“As you know, I have been considering retiring for a long time, and one of the reasons, among others, is that I think my grandchildren are not going to understand their grandfather’s novels. This of Catalan In two or three generations it will have been lost, it will have become a strange thing for the majority of people. youth”. These are the words of a Catalan and Catalan writer with a long career behind him and who has collected a very important list of awards. This friend of mine expresses himself like this when the question of language appears in the conversation.
The novelist has long realized, like anyone who has ears, that increasingly the ‘lingua franca’ among young people is Spanish. We read it on Monday the 8th in this newspaper, which echoed the results of the Survey of the Youth of Catalonia, by the Generalitat. The report published by EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA explained how the use of Catalan has plummeted among young people in recent years. Among the examples, appeared the case of two cousins from Catalan-speaking families who, upon meeting, conversed with each other in Spanish. This habit is very widespread, and is reproduced among friends and in groups and gangs. The same thing happens when young people talk to someone for the first time, enter a bar, a store or any other establishment. What is ‘normal’, in the sense of neutral, is Spanish, while Catalan is connoted, which generates discomfort, that is, it presents a cost that only a conscious minority will assume. Thus, and also in other ways – not everything has to do with the behavior of youth -, it is like Catalan is getting smallerand it is increasingly less shared in Catalonia.
I do not see myself personally capable nor, in any case, do I have enough space to try to determine why this happens and in such an obvious way. I think, however, that is related to globalization. Globalization, with a strong cultural component, is putting enormous pressure on medium and small languages, even more so if they do not have a strong state that defends them with determination. Spanish, with hundreds of millions of speakers around the world, and official in a very long list of states, will perfectly resist globalization, it is even part of it and can benefit. Catalan, on the other hand, has it, in my opinion, much more complicated.
Naturally, having a State that, at best, is reluctant to accept Catalan and the diversity of identities as an asset, as a heritage, does not help either. Nor, for example, While Spanish is mandatory in Spain, Catalan is only a right, and often hidden, in Catalonia, the Valencian Country and the Balearic Islands.. Or the continuous questioning of teaching in Catalan. Even so, I have the impression that this is only part and certainly not the main part of the problem. Nor, at least for the moment, efforts to corner Catalan and make it disappear as soon as possible, driven by a broad flank of Spanish nationalism. A desire – to end a language, a culture and an identity – that represents atrocious moral turpitude. However, The independence of Catalonia would not guarantee the future of Catalan either. It would provide more tools to make policies in its defense, certainly, but it would not ensure anything.
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A similar and parallel phenomenon to what occurs among young people also occurs among people who come from outside -the demographic structure of Catalonia cannot be lost sight of when addressing the question of language- and they do not know Catalan. When they weigh costs and benefits they conclude that it is more worth learning Spanish (In the case of Latin Americans, they don’t even need it). It is more useful to them. Especially when the vast majority address them in Spanish (many Catalans continue to change languages in front of a stranger) and at the same time they see that all Catalans speak in Spanish, but only part of them in Catalan (monolingualism occurs only in Spanish). It is the same thing that any person born abroad in a Catalan-speaking family and who does not speak Spanish realizes. You will immediately discover, when you set foot in Catalonia, that Only with Catalan you cannot live normally, something that does not happen with Spanish.
The key, I think, lies in make Catalan a truly shared and country language, and work to make it more useful, more advantageous, something that reaches a multitude of different aspects. I include, in this idea of ’utility’, all those motives and reasons that can lead someone to invest time and energy in mastering it and using it in their daily lives. This is vital and at the same time complicated when someone has an alternative such as Spanish or Castilian.