Fact is that inferior or not, Catalan and Galician are almost quaint
local color. No one outside Spain (and I'd be surprised if many
within Spain) learns any of both as a second language and
bilingualism appears more because Galician/Catalan speakers need to
learn Spanish, since aside from culture, Catalan and Galician can't
stand on their own as practical everyday use languages nowadays.
> Gerry,
> I suppose what Miquel suggests is that it took the
Galicians too long to take pride in their own language and to
realise that it was not really inferior to Castilian in any way. As
a result, Galician has undergone Castilianisation, losing some of
the features either shared with standard Portuguese or uniquely
Galician. Miquel uses rather strong terms
("annihilation", "devastate", "fight") to describe this situation --
well, his emotional involvement is entirely understandable. I'd
prefer to discuss these things impassively, though my inner voice
always tells me to sympathise with speakers of endangered languages.
>
> Miquel will no doubt answer your QUESTION, but
lest you should consider him biassed as a local patriot of
Catalonia, let me comment as an impartial foreigner: the language of
Catalonia is Catalan -- a most respectable Romance language with its
very own literary tradition going back to the end of the 12th
century. It rose to the dignity of a fully fledged literary language
in the 15th century, which was the golden age of Catalan poetry.
Linguistically, Catalan was pretty close to Provençal in the Middle
Ages; since then it has partially yielded to the influence of
Castilian Spanish and become more "Hispanic"; however, it has never
lost its cultural independence or its distinctive character. After a
long period of decline, Romanticism brought about its revival as a
literary language (La Renaixença) in the 19th century. It is now
recognised as one of the official languages of Spain (this status
was denied to it under Franco's dictatorship, which tended to
suppress all forms of regionalism) and you will find it listed as a
separate Romance language in all linguistic handbooks.
>
> If you know any Spanish and/or French, Gerry, try
to work this out as an exercise:
>
> Alguns catalans, perpètuament girats cap al
passat, pensen que el futur de Catalunya està tancat i barrat.
Altres catalans creuen que Catalunya és distingeix per la
possibilitat d'un continu renaixement: que Catalunya, en una
paraula, és eterna. Ni els uns ni els altres no fan el que haurien
de fer els catalans: tocar de peus a terra. Els primers, per manca
de confiança. Els darrers, per excés d'il·lusió.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
>
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