Catalan
Nearly 4 months already in Barcelona, and What can I say.
Well one important thing for the people here is the Catalan thing…
I have to say when I first arrived in Barcelona, I had no idea that people here talked Catalan. I had heard of the language, but couldn’t have said where it was spoken. It could have been spoken in Greece, South America or Estonia for all I knew (and cared). I must have been told though many times during my spanish lessons. People who had been here must have told me, that “Spanish” is in fact Castillan. I had even been to Barcelona without realizing that people actually talked another language than spanish. I guess it just never ticked.
The plain idea of people talking another language than spanish in spain was therefore a bit of a surprise.
It was simple arithemetics for me: France = French, England = English, Germany = German, Spain = Spanish.
But I was wrong, spain is in fact a multi language country a bit like Switzerland, with multiple languages. Which makes everything here, just slightly more complicated.
So here I was in Spain. Hoping to freshen up my language skills a little, since one of my prime objective here was really to get pretty fluent in another language.
I was initially really happy. That is such an opportunity for me. Not only can I learn 1, but 2 languages, during my stay here. I will become not trilingual but quadrilingual.
Well 4 months later, and my frustration really starts kicking in, since I still cannot communicate in spanish very well. So let alone Catalan. I have learnt to my expense that the learning curve, is in fact really pretty steep.
I have to say my spanish is getting better, and I do feel like I understand a lot more. I have gone from nearly nothing to a reasonable understanding level. And do hope to become pretty fluent in the next few months if I keep working hard on it.
But learning spanish is already pretty hard work by itself. So how about the Catalan. I have been here for 4 month and have hardly had time to learn the local language.
It seems here that in Barcelona, over 80% of the people have Catalan as they mother tongue. And as long as you stick to Spanish, you will never really be fully accepted. Simple things really, you can’t read the sign posts, you can’t read a menu, news papers, when people here talk between each other. Which means that it is always that little bit more difficult to get yourself understood, and to understand what is going on around you.
Spanish in Barcelona is a bit like talking English in a none English speaking country. It will be the language people use for work, but by no means the local language. It is already an effort for most people to talk Spanish, so let alone English or French.
So this is my own experience about this. But what does it really show about the Catalan situation in general. Well from my foreign point of view, it feels like it is much more difficult to adapt in this area than a Spanish talking Area such as Madrid. And that therefore a much less welcoming area to foreigners. And the more foreign people move in, the more the Catalan people seem to use the Catalan language to protect themself against ‘us’, the none Catalan talking people.
Is it very much the ‘us’ thing. Those who talk it, and those who don’t.
Spanish people, will learn it pretty quickly, so will be more easily accepted, than those who first need to learn Spanish, and then Catalan.
It is just an extra step to make, in order to be accepted here.
Of course, you don’t really need Catalan to live here. If the people here, have an interest in you or in a skill you have, they will adapt to you. It is probably a similar thing in all places in the world. In order to be part of a group, you need them to need you, or else you need to be able to communicate easily with them and they will easily find a use in you. It is the first thing really, if you make that effort, then they may try and do the same with you. And if you talk they language, then they will need you to communicate with the others, since they wont be able to talk the other languages.
And this really shows the importance of language in all conflicts around the world. And of all conflicts in general. The ones who can communicate with the one in power will then become the middle man, and will be the one which everyone needs.
This got me researching a little and I found interresting facts about languages:
By far the most spoken would be chinese mandari, although I thought it was english [1].
For French, though it really depends on how you count the number of people who can talk the language. Since a lot more people use French as they working language than as they mother tongue [2].
Catalan is spolen by over 11 million, which is more than Swidish, and nearly as much as Greek, and is placed 75th in the list of most spoken native mother tongue according to [3]
All this is pretty interresting and new to me. There are many other things which come into account when arriving in a country, and trying to adapt. And much more to the Catalan issue and politics than the language. But as far as I am concerned, and for now I will just have to put my head down, and study as much as I can, and as quickly as I can, and as many languages as I can. And maybe if others did the same then this would change a lot in the way people see things, and communicate.