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How To Get Up A Catalan’s Nose
Welcome to 2009. Happy New Year. Feliz A?o. Bon any.
Last June Theresa and I published an article at Expatica.com called Ten Things To Know Before Moving To Spain, based on material from our book In The Garlic. And like the book, it was intended to be both informative and fun. We never dreamt it would arouse a storm of controversy.
Anyway, Expatica has just posted its Best Of Expatica Spain 2008 and our piece, with 92 comments, is the ?Most Reacted?. Wow. One of the reasons is that quite a few people including, I hate to say, a number of Spaniards, didn?t get the humour - the British irony. They really thought that we hate Spain and were being nasty about it. Which obviously begs the question: if we hate the place so much, how come between us we have been here for a total of over 50 years! Fortunately, lots of others, including many Spaniards, chided them for having no sense of humour and being oversensitive. Another reason is the Catalan issue. As you probably know, this is like a red rag to a bull. We were stunned to find ourselves attacked for saying that Catalan is a dialect of Spanish. Whaaaaat???? Clearly, people don?t even read things properly any more. This is what we said: Tip 10. ?Do not refer to catalan, valenciano or gallego as dialects of 'Spanish' or Castilian ? unless you want to get right up the nose of a Catalan, Valenciano or Gallego big time. They are all languages in their own right, and are co official with castellano in the autonomous communities in which they are spoken (ie Catalunya, Valencia and the Balearics, and Galicia).? This then led to an unpleasant exchange of rants about the relationship between Catalan and Valencian, which we hadn?t even mentioned. Anyway, the advice given in Tip 10 holds. Catalan is a language in its own right descended from the Latin spoken in the north-eastern Iberian peninsula during the Roman empire, and thus a sister language to French, Castilian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Proven?al. And that?s a fact. Oh - you can read the Ten Things here.Comments
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‘Catalan is a language in its own right descended from the Latin spoken in the north-eastern Iberian peninsula during the Roman empire, and thus a sister language to French, Castilian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Proven?al’. I’m afraid this is not correct, ...(It continues in the next comment)... By historic rigor on 23.01.2009 |
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I’m afraid this is not correct, it is the institutional version concocted by our national-socialist government who, unable to build a new nation out of any historical rights (there’s never been such thing as the Catalan nation), they have taken over the job of creating a nation ? a job left unfinished by the first wave of Catalan nationalists because of the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 ? based on language; a very flimsy foundation stone but one to which they’ve bestowed the status of ‘the identity of a whole nation’. A very scary concept indeed.
By historic rigor on 23.01.2009 |
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In fact the Catalan as we know it today is the Barcelona dialect, despised by many as a travesti of Catalan. The modern Catalan language is a language devised in the XIX century by the Renaixen?a Catalan Nationalists under the orders of the infamous Prat de la Riba who didn’t waste much time and as soon as he became President of the Catalan Mancomunidad he paid the industrial technician Pompeu Fabra ( now elevated to ‘grammarian’and ‘catalan filologist’ and immortalised by naming an University after him)a loyal and active nationalist,
By historic rigor on 23.01.2009 |
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to write in 1918 the first Catalan Grammar rules of all times ( written in Spanish…). This eminent scholar also wrote the first ever Catalan Dictionary in 1932.
By historic rigor on 23.01.2009 |
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Fabra used the Barcelona dialect ( a Spanish version of the Occitan-Llimousin language) as the linguistic base to create the modern Catalan language. ....it continues below… By historic rigor on 23.01.2009 |
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the Catalan nationalists wrote to the Academie de la Langue Francaise requesting for the Catalan to be segregated from the Occitain-Llimousin language to whom it had belonged until then. The request was accepted but “Only for Spain”, nowadays, the Catalan in France continues to be a dialect of the French Occitain. ..it continues below By historic rigor on 23.01.2009 |
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There’s been a scandalous re-writing of History and erasing of facts carried out systematically by the bullish nationalist governments that we’ve had to endure in Catalunya. My words will be vilified and I will be called a fascist ( the nationalist mob response to any dissident) because I simply know the real History and speak the truth and although I’m a Catalan, my destiny in this abused land is to be a pariah because that is the future of those who don’t follow the ideology of the regime and refuse to be indoctrinated. ...it continues below.. By historic rigor on 23.01.2009 |
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For the foreigners is a different story of course, they simply have a new love affair with Spain and never have known much about its real History so, they are an easy lot to manipulate and a very handy albeit unknowing and unexpected collaborators. They read the new History and of course they believe it. Why would they question it? Please look around you and don’t take what you are fed with without questioning it. Thank you By historic rigor on 23.01.2009 |
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I have only just seen these comments. I don’t know what this person is arguing about. As I said: red rag to bull. I am simply going to reiterate a linguistic fact (I AM A LINGUIST): By Valerie Collins on 29.01.2009 |
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I do have one more thing that I’d like to clarify. We always state that Catalan (whatever that term includes or doesn’t include) is a language in its own right descended from Latin precisely because a large number of people have no idea what Catalan is and think it’s a dialect of Spanish. By Valerie Collins on 30.01.2009 |
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Thanks for the distinctions about Catalan history. By Valerie Collins on 30.01.2009 |
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I have only one thing to say. This person “historic rigor” should read more than one version of the history. What he/she describes is totally false and obviously full of hatred. By angeliufus on 02.02.2009 |
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tiffany sale By blue77 on 24.08.2010 |