Do You Speak My Language?
We all know that in Spain people speak Spanish. However, if a tourist winds up in a small town in the region of Galicia and has to ask a question, the person he asks may reply in what the tourist thinks is Portuguese. He'll probably check his map twice to make sure he's still in Spain. Yup. It's just that the person in the street speaks Galician, or gallego (Galego in Galician!).
When the Romans came merrily marching and building their roads through Spain they brought that wonderful invention with them that would end up uniting most of western Europe - Latin. The locals learned to speak it and with time it lost much resemblance to that classical Latin of Cicero's "O tempora, o mores!". It gradually evolved into Galician-Portuguese by the twelfth century. After the independence of Portugal at the end of that century, Galician and Portuguese started to diverge. Galician, however, still had a certain status and was used as a literary language in Castile until the Catholic Kings (Isabel and Fernando) decided to truly unify Spain and made Castilian the written language of the new kingdom. Galician stopped being used as a written language and was relegated to the lower classes as a spoken language. After that it entered its own Dark Ages, where the nobles would speak and write Castilian Spanish and their servants and serfs would only speak Galician, which lost its spelling and grammar rules after becoming an oral language during many centuries.
However, along the middle of the nineteenth century Rosalía de Castro was born in nearby Padrón. She wrote poetry in her native Galician, and along with some other important authors and agitators, their efforts resulted in the Renaissance (Rexurdimento) of the Galician language. Unfortunately, that budding cultural rebirth was crushed after the Spanish Civil War, when Franco decreed (just like Isabel and Fernando) that Castilian Spanish was the only official language, and that everyone had to speak it. In the first years after Franco's coming into power, Castilian was the only language anyone was allowed to speak in public. After a while, though, that law was relaxed, but the regional languages still had no role in public life. That meant that if you wanted to climb and try to make a better life, you had to start speaking Castilian. Most people who lived in cities ended up speaking Castilian and now that's where regional languages are least spoken.
After Franco's death, each region that had its own language had it become co-official with Castilian, and now kids in Cataluña learn Catalán; in Valencia, Valenciano; in the Basque Country, Euskera; and in Galicia, Galician. Those languages which had been mostly oral, such as Euskera and Galician, regained orthographical rules. They were slightly unnatural because the linguists who did it tried to unify the different oral versions of the same language. But as the generations go by and the languages are studied in school, people gradually speak the written versions, as well. Not everyone still knows their regional language correctly, though, including those who should know how to speak it, like the mayor of Valencia. At the opening of the Fallas, the local festival based on fire and fireworks, the mayor gave a speech and made so many gaffes in Valenciano that she was made an object of ridicule on Internet. Not good. But it simply shows that the local languages were mostly spoken by the lower classes, while the upper classes and city dwellers spoke Castilian.
So, if a foreign tourist should venture into the villages of Galicia (which can be beautiful), he should expect to hear people speaking differently. But he shouldn't worry, he hasn't crossed a border unexpectedly.
When the Romans came merrily marching and building their roads through Spain they brought that wonderful invention with them that would end up uniting most of western Europe - Latin. The locals learned to speak it and with time it lost much resemblance to that classical Latin of Cicero's "O tempora, o mores!". It gradually evolved into Galician-Portuguese by the twelfth century. After the independence of Portugal at the end of that century, Galician and Portuguese started to diverge. Galician, however, still had a certain status and was used as a literary language in Castile until the Catholic Kings (Isabel and Fernando) decided to truly unify Spain and made Castilian the written language of the new kingdom. Galician stopped being used as a written language and was relegated to the lower classes as a spoken language. After that it entered its own Dark Ages, where the nobles would speak and write Castilian Spanish and their servants and serfs would only speak Galician, which lost its spelling and grammar rules after becoming an oral language during many centuries.
However, along the middle of the nineteenth century Rosalía de Castro was born in nearby Padrón. She wrote poetry in her native Galician, and along with some other important authors and agitators, their efforts resulted in the Renaissance (Rexurdimento) of the Galician language. Unfortunately, that budding cultural rebirth was crushed after the Spanish Civil War, when Franco decreed (just like Isabel and Fernando) that Castilian Spanish was the only official language, and that everyone had to speak it. In the first years after Franco's coming into power, Castilian was the only language anyone was allowed to speak in public. After a while, though, that law was relaxed, but the regional languages still had no role in public life. That meant that if you wanted to climb and try to make a better life, you had to start speaking Castilian. Most people who lived in cities ended up speaking Castilian and now that's where regional languages are least spoken.
After Franco's death, each region that had its own language had it become co-official with Castilian, and now kids in Cataluña learn Catalán; in Valencia, Valenciano; in the Basque Country, Euskera; and in Galicia, Galician. Those languages which had been mostly oral, such as Euskera and Galician, regained orthographical rules. They were slightly unnatural because the linguists who did it tried to unify the different oral versions of the same language. But as the generations go by and the languages are studied in school, people gradually speak the written versions, as well. Not everyone still knows their regional language correctly, though, including those who should know how to speak it, like the mayor of Valencia. At the opening of the Fallas, the local festival based on fire and fireworks, the mayor gave a speech and made so many gaffes in Valenciano that she was made an object of ridicule on Internet. Not good. But it simply shows that the local languages were mostly spoken by the lower classes, while the upper classes and city dwellers spoke Castilian.
So, if a foreign tourist should venture into the villages of Galicia (which can be beautiful), he should expect to hear people speaking differently. But he shouldn't worry, he hasn't crossed a border unexpectedly.
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