Re: Odp: The relationship between Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 774
Date: 2000-01-05

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Gerry Reinhart-Waller
To: MIQUEL CABAL GUARRO ; cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2000 6:43 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: The relationship between Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese

Gerry:  Your above comment is most interesting!  Yes, Madrid is a city,
and a very lovely one at that, I might add.  And am I correct in
assuming that the geographic areas you speak about are more rural than
urban?  Possibly they are.  And what happens in rural areas is that the
folks there always think they're "just as good as the rest of the folks,
especially those in the city".  I know that's true here in the US so I'm
assuming it might also be true in Spain.
Gerry!
 
For goodness sake, do consult an encyclopedia or an atlas before you ask what is "possibly" true of Spain. According to recent estimates (1994), Catalan has some 4 million mother tongue speakers plus 5 million second or third language speakers. It's used by about 6000000 people in Spain and by many more in France, Andorra and elsewhere. The population of Barcelona (the capital of the autonomous region of Catalonia) is about 1.7 million -- it's the second largest city of Spain and the main commercial and industrial centre of the whole country. It's also one of the most beautiful cities of Europe, and its history goes back to Greek and Carthaginian colonisation in the 3rd century BC. Barcelona Province is the most industrialised and BY FAR the most populous province of Spain. The very last thing you could say of Catalonia is that it is backward or rural.
 
Gerry, no offence, but if you don't feel quite at home in California, please do not ask typically Californian questions. A well-educated Californian friend of mine was once showing me a log cabin in the San Gabriels. "Do you have log cabins in Europe?" she asked. I said I believed they were pretty common there. Her next question was, "Do you still have any Native Europeans in Europe?" A DANISH woman who had not spent more than ten years in LA asked me during a Cinco de Mayo celebration: "Do you have pinyatas in Poland?" This proves that Californian naivety is contagious.
 
Piotr