Talk:Languages of Catalonia

Infoboxes

I think the 2 infoboxes in this page are nothing but a distracting nuisance. Has anybody anything to say about it? --Jotamar (talk) 15:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree. MOUNTOLIVE _{fedeli alla linea} 02:45, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Wording

The 'Social origin' subsection was reading something like "The main cause of Spanish and Catalan social bilingualism in modern Catalonia is a large scale immigration process from the rest of Spain which occurred over the 20th century". That is not exact.

Actually, the previous wording was contradicting itself, because, after declaring immigration the main cause, read like this "Spanish has also been spoken as a second language by most Catalans, as it has been the only official language over long periods since the eighteenth century".

To illustrate a bit better my point, let's take a hypothetic scenario of Catalonia having had 0 immigration from other regions in Spain, would that mean that Catalans would not be bilingual in Spanish today? I dont think so. Actually, that scenario is not so hypothetical, since large rural parts of Catalonia had a basically 0 immigration from other parts of Spain, but that doesnt mean that the people living there are not bilingual.

Obviously there are a series of concomitant factors taking to the present situation. Immigration is one of those. I changed the text accordingly. MOUNTOLIVE _{fedeli alla linea} 18:16, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

The words bilingualism/multilingualism are used for 2 quite different meanings: individual multilingualism and social multilingualism. Any beginner's course on Sociolinguistics will tell you that. You can have social multilingualism with little individual multilingualism (example: Switzerland) or viceversa (example: any European country where English is extensively taught at schools).

A century ago, there was necessarily some amount of individual multilingualism in Catalonia (because Spanish was the only official language, except for short periods), but the amount of social multilingualism was very scant: basicly linked to the "floating population" of civil servants plus the very first cases of Spanish-speaking immigration. That is to say, a conversation in Spanish in the streets of a Catalan town was a rare event those days. It's not a rare event any more, due almost exclusively to massive immigrations in the XX century. The few upper-class people who switched to Spanish (I can recall now the Milà siblings) are re-learning Catalan like mad these days; they could have been the seed of a process of language shift, but when Franco died that seed died too.

Therefore, all your reasoning is simply invalid because you confuse social and individual multilingualism; the cause of social multilingualism is immigration. That, leaving aside that your text is vague and inconcrete. So I revert. --Jotamar (talk) 12:36, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Your point is interesting (the kinda rude tone wasnt necessary, but so far that is business as usual with you as well as with other Spanish -including Catalan- wikipedians trying hard in this wikipedia, so no wonder and no apologies needed, really).

However, your bold "due almost exclusively..." sounds like original research. And it is not addressing my point anyway. Take my example above: there are rural areas of Catalonia having received nearly 0 immigration from elsewhere in Spain. Yet we assume a fairly competent bilingualism there as well, especially among the youngest. So how does that cope with your "due to almost exclusively to massive immigrations in the XX century"?

It does not jive well at all.

I'll give you a clue: remember what the current Catalan political establishment says when asked why they won't allow Spanish teaching in the schools "això ja ho aprenen a la tele" (the subtext is "això, com totes les coses dolentes, ja ho aprenen a la tele"...but that is another story).

So please elaborate more satisfactorily... MOUNTOLIVE _{fedeli alla linea} 00:44, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

If we say that there is social bilingualism in Catalonia, we don't mean that that is true for every single town, hamlet and house... that should be obvious. If a town has received 0% immigration (a rare situation, even in Catalan rural areas) then the amount of social bilingualism will be 0%, that is to say, virtually all everyday interactions will be conducted in Catalan. I don't understand why this is not clear.

So what I'm trying to explain is simply this: the reason why Spanish is used extensively as an everyday language in Catalonia is because there are a lot of people for which Spanish is the mother tongue. The main reason why Spanish is the mother tongue of many people in Catalonia is because they (or their parents or grand-parents) have immigrated from Spanish speaking areas elsewhere in Spain; some other secondary reasons would be tourism, military posts, etc. And these facts are the base to say that Catalonia is bilingual today; we usually don't say that Holland is bilingual even if most people there can speak English. --Jotamar (talk) 14:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Needless to say that I am not denying the role of immigration (especially important in the nativization process of Spanish in Catalonia). However, the problem is with the (unreferenced) statement claiming that it is the main cause.

If we delve a bit, we will see the situation is quite more complex than that. Let me insist with the hypothetic scenario I presented before. Consider an hypothetic 0 or a marginal rate of immigration to Catalonia from elsewhere in Spain during the 20th century.

Would that imply that 21th century Catalans could not speak Spanish or have serious problems to? To illustrate a bit better, let's take a comparable scenario in Galicia, where immigration from elsewhere in Spain was basically 0 (that was, actually, an 'exporting' region). When you go to Galicia it is not the case that you have serious problems communicating because they can't speak Spanish, regardless the absence of immigration from elsewhere in Spain.

In other words, while immigration to Catalonia did play a role, that is not the main cause whatsoever. Catalans are industrious people who have commercial ties with elsewhere in Spain. They travel and do business abroad. They read Spanish papers and books. They watch and listen to Spanish TV and radio (well...unsurprisingly, last time I checked that, they were Spanish).

Therefore, the current wording is overstating one factor while downplaying the others, and that is not exact. MOUNTOLIVE _{fedeli alla linea} 16:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

What you are trying to describe has already been described and given a name: language shift. And yes, there is language shift in Galicia. There is language shift in the Valencian Community. There is language shift in the Rousillon. And in many other parts of the world. But there is no language shift in Catalonia.

I know all that because I've been living in Catalonia for quite a long time, and because I've made a course in Sociolinguistics, and I'm interested in the matter, and I've read quite a number of studies related to the subject. By the way, if I didn't try to reach consensus in the page, I wouldn't have written main cause but rather only cause.

Now, would you be so kind as to tell us what are your sources of information about the linguistic situation in Catalonia and why do you consider them superior to mine? Meanwhile, I have all the reasons to think that my information is very reliable, and therefore my wording is the one that should stay in the page. --Jotamar (talk) 17:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect. I am talking of bilingualism, not of language shift, so please do not misrepresent my point. Besides, you are wrong when you say that there is language shift in Galicia (there is very little of the thing outside Corunna and Vigo, probably even less than in Catalonia, besides, in the large cities the tide is turning as well).

Some would say that, on the face of problems to explain your point, you come back to the "I live in Catalonia" so-called reasoning. You living in Catalonia or you taking a course in Sociolinguistics is largely irrelevant at this point.

Some would say also that you have reverted without reading my point, because you are not addressing not even one of the questions I posed.

So, please, either provide something more convincing that "I live in Catalonia and I enjoy sociolinguistics". I made pretty specific questions, but you have declined to address them.

You have one more chance to explain yourself, this time more convincingly, please MOUNTOLIVE _{fedeli alla linea} 19:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC).

I think I have addressed all your questions; please point out which ones remain unanswered. besides, I've sourced my main cause claim, so you can get more relaxed. --Jotamar (talk) 17:10, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

[indent] The source is not too bad. I mean, it still has quite a xenophobic subtext ("an immigration that would have been even larger had not whole trainloads of newcomers been turned back prior to their arrival" what on earth is this guy talking about?? who stopped those "trainloads" (rather unfortunate wording coming from a Jewish, huh?)??) but it still has some value.

However, the quote is not saying that the main cause for bilingualism is immigration, as the text claims.

Look, I will do a last try to explain myself better, I just hope you make the effort yourself as well to try to understand my point, which is not so complicated anyway:

How does immigration explain the fact that the locals of small-to-middle populations virtually untouched by immigration from the rest of Spain speak Spanish? (I'm thinking the likes of Tremp, Capellades, Caldes de Malavella...). Are you suggesting that marginal rates of immigration (this kind of villages may well have had a 0 to 10% immigration from elsewhere in Spain after all) can dramatically change so much the local custom? I dont think you are, you must be smarter than that.

So, there has to be more decissive factors. Unsurprisingly, yes, there are. Basically I am thinking of mass media. Catalans are not isolated from the rest of Spain as your reasoning is suggesting. According to what the text is presenting now, it sounds like should Catalonia had not had any immigration from the rest of Spain, people there would not speak Spanish, something which is non-sense.

Immigration did flooded the outskirts of Barcelona, but whatever consequences it had in and around BCN we can not extend to the whole region if we are to be true to the facts. There are many factors and conceding the role of "main" to immigration is not true outside of BCN, as per this reasoning. Whatever explanation works for BCN-metro is not necessarily working for the rest, because BCN-metro has little in common with anywhere else in Catalonia. See my point?

Am I making any sense? MOUNTOLIVE _{fedeli alla linea} 18:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Let's proceed point by point:

• This guy, Joshua Fishman, is one of the most respected scholars worldwide in the matters that we are discussing, like social bilingualism. I'll skip some of your comments about him.

I guess you are right. Still, this gentleman sounds slightly xenophobic and, worse, is definitly ill-informed when he mentions "trainloads turned back". Which "trainloads" were turned back? It sounds like, despite all his general expertise, he is not very well informed about this particular case.

I've heard several times the story of the returned trains, from different people... anyway, its importance for the current discussion is close to zero. --Jotamar (talk) 16:52, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

• The text is not stating the main cause is immigration? You are very demanding indeed! The text does not state that literally, but the implication is straightforward: after the 1950-75 period, a large Spanish speaking community was born in Catalonia, one that could not be integrated any more into the Catalan-speaking (narrow) majority. By the way, after 1975 immigration from the rest of Spain didn't stop, it just slowed down. For instance, I am a Spanish-speaking immigrant in Catalonia, and I came well after 1975; I know many others like me.

The text is stating, literally "The main cause of Spanish and Catalan social bilingualism in modern Catalonia is a large scale immigration process from the rest of Spain". That is broad paint indeed.

• Tremp or Capellades untouched by immigration? This sounds like a COPE-type phantasy. To find a place in Catalonia untouched by immigration, you must go to very, very remote hamlets. Anyway, you seem so convinced about this point that I'd really like to know where you are taking this wrong data from. Perhaps you are forgetting that immigration from inside Catalonia after 1950 did include Spanish speakers, as the Spanish-speaking community was beginning to grow. In fact, working-class people usually migrate a lot between towns, and in Catalonia the working class is mainly made up of Spanish-speaking immigrants (or children or grand-children of immigrants).

You dont have to go to 'remote hamlets' to find immigration rates of 0 to 10% from the rest of Spain to small-to-medium populations like these ones I mentioned. You only have to check their census evolution and you will notice no sudden population bumps like the ones in BCN and the smaller metropolitan areas.

That is because Catalonia is a fairly extensive region and large parts of it are rural: these didnt need any kind of immigration from elsewhere (other than one month of harvesting).

Besides, your analysis seems to confer an extraordinary, nearly miraculous, power to whatever quantity of immigration of Spanish speakers. ::While higher rates do have an impact, pretending that a 5% or even 10% immigration could change the linguistics of the rest of the community is definitely incorrect. Now I am overdoing it myself, but, if such a thing was correct, we would have entire bilingual communities in Catalan and...Urdu or Arabic. There has to be something else besides the mere numbers. And that's what I am saying since the beginning: immigration alone will not do the trick without the equally important mass media and else.

This point needs a lot of elaboration:

• Census data must be read very carefully, because once any Spanish immigrant has lived for some months in any part of Catalonia, he will be legally a Catalan and counted as a Catalan for most statistical accounts (it's different for immigrants from outside Spain). A process like this was by no means unusual: an immigrant arrived in Barcelona and after some time got informed about a particular opportunity elsewhere in Catalonia, and moved there. Maybe he kept moving to other towns, as immigrants typically do. All these movements will be counted in statistics as Catalan internal migrations.

• But even more important: as time has passed, many people born in a Spanish-speaking immigrant family in working-class districts around Barcelona, and in other Catalan cities, move around Catalonia too. Many of them have grown in a Spanish-only speaking environment and even so they count exclusively as Catalans for all statistical purposes... they were born here. I don't think there are any statistic sources for internal migrations which consider data such as province where your parents/grandparents were born or born in a Spanish-speaking working class district... In other words, in census data, to find out the number of Spanish-speaking immigrants, you should consider not only immigration from the rest of Spain, but also at least 50% of immigration from inside Catalonia... probably well above 50%, I'd say more something like 80-90%.

• And of course Spanish-speaking immigrants have something that puts them apart from Urdu speakers: they speak an official language, one that natives speak too, as a second language, and one that they know is pervasively used in Catalonia. For these reasons, wherever they go, even to rural areas, they can manage to live not speaking a single word in Catalan. Those reasons reinforce bilingualism, but don't create it in the first place.

• Another factor difficult to measure are the higher birth rates in the working classes, which in Catalonia mean higher birth rates among Spanish speakers.--Jotamar (talk) 16:49, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

• What you suppose I am saying is exact: if there hadn't been any immigration into Catalonia, Spanish would not be a mother tongue here, except for some already mentioned minorities (civil servants, the military, etc.); it would be just a common second language, as it already was. Of course, one could imagine that in that case, a process of language shift would have started, similar to the ones in Galician cities, or in Valencia and Alicante. This process typically begins with the urban upper classes and then it trickles down to the rest of the urban population, and eventually (after centuries) to all the population. As I mentioned before, there was a very small seed of such a process in Catalonia in the early 20th century, but the seed died no later than Franco died. The cause of this typically slow process, by the way, is not watching TV or reading the press, but much more complex questions related mainly to political and economic power. --Jotamar (talk) 15:11, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Basically agree here.

I understood your point since the beginning, I hope you see mine. I will work out another wording trying to compromise. MOUNTOLIVE _{fedeli alla linea} 20:11, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Immigration

Immigration brings to mind economic immigration from abroad. This in reinforced when talking about Urdu or Maghrebi Arabic. Therefore, including Spanish here is very much misleading.

If immigration from America is meant, "American Spanish" is better to reflect it. If "immigration" from the rest of Spain is thought of, this is simply not correct, for two reasons:

1) This is not "immigration" neither in the technical nor in the received wisdom sense of the world. It would be internal migration instead.

2) Remarkable fluxes of internal migration into Catalonia originating from the rest of Spain ended approx. 30 or 40 years ago. Their descendants have been raised for the most part in Catalan by the Catalan education system (in place since the early 1980s, that is 30 years ago).

3) Unless an ethnic nationalist concept is followed in the article, it is not possible to label people indefinitely like "internal migrants" if they are born and raised in Catalonia, regardless of their parents origins.

Dear Jotamar, by reading this talk page I can see that you seem to think your wording is very difficult to improve. Therefore, I ask you, to please improve it with a different wording of your own which is acceptable both to you and to me. In the meantime, I am using "American Spanish" which is more consistent with the rest of languages listed and the received wisdom. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.73.63.7 (talk) 10:23, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, first of all, dear sir with an IP, thank you for discussing your points in a very reasoned way. Not everyone does that. Nevertheless:

1. It's a bit irksome to spend a lot of time discussing a small point that is not central to the page.
2. Info boxes should only contain those points that don't need many explanations. When an edit war about an info box arises, the best practice is to simply take the controversial points out of the box. The regular text in the page is the place to put all of the needed clarifications to avoid ambiguities or misleading statements.
3. Your point (1) is a personal definition of immigration. My definition would be different, and more important, this page deals with a territory called Catalonia, so it makes sense that internal migration here means migration from inside Catalonia.
4. I could refute your point (2) just by listing the dozens of recent immigrants form the rest of Spain that I know in person.

So I proceed to take the controversial segment out of the infobox. Jotamar (talk) 17:31, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Totally agree that infoboxes are like fresh bait for bickering. Indeed, you have saved the both of us a lot of words by simply removing this from the infobox.

Less is more.

Now, since we seem to be able to discuss this with a cold head, I would like to point your attention to the same infobox and Catalan described there as a "minority language".

When -in practical terms- the GenCat is basically monolingual in Catalan, most local media are either monolingual in Catalan or have at least a Catalan edition, the Parliament life is monolingual in Catalan (save Ciutadans), the education system is monolingual in Catalan (save for some hours of Spanish and English), there are important pockets of population in rural Catalonia (away from BCN) monolingual in Catalan (save for the language of seasonal immigrant labourers), most public life takes place in Catalan and so on....

...on the face of all this, dont you think that to write that "Catalan is a minority language in Catalonia" in the same fashion as Aranese is a gross overstatement? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.73.63.7 (talk) 19:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, let's take it out too. --Jotamar (talk) 13:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

There was a problem in the template that made it show the {{{vernacular}}} parameter into the Minority language label, but my intention was to include Catalan and Aranese as Vernacular languages of Catalonia. I think this is a good way to remark the difference that the Constitution and the Government makes between llengua pròpia and llengua oficial. I am putting it back again, because I understand that the disagreement was in terms of qualifying them as "minority languages". --SMP - talk (en) - talk (ca) 18:55, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

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