Hi everybody, my name is Gabi and today we’re going to talk about an interesting but controversial subject.
I recently spoke to an acquaintance of mine who happens to be Italian, specifically from Catania, Sicily, about a linguistic and social aspect of Catalonia which I always found to be true and interesting.
This is a controversial subject for many, but as I have come to realize there is always a modicum of truth to be found in controversies and why not sometimes there is even a treasure of wisdom to be found in social and linguistic controversies such as this one.
My acquaintance moved a year ago to Barcelona. He doesn’t speak Spanish very well yet, but he hasn’t failed to notice that there is something off-putting about customer service here. Specifically, in Catalan small businesses.
And what is it exactly, you might wonder?
Well, he says that whenever he goes to buy food to take away from any of those smaller family-run businesses which have small pre-cooked and prepared dishes to take away he encounters the same problem. It goes like this: He first enters the shop and queues up in silence while he looks at the food on display to choose from.
When it is his turn to order he smiles and tries to proceeds to try to order a dish from the employee. He realizes right away that his lack of command in Spanish and Catalan deems him as a very unattractive customer. Possibly regarded as a tourist. Very unpopular thing to be here.
The fact that he cannot read the room yet, that is, the fact that he cannot understand the local social clues in order to know what is actually going on in the room, in a social sense, that is, he cannot read between the lines, makes him stand out from the crowd in a bad way. Well, we could say that there is some prejudice here I guess.
The employee at the counter would typically look at him with disdain and with a grin in their face and keep on talking to the other employee who’s probably standing next to her.
The fact that my friend is incapable of reading the social situation correctly and adjust his behavior and tune his language skills in order to get this food in public makes him feel rejected very often. And this isn’t just a linguistic matter, but it is rather a socio-linguistic matter.
But what is it exactly? Is it an example of xenophobia?
It can’t be racism, for the man in question is caucasian. You could say he looks Mediterranean just like any other Spaniard.
So it must be xenophobia, right?
What is xenophobia?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary xenophobia is : the fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign. Including a foreign culture or accent. Etc. Okay, interesting stuff.
Anything that seems to be foreign, or strange or different would be a reason for somebody to reject this person. That is xenophobiaNow, is it true that speaking Catalan takes you further in the eyes of the locals? I would definitely say yes with capital letters after living here for over 20 years.
How true is it that those small businesses wish to cater only for locals? Well, very true in my experience I would say.
Is it a good business idea? I don’t think so, but hey if you wish to preserve the identity of the districts this is a good mandatory linguistic restriction, right?
Let’s go back to the story though.
Okay, when he realizes he’s not being well-catered for, he just decides to leave the shop and look for food elsewhere. He feels disrespected and forgotten. He feels the slap of indifference right across his face.
Why is he perceiving in the air that he doesn’t fit? Why? He speaks enough to order food. After all, it is a business and presumably they want customers, right? Mmm.... But ideally, what customers?
I want to put a reference frame to his experience and essentially give you an example of why he might be onto something after all.
I worked many years in the harbor of Barcelona. I worked in a Catalan family-run business. We had a few boats which would tour tourists around the port and along the coastline of Barcelona. When I started working there I noticed a lot of local families would come to take their children on the smaller tours with us.
It had been a family tradition for hundreds of families since 1892 when the company was first founded. Most of the families would speak exclusively Catalan and likewise would indirectly demand employees to speak to them back in Catalan. That was a huge unspoken rule. It was understood it had been that way for more than a hundred years and it was not going to change.
By the same token, my boss, his wife, the accountant, her fiancé and most of the other workers spoke Catalan as well. So obviously people would greet and talk to you in a favorable and familiar manner if you spoke Catalan. They were in a safe space. So to speak.
So, understanding this truth made me realize how history sculpts the hearts and lives of people through generations. How in the times of the Spanish dictatorship Catalan was prohibited and it was the language spoken only within family settings. How polarized and politicized this society is in respect to linguistic matters has become is still mind-blowing to me.
Interestingly, the fact that a newcomer speaks Catalan is not enough. A person who values this language and its social and cultural heritage will indeed integrate this society primarily by means of speaking the language.
But there has to be cultural transformations as well in the person that are not readily available or that are not acquired in a classroom or academic setting, but that can only be understood and properly comprehended through vital experience.
And this is key gentlemen. It is the emotional experience in a linguistic environment which leaves an emotional imprint in the hearts of those who speak a language.
We must understand that languages do not grow in vacuum but grow in cultural spaces.
In other words, there is knowledge to be found and learned when you live in a foreign country that can only be learned there, in the place. By means of befriending a local and making him or her become your best friend.
Or even better, to make a closely nit circle of friends. With all the emotional upheavals that having close friendships like that entail. We need to laugh and cry in that language. You need to truly live it in order to make truly live within you.
What is that mean? Well, it essentially means that you are not to only speak the language with a 100% accuracy, but understand and commit to the culture wholeheartedly.
Here you have a little backstory of how the reverse can be true too.
How does someone who speak Catalan as their mother tongue face the desintegration of his language and its revival decades later?
By means of migration.
I will talk about my dad’s case.
My dad is Catalan. He is a Barcelona man, born and bred. He met my mother writing letters to each other via a pen pal service very much in vogue at the time. He brought my mother to Barcelona and married her at the Corpus Christi Church in September 1969, in the Gràcia district.
Six months later after their marriage my mum realized she did not like it here, she was very home sick, and decided it was time to come back to Colombia to be with her family. She was pregnant with my elder sister.
My father basically followed her and settled in Colombia with my mother and his family-in-law.
My siblings and me were born and grew up there until a huge financial crisis erupted and we had to come back, as it were, to the roots, around 20 years ago. As I developed a liking for foreign languages while growing up I would ask my dad to speak to me in Catalan.
He would teach me some basic vocabulary and phrases that I would retain for a few days and then forget. I would occasionally hear him talk to Gloria, his sister, in Catalan over the phone. My dad was born in 1947 in Barcelona on Avellà St. n.6. 2-1; very close to the Cathedral of Barcelona.
He was actually baptized in the cathedral as his mother knew a lady who belonged to the upper class who helped her take my dad and get him baptized there. His mum in exchange would sometimes take care of the carving of the Santo Cristo de Lepanto in a chapel of the Cathedral.
My dad’s mum became pregnant from this wealthy man, who was my grandad. He was originally from Santa Coloma de Farners and he already had his own family. My grandad owned several antic shops in Barcelona.
Needless to say this man never left his own family for my grandmother who was just an affair to him. But on his behalf I will say that he still offered to give my dad his last name, but my grandmother wouldn’t take it.
His mum couldn’t take care of him as a single mother so she sent my dad when he was still a baby to a place called Jardins de la Maternitat on Les Corts avenue with what I believe are called Sisters of Charity or nuns of charity, which was kind of a foster home or orphanage for children with no parents or single mums who had to work and had no money.
He lived there till he turned 10 and then between the ages of 10 to 16 he was sent to a type of religious foster home called Llars Anna Girondella de Mundet, Casa de Caritat, in La Vall d’Hebron, Horta, with the Salesian priests.
My dad went to Colombia and had to learn a new variety of Spanish and adapt himself to a new culture. Which isn’t negative per se, but he had to lose his accent in order to fit in the Colombian society and gain new customs and ways of behaving in society as it was expected back then.
Four decades later he returned to his native city and had a reverse culture shock. He had to come back to his original way of speaking Spanish and regain fluency in Catalan, which admirably he did do. In the world of languages everything is possible. He not learned again his linguistic skills but he was fully employed and worked for another decade till retirement.
So much like my Italian acquaintance and my dad had to regain his original Spanish accent and he also had to hone his linguistic skills in his mother tongue too. So he had to practice enough and remember Catalan again.
This shows that people not only have to learn a new language but have to live in the place to understand what is culturally admissible and even desirable in every given situation. It’s the unspoken rule of languages, I guess.
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