The Adjusted Normal, 1. Expresing Our Differences.

This new continuation of my blog of the plague year will continue with numbers. Until when, I don't know. Perhaps until there's a change in the situation one way or another. Or perhaps until I'm fed up with it, and you, too. Let's admit it, these are not normal times. Meanwhile, life, and its usual problems, continues.

Language problems, for example, and I'm not talking about the difficulty to learn English or other foreign languages. People tend to refer to the language spoken in Spain as "Spanish", but it's not. The majority language spoken here is Castilian. The idea of "Spanish" was encouraged by Franco to maintain the image of unity and One Spain. There are many other languages spoken here, and they all make up the Spanish languages of Spain. 

There are three other co-official languages in Spain: Galician, Catalonian, and Basque. (Galego, Catalán, and Euskera.) Galego looks like a cross between Portuguese and Castilian, Catalán like someone mixed up French, Italian, and Castilian, and Euskera just stands out on its own, with no relation to anybody or anything. Galego is spoken in Galicia, and in townships in Asturias, León, and Zamora that are close to the regional border. Catalán is spoken in Catalunya, and has official variants spoken in the Balearic Islands and Valencia. Then, there are areas in nearby Aragón and Murcia that speak it, as well as in the eastern Pyrenees of France. Euskera is spoken in the Basque region and Navarra, as well as the Basque areas of France, and my hat goes off to those speakers for dominating such a difficult language. 

Apart from those, there is Aranés, a variety of Occitan, in the Vall d'Arán, way up in the Catalán Pyrenees. It is now a co-official language in that valley, though speakers don't reach even the five thousand count. When we were in the area, six years ago, we saw signs written in Aranés and it seemed a strange variant of Catalán. But we didn't hear anyone speak it. Nor Catalán, for that matter.

Then there are the dying languages that aren't co-official and aren't taught in schools. There's Aragonés in Aragón, Bable in Asturias (though this is healthier, with traffic signs in the language), Extremeño in northern Extremadura, and Llionés in León. Some would argue that these are dialects, rather than languages in themselves. 

Those recognized as dialects are Canarian; Andalúz; Cantabrian; Eonavian, in the area of the Eo river on the border between Asturias and Galicia; Benasquese, from the valley of the river Benasque in Huesca; Churro in the interior of the Valencia region; Murciano, which is a borderline language on its own; Manchego; Riojano; and Fala de Jálama, spoken near the Portuguese border in Extremadura. 

The conflict arises in those who still worship the Franco years. These are the people who will proudly say they speak Spanish, and ask others to do the same. The party Vox, for example, would do away with the autonomous regions and co-officiality of other languages, which would have all protections stripped away, being limited to a class or two in schools, and private usage, only. There are Castilian speakers in Galicia that complain that their children are taught in Galego at school, arguing that the home language of their children is Castilian and demand to be taught in it. They call themselves true bilinguals, and have an association, Galicia Bilingüe, which has joined a right-wing association, Hablamos Español. 

This association calls for non-discrimination of those who speak Castilian, and asking for Castilian to be the vehicular language in just about everything, even down to calling towns by their old, Castilian, names again, such as Rianxo, Rianjo, or Lleida, Lérida. They consider themselves discriminated against because they speak Castilian, while living in areas that have a second, co-official language, which it seems, they don't want to learn. Yet, they want to learn English, for example, which is so much more different than any Spanish language. 

Call me biased because I grew up speaking Galego at home, but I would like to keep things co-official. Castilian is an international language. But learning Galego makes it easier to understand Portuguese, which is also spoken by millions of people elsewhere. And learning two or three languages from birth helps the brain grown differently, and makes it easier to learn other languages to communicate with other people. I pity those who only speak one language and who don't want to learn any others because theirs is "just as good," whether those people be Castilian speakers, English speakers, or French speakers, or of any other language. 

Yet Europe has a slew of other languages no one knows of, most of which are dying. France, for example, has French as the only official language, but there are many others. They are: Breton, Alsatian, French Flemish, Lorraine Franconian, Corsican, Oïl (divided into 13 variants, including the official French), Occitan (divided into 7 variants), Catalán, Basque, Franco-Provençal (divided into 6 variants) and Ligurian. 

Then we have the case of Italy, which official language, Italian, was only imposed on the entire country after unification in the nineteenth century. The language spoken in Florence, birthplace of Dante Alighieri, was chosen to be the official language. A Venetian will not understand a word of Sicilian, and vice versa (and, despite Sicily having been under Spanish domination for a few hundred years, I can't understand Sicilian, either). 

This diversity should be applauded and encouraged. Yet, many of these languages are down to a few thousand, and even a few hundred, speakers. They are on the endangered list, and many could care less, since they aren't seen as a help in modern times, when English and the majority languages are seen as the impulsers of communication. But these ways of speaking are a part of our soul, and we shouldn't lose them, or we lose our origins and ourselves. 

Life continues. I wish these languages would, too.