Spanish parliament ( Cortes) in Madrid, even though the latter supposedly represented the entire country. In the midst of it all, of course, once you take off the “black and white” glasses and start investigating the topic, you find plenty of people in fact take more moderate political positions too. ![]() Generally, there is considerable allowance made for those who do not speak Catalan well but perhaps less patience with those residents who do not know it at all at least passive competence in Catalan is now widely expected among those who choose to live in the region. That can often differ not only from area to area and from person to person but also from context to context. Most people in Catalonia understand both Catalan and Castilian Spanish the question is whether they use them in the home, at work, and in social gatherings. Nor, of course, is even the term “Catalan speaker” all that helpful. Likewise in Ukraine there are Russian speakers who have no sympathy with Putin and in Catalonia there are Catalan speakers who oppose independence. However, it was not a sufficient majority as expected English speakers overwhelmingly voted against but French speakers were in fact also a majority of “No” voters. Certainly, in the modern world, language and national identity (and thus language and politics) can align: a majority of French speakers in Quebec voted for sovereignty in 1995, after all. Recent maps of Ukraine have emphasised the “Russian-speaking” areas as if they can be directly aligned to sympathy with a prospective Russian invasion. She spoke to me, as a matter of principle, only in Catalan I still remember her right at the start emphasising the word menjar ‘to eat’, noting its similarity with French but distance from Castilian Spanish (which has comer). There my host lived with his partner, and most notably unlike my host she refused (perfectly politely, I should emphasise) to speak to me in Castilian Spanish. However, the visit to the Centre was not in fact the most interesting aspect of my trip that, as so often, was when I was afforded what I always believe is the immense privilege of visiting a home in the local area. ![]() This is, for example, where Catalan differs fundamentally from Swiss German although both are arguably sufficiently linguistically distant enough from Spanish and Standard German respectively to be considered separate languages, attempts are only really made in the former case to teach the language to incomers and outsiders and thus “normalise” its use even, for example, by co-workers going on a team bonding exercise. These centres are perhaps not as authoritarian as they sound their main objective, in fact, is to enable Catalan to become the first language of work and leisure in Catalonia by, for example, teaching it to immigrant workers. In 2000, I visited specifically on linguistic business, to visit a centre de normalització lingüística in central Barcelona, hosted by a gentleman who lived on the outskirts of the city in Cerdanyola del Vallès. I first visited Barcelona in 1992 and then went back every other year, roughly, until my nerdy travels ended in 2008 (completely coincidentally the year I met my now wife…) I returned to Mallorca in 2011 and the Tarragona area in 2019 but have not otherwise been in the Catalan lands since. As those posts concern themselves with languages I actually know reasonably well, it is therefore a cert in this post about a language I know rather less well! I also know that a couple of readers are fluent in Catalan/Valencian (one specifically the latter), so I start this piece under added pressure… to the extent that I will stick almost entirely to the sociolinguistic and structural curiosities! Just about every time I re-read a post on language I have written on my blog over the years, I find an error.
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