Catalan

El Clàssic or Yet another football post

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

Tomorrow evening there is a football match between Barcelona and Madrid. It’s called El Clasico or El Clàssic in Catalan, and is the name given to any match between these two teams. It is one of the most watched football matches in the world – hundreds of millions of people glued to their TV screens, as well as the lucky ones who are actually there to see it live.
As I’ve said before, I don’t know much about football, but it is easier to learn about it when it grabs your attention like this does.
To show how ignorant I am in general I will embarrass myself by admitting that I didn’t know there was a  Barça/Madrid match tomorrow night until I just saw it on TV.  Then I noticed something interesting – I felt nervous!  I realised it makes me anxious thinking about it and I know that when I am watching the game there will be butterflies in my stomach.
Weird isn’t it?
Five Things I Have Learnt About El Clàssic
1/   Real Madrid has more supporters in Spain than Barça does while Barça has more support in Europe. Worldwide, Real Madrid appears to win the number of supporters competition with over 228 million fans according to some studies. Perhaps if you keep expanding your horizon to include the universe,  Barça would come out top!
2/   Barça has won more Classic matches than Real Madrid.  Barça 103 – Real Madrid 90 (I’ve never seen them lose which is one reason for my pre-match anxiety)
3/   More players have switched from Barça to Madrid than the other way around with 17 going to the Spanish capital and only 4 coming to Catalunya. I wonder why? More money offered by Madrid?  Barça preferring to get new players elsewhere?
4/   The other rivalry is between the team coaches – Guardiola and Mourinho.  They share a first name but for Guardiola it is the Catalan version Josep/Pep and Mourinho is known as Jose.  In English? Joseph or Joe.

5/  When they speak in the after match discussion it is impressive how easily Guardiola slips between languages but I have just read that Morinho too speaks English, Italian, Spanish, French as well as Portuguese.  Guardiola speaks English, French, Italian, Spanish and Catalan so in this match there is a draw!

Choosing a Book in the Library

~ Kate Wilson ~ 6 Comments

A friend in London mentioned to me that there are some famous Catalan crime writers who have been translated into English and who are worth reading.
I decided to have a look in the library and try to get one in Catalan

  I didn’t know any names so I asked the women who work there and who are usually very friendly.
” Can you help me?  Who are the most famous Catalan crime writers? The ones everyone wants to read and who have been translated into English?’
The answer – blank looks, shrugged shoulders, ‘No se’
Do you think that is strange? Perhaps crime fiction is more a British fascination? I could name you at least 10 crime writers in English while they couldn’t come up with one.
No problem. I love libraries and feel totally at home when I’m there. I started to go along the shelves looking at every book – except the ones on the bottom shelf which I am too lazy to bend down to!
But it’s not the same as looking in a library in the UK

1.     Some books are in Catalan. Some are in Castellano. Some are translations from other languages.
2.     There are helpful pictures on the spines so you can concentrate on the genre you want – I looked only at the guns and the Sherlock Holmes silhouettes

 3.       Once you find the genre, you look at the authors name – PD James – no. Ian Rankin – no. Francisco García Pavon – no because it sounds Spanish. Javier Calvo – that sounds promising and yes he is from Barcelona but no – it’s written in castellano! Some Catalan authors write in Spanish to reach a wider audience. But more and more the original version is in Catalan.     Teresa Solana – aha! She sounds interesting.
4.       Now I get to the part where I actually pull a book out of the stack. Ignoring large fat ones, I look at the first sentences and decide if it will be possible to get the gist without using a dictionary.
5.        Finally I decided on this one – the author is from Menorca and that is where the action happens.

Fifteen minutes before the library closes for lunch they begin to pipe music in through speakers on every floor. The first time this happened I thought someone had forgotten to turn off their mobile phone and was surprised that noone started to Shush!!! 

How can I resist?

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

This is not about chocolate or cakes.
But on my current theme of language.
I was watching a video of Manel on youtube which a kind friend sent to cheer me up and in the comments below someone wrote that they enjoyed the music but why couldn’t they just sing in castellano so more people could understand?
This made me think about resistance to learning Catalan and where better to start than with my own experience?


I came to Barcelona to learn Spanish. That is what I was already studying and that is what I wanted to practise. What a nuisance that all my new friends were talking Catalan – it was a constant frustration for me as I knew they spoke Castellano as well but they insisted on having conversations in Catalan which I couldn’t understand!
“Why don’t you learn Catalan if you are going to live here?”
NO! I can’t do two languages. I want a language that I can use when I go to Argentina to dance tango. Perhaps one day, but not now.
So far so typical, I think.
Then of course I met someone and fell in love and came to live outside of Barcelona in a town that is more Catalan speaking and I needed to survive in a new family as well as be able to make friends. Also if you really want to be intimate with someone I think it is best if you speak each others languages.
But still I resisted.
“One day when my ‘Spanish’ is better, then I’ll get started”
But meanwhile I was taking it in – I had to – I was sitting for hours listening to Catalan at home and at parties and in the street. People were kind – they switched to Castellano for me but soon enough I would be lost with that as well and they’d slip back into their normal language.
I got very depressed about it as I also wasn’t improving my ‘Spanish’.  I’d complain to friends about how hard it all was. To my mind Castellano had to come first and Catalan would follow…..sometime.
Occasionally people would say – ‘you have to start learning Catalan’ – and that would make me even more determined not to. I don’t like being pushed. Of course I was learning it even without trying – and that annoyed me too.
I remember the day it all changed. It was summer solstice last year and we were dancing on the terrace of a house in the middle of the woods. My friend Diana suddenly said – I think you should stop studying Castellano and concentrate on Catalan. I felt something solid inside me melt and soften and open up and I said Yes, that’s right.

From then on it has been easier and so much more enjoyable that I thought possible. I have always loved the sound of the language and now that I allow it in,  I am not using precious energy to resist it. I also believe I am connecting to a deeper level of language – reaching down to a place that is older and more communal that we can imagine. I read out loud and even when I don’t understand the words I get the gist – that’s magic isn’t it?
French helps too – the roots intertwined somewhere in the past.
A few weeks ago I went to visit an elderly woman called Pepa in Barcelona – she has a small flat in the Barri Gotic that I rented when I first came here more than 5 years ago. At that time I barely spoke Castellano and she knows no English. She was the first person to ask me if I would learn Catalan and I remember how alien the idea was. I knew almost nothing about Barcelona, Catalunya or the Catalan language. I still thought I was in Spain. I thought of Catalan as something similar to Gaelic or Welsh.
I hadn’t seen her since that first visit and so it was a great pleasure to call on her and start to speak in Catalan. We talked for about an hour and all the time I was thinking – I can’t believe this is me!
These memories serve as markers of the big change that has happened in my life and that I am still undergoing.

Immersion

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

For a week I only spoke Catalan at home. And in the shops and on the street with the other dog walkers that I met.  I read the newspaper in Catalan and listened to iCatfm and watched  tv3 which is the Catalan public television station.
Yes, there was a little English – phones calls to the UK, coffees with a friend in Granollers, and writing here.
Also I watched BBC1 a couple of times – there was a drama on for three nights which I got hooked into although I missed part three because of the football!!! (anyone know what the mystery was about?)
Oh and we went to see La Red Social at Granollers film club  – it’s the film about Facebook which of course was in English but had subtitles in Castellano.

So…how was it?

  • I enjoyed it and didn’t seem to be speaking any less
  • I started actually using the grammar we are learning in school – the subjunctive and past tenses and imperatives. ‘Passa’m la sal, sisplau’, ‘he estat 20 minuts corren al gimnàs’ i ‘desitjo una casa que tingui un jardi per les meves gosses’
  • I realised I haven’t got a handle on the use of pronouns yet
  • I still thought in English but I didn’t need to translate slowly before speaking. Some things seem to be more automatic. 
  • Words I didn’t know that I knew started to come to the surface
  • I tried to trust what was coming out of my mouth – sometimes it was wrong!
  • I felt a bit frustrated with how hard it is to understand people talking at a normal speed
  • The biggest thing to come out of it was a boost in confidence about speaking and learning Catalan. I surprised myself with how much I know.

So I have decided to continue for another week! thanks for supporting me

Also, thanks to all who have asked about the drawings – yes I am doing them on an application called whiteboard on my mobile phone. There would be more but I have had trouble saving them so have lost a few but hopefully will get this sorted in the next week. Must be that Spring energy – needing to do something different and new!

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

Manel is an indie band from Barcelona.  Their second album 10 Milles Per Veure Una Bona Armadura became the best selling album in Spain 10 days after being released. This is more interesting than you might think – the songs are all in Catalan. 
Catalan people are bilingual – they speak their mother tongue which is Catalan and also Castellano the language that some of you may know as ‘Spanish’
But obviously people who live in the rest of Spain are not always bilingual and if they are it is unlikely that their second language is Catalan.
The language question is very important – one the one hand it is just the language of this part of the world so obviously people speak it, write it, dream it and sing it.  But there it also has a long history of being repressed and even nowadays it still brings up controversy. 
People are criticised for speaking it in public. Like the case of the football coach who answered a question put to him in Catalan, in Catalan.  Spanish journalists told him to speak in Spanish. They  weren’t just asking him to translate so they could understand – they wanted him to stop answering in his own language.  Pep Guardiola answers English questions in English, Spanish ones in Spanish and Catalan ones in Catalan. But he is only criticised for the Catalan part. Strong reactions. As if the language is a threat.  As if it is a language which needs to be put in its place.
So, it is actually very amazing that an album sung totally in Catalan is top of the Spanish charts.
Here is the track called Aniversari.  It has the lyrics in castellano so you can hear one and read the other!
I hear this on the radio almost every day so I have gone from ‘sort of finding it ok’ to really enjoying it.
PS Tomorrow. Virtual Vermut. At a time when it suits you. Fins Ara!