Catalan language in danger?

The European Romantic movement virtually rescued Catalan culture
and language just as it was in danger of disappearing...

I read that Catalan was revived in the 19th century after approaching extinction. It ranks with Hebrew as one of the few near-extinct languages that has been successfully revived. The Irish have not been as successful with Gaelic.

Well, as for Hebrew, Hebrew actually /became/ extinct, except for its use for liturgical purposes (like the current use of Latin), so hence in the case of Hebrew, an actually /extinct/ (not just near-extinct) language was successfully revived altogether.

Dear Brennus,

Until the 1930s over half the population was still monolingual in Catalan (they couldn't speak a word of Spanish). My grand-dad died in 1976 and was totally monlingual (he could understand Spanish but I never head him utter a word in that language).
My father speaks far better Catalan than Spanish and I was first fluent in Catalan as were my wife and two children who never spoke a word of Spanish until they went to school. Catalan is the first language in all Catalan primary schools although children also have to learn Spanish.
Catalan was the only official language until the early 18th century when Castille imposed its language after the "War of Succession".

It is true that a great part of the elites began to write in Spanish earlier in the 16th century (people tend to forget that Spanish was the "international language" in that century (before French became the international language and long long before English.) Even some Portuguese wrote their literary works in Spanish in that period.

What happened in the 19th century (Renaixença movement= Rebirth) is that Catalan became the main language of Catalan writers again.
75% of the population of the city of Barcelona is now fluent in Catalan. Catalan has 8 million speakers and is the main western European language without a state. Nevertheless it is co-official in three Spanish autonomous regions. Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencian Country. In Valencia it is officialy known as Valencian although the Valencian Academy of the Language acknowledges it is the same language as Catalan (with minor differences similar as those between British and American English.)
What happened during Franco's Regime (1939-1975) is that a few million Spaniards from other Spanish Castilian-speaking regions settled in the Catalan-speaking countries. That is the reason why Catalan was down to 60% in 1975 whilst over 90% of the younger Catalans are now bilingual (Catalan-Spanish). Catalan is the language of the home for more than half the population and growing. Spanish is also very strong, specially in the main cities and is a major threat to Catalan although Catalan culture is very strong.
The situation is much closer to Quebec than anywhere else (French in a mostly English speaking country, in that case).
I don't have much time and I trust you will have understood the situation.

Jordi please tell me if I go to Barcelona...do they speak spanish?

And how many ?

Gracias

From what I've heard (don't take my word for it), primarily Castilian is spoken in Barcelona itself, due to individuals from much of the rest of Spain moving into it, while in most of Catalonia outside Barcelona itself, primarily Catalan is spoken in everyday usage. However, that's just what I've heard from a friend of my, who's a Catalan-language sympathizer and like, but who currently's been living in the US (even though he plans to (soon) move to Spain, for various reasons).

Jordi,

Thanks for your post. I also agree with you about the "Quebec analysis" regarding the status of Catalan in Spain and that of French in Quebec. The situation seems very similar.

It's interesting to note that al of the Catholic missionaries who founded the San Diego mission in 1769 were Catalonians, Father Junipero Serra, Fray Luis Jayme, Fray Vicente Fuster and Father Francisco Dumetz. Fray Jayme was killed in 1775 when the Diegueño Indians attacked and burned down the mission (though a little of it is still visible today).

To most students of American history in the U.S., however, they are known simply as "Spaniards". While the 18th century may have been a bright period for Catalonian missionaries, it seems to have been a dark period in the political life of the Catalonian people and their language (Catalan).

"The situation is much closer to Quebec than anywhere else (French in a mostly English speaking country, in that case)."

It's like Québec in some ways, true, but there are a few differences in their situations.

French has been the official language of Canada (along with English) since 1867 when the country was formed. Prior to that it, it had official status in the colony of Lower Canada ("Bas-Canada" what is today Québec).

So, despite continuous stress on the language, it has always retained its legal status in Canada though it would be naive to pretend that French-Canadians, especially outside Québec, were not always under considerable pressure to "anglicize." As French speakers represent a small minority on a North American continent dominated by English, such pressure has been constant.

Ironically, if the number of French speakers is continuing to decline in Canada and Québec, French Canadians now only have themselves to blame: they have gone from having the highest birthrate in Canada to the lowest. English Canadians don't have a very high birthrate either but their numbers are bolstered by immigration; most immigrants coming to Canada are only interested in learning English.

Sorry : I'm (partially) off-topic but this is an answer to Brennus's post in an already deleted thread about globalisation killing languages.

Brennus,

I'm not fully convinced by the 'this is not the United States' doing' argument : see, for instance, US perception of movie-making (films = commodities, not art) as a vector of cultural hegemony. I agree it's big money - not necessarily big government - that's now managing the movie industry, but the result is the same : it's the US' doing.

I strongly disagree with the view that globalisation (or English) is killing languages. There has never been so many ways to perpetuate or promote the use of existing languages : internet, travel, business opportunities, studies etc. Even artificial ones were created. I find the idea that only a handful of languages are to 'survive globalisation' really debatable, to say the least.

Last, the 1.000-year span is really ambitious to formulate anything ressembling a plausible prognostication about the future of languages. Look for example at the uncountable accidents of history. Do you think English was meant to reach its current status as early as 200 years ago ?

That said, all languages are likely to die out some day. Sometimes 'globalisation' (or globalisation with a gloomy outcome) kills the strongest ones (Latin) and favours challengers (Germanic) or thorough transformations (Romance).

greg, sorry about causing that thread to be deleted; I just thought it was part of the spamming, due to the sort of non-question which formed the initial post in the thread.

I would say the language you "hear" in Barcelona would roughly be 40% Catalan, 40% Spanish and the rest would be other languages (Arabic, Chinese, English and other European languages.) According to the Catalan law all signposts and shops are written in Catalan (at least). Catalan is definitely a "prestige" language in Catalonia right now.

The main reason is that Barcelona is home to many people but also one of the most important tourist destinations in Europe. Our first clients (tourists) happen to be people from Madrid itself who come for a weekend! Isn't Montréal full of English-speaking Canadian and American tourists in the streets? Barcelona has over 60.000 beds in hotels, for example.

This said, according to the census 90% of the younger residents are fully bilingual. There are some areas in the city (usually middle and upper class) where Catalan is the majority language whilst in other areas (middle and lower class) Spanish in the majority language. In both areas there is a minority Spanish or Catalan community.

More or less can be said of the other bigger cities (Tarragona, Girona and Lleida) although Catalan is even more important in those cities.

In towns of 50.000 people or less Catalan is heard everywhere by almost everybody and people learn Catalan after a very short time.

Anyways, greg, I myself think that English's day's are numbered, not because it will be replaced by something like Mandarin, Castilian, or Portuguese, but rather because I think that English itself will eventually fragment (contrary to popular opinion, English dialects in the US at least *are* spreading apart, *not* converging) into a number of separate languages, with literary English being left in a position similar to that of Latin during the Middle Ages, as the literary lingua franca, but not the spoken language of the general population (and thus, it would likely be a language which would have to be specifically *taught* to individuals, due to it not being spoken natively by most people). People are not speaking like the people they see and hear in the media, but rather they're actually having new sound shifts and like showing up in different areas, as shown by things like the Northern Cities Shift and the California Vowel Shift. The only exception to such being being Estuary English, which is busy destroying much of the preexisting dialect and register structure in the UK (both "high" forms and "low" forms), and replacing such with one new common dialect, and will very soon be a new "Standard English English" most likely.

That should be "to such being Estuary English" above; the two "being"s should just be one.

Travis : are you a moderator like mjd ?

greg, no, because were I a moderate, I would have a star by name, which I have not. I had just made a post to the thread saying I thought it was one of the spam posts, because of the wording of the original post in the thread, which resembled the other spam posts in often being somewhat non-question-ish in nature, as it was not actualy *asking* anything, but just making a random, badly worded comment, and that the thread should probably be deleted, and the thread was subsequently deleted after that.