Language

Vocabulary

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

Two new phrases learned today – not sure how they are connected, if at all but they caught my fancy.

Mala Llet          Literally means bad milk. Someone  who has mala llet is an unpleasant character.            Shouting. Angry. Mean.       Tenir mala llet is permanent. Estar de mala llet is a passing bad humour.

Torracollons      Someone – it can be a man or a woman – who nags and complains and won’t get off your back about something.

And that reminds me of the one that Oreneta told me.

Tancat com una tomba   Shut like a tomb. Useful for describing adolescents in the grunting phase.

Bona Nit!

To Err is Human

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

Day 3 of intensive Catalan.
I  remembered not to speak English first thing in the morning – something in my brain has accepted the challenge and starts the day with Bon Dia.  I told my dreams in Catalan – a bit of a muddle but I don’t think the other person is usually listening much to the details of strange journeys, dreams of a little girl singing to her cat and yet another experience of driving without brakes!  What surprises me is that I think I don’t know the word for brakes, I pause for a moment, then it comes into my head. Like magic!
(Frens by the way)
I have learnt so far on this challenge

  • I know much more than I thought I did
  • If I can relax and just ramble there is lots of vocabulary hidden in my brain. I didn’t consciously put it there but it has been taken in and stored and is accessible, if I am patient
  • It is ok to make mistakes – in fact it is vital.  I have lots of friends here who speak English, some of them very fluently. But they all make loads of mistakes – in pronunciation, in grammar, in vocabulary. It doesn’t make me think any less of them and in fact I am impressed that they speak English so well when I am still struggling with Catalan and Castellano.   

For some reason I put pressure on myself to get it right. It is hard to make that leap into just talking – without worrying about what I get wrong or stumble over. But this is exactly what this week is helping me do. I have taken away my easy option, I have put up a No Entry sign in front of the path of least resistance.I have to take another route and even if it is a bit twisty and turny, we get there in the end.
I really do feel there is something mysterious in this process – as if I am remembering the language rather than learning it.

A Week of Catalan

~ Kate Wilson ~ 10 Comments

Starting today I am having a week of total immersion in Catalan. Where possible I’ll speak only in Catalan and listen to Catalan radio and TV.  It is one of the recommendations in this blog about learning a new language and so far I haven’t really given it a good shot.
So, what about the blog?
I decided to continue writing here in English but concentrating on things to do with the language and how it is to let go of my mother tongue for a short time.
As I can speak English at home I have the tendency to slide back into my familiar pond when I get stuck for a word or a phrase or …. when emotions run high.
This has to stop!
For example today when we were driving to the rubbish tip and I wanted to express forcefully something about the driving here in Catalunya (eg the speed which people drive through built up areas and the way it is considered normal to put your foot down when approaching traffic lights so not to have to stop)  I found myself swearing and cursing in English. Yet, I do have a store of expletives in Catalan. Many of them learned first hand from the son of the house.
So, here we go….
” Ei, ets tonto! … Puta merda…..Collons!!!  Ostia!….Tio!  ”
” You are an idiot…Shit of a prostitute….Bollocks…..The Host…..Guy!”
Funny how when you want to swear you automatically switch back to your own language and the new words seem somehow less strong. Also I worry that using Catalan means I am not so sensitive to how strong the words are. Who can I use them in front of?
A while ago I learned an insult from the boy – “Cara cul” It roughly translated means ‘bottom face’ which sounds funny in English but it caused trouble here. On the other hand I find puta merda offensive but he uses it almost every day without problems. Homework – puta merda. Vegetables on his plate – puta merda   Time to turn off computer – ditto……
Mmmmm. More study needed I think before I can really relax and let rip.

Learning a Second Language

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

It all began like this

An early start to the day to queue up for a place in one of the free Catalan classes that are organised by the Generalitat. I cycled over for 7.00am and found one person already waiting. Luckily for me she was someone I knew so we spent the next 3 hours chatting before the doors officially opened.

After a short and very tricky language test we were both allocated to Basic 1, the bottom level!
I had been listening to and reading Catalan for months but didn’t have even a soft grip on the grammar.

For 6 months I went twice a week to the school. My class was made up of three or four main groups. The majority were women from Morocco. Next was the group of castellano speakers from Latin America or Spain. Then a tiny group of two African women but they rarely came on the same day so could hardly be called a group. And lastly my German friend and myself – the Anglo Saxons.

A long time ago I read a book about immigrants to America who were going to an English class in New York. It was a humorous story about diverse strange characters brought together only because of this shared goal. I can’t remember the name of the book nor the author but being in this class reminded me of it all the time.  Learning a language because you need it to live and work somewhere is different from being a language tourist, or a student of a foreign language in your own country.
A typical lesson.
  • I arrive breathless dead on 2pm
  • The Castellano group is already there studying
  • We start the class with perhaps 7 students
  • Slowly the room fills up over the next half hour. When the Moroccon women arrive they stride across the room to their normal seats, sit down and rustle in their bags for a while, talking all the time to each other in Arabic
  • Our teacher is a nice man – he wants to take the pace slowly so that everyone has a good grip of the basics. Unfortunately this means very slow indeed as more than half of the group only put in an appearance every now and then.
  • We work our way through the Passos book, asking ‘Com et dius?’ and ‘Quants anys tens?’ and ‘On vius?’ for several weeks
  • I practise learning the names of the other students. It is interesting how my brain takes in the familiar and resists the unfamiliar.  Every week I write down who is here and where they are sitting but I always have to look up my aides memoires. I am so much slower to remember that Nadia is the young woman in pink, that Najad has blond hair and is very smiley, that Latifa is the one who giggles all the time.  So many new names in the last year – Montse, Jaume, Ximena, Xavi, Esteve….all Catalan names that have also taken me longer than usual to remember.
  • I practice loving acceptance of my ‘bete noire’ – a large woman who always arrives late, chats loudly throughout the class, chews gum, has no books, never does the homework and sits with her eyebrows raised all the time as if to convey that the whole thing is a waste of her precious time. When we did the exercise on ‘Quants anys tens?’ I was amazed when she said 36.  I had assumed she was much older than me.  One week she arrived so late she couldn’t sit in her preferred seat and ended up amongst the Castellano group. I was happy that she wouldn’t be able to chat all the time to her friends – but I was wrong – she just did it across the room.
  • About 15 minutes before the end of class most of the Morrocon women start to rustle again and one by one they get up and leave, with loud farewells to all.
  • I did learn a lot of Catalan in this class but it was painfully slow and now at the end of the first level I have been upgraded to Basic 3 – missing out Basic 2 altogether. I hope I won’t swing to the opposite extreme and go from bored to overwhelmed.
  • I also enjoyed being with this very friendly group of people who in my normal everyday life I would not meet.  It helped me let go of my over-studious approach to lessons and to just take in whatever new thing was on offer.  Next week I will have to join a new group and will probably not have time to do anything else except try to keep up.

After class some refreshment is always needed in one of Granollers lovely cafes

What’s in a Name?

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

 

Prada de Conflent (Prades) is also famous for being the town which sheltered Pau Casals the world famous cellist who was also known as Pablo Casals. Many Catalan people were obliged to use the Spanish version of their names and it is important to realise that this name changing is political and not just a personal choice.

Is the language we know as Spanish, the only Spanish language?  Or is it better called Castillian in order to differentiate it from Catalan and Galician or Basque?   It is actually the language of Castille even though it has come to be the language spoken all over Spain.

If I write Catalunya I am using the Catalan spelling. If I write Cataluña I am using the Spanish spelling.

My partner’s name is Josep shortened to Pep. But in Spanish this would be Jose or Pepe.  He is used to it and doesn’t react but I notice when friends in the UK call him Pepe.

There are a lot of possible mistakes if you don’t understand the background and the history.

Of course it is possible to be over sensitive – I no longer get upset if someone calls me English but I do give a gentle reminder that Scotland is part of the UK not a subsection of England.  But sometimes I don’t bother.I came to live here with a very minimal knowledge about the history of Catalunya.  I make many mistakes and put my foot in it all the time, but it is wonderful to learn about what has happened here, how people feel about their country and language and to find new ways to expand my understanding.

It is worth knowing if you visit this region that Catalan people do not consider themselves Spanish. The language of Catalunya is Catalan and that the language commonly known as Spanish is actually Castilian or Castellano.  Spain has four official languages – Castellano, Català, Gallego(Galician) and Euskera(Basque) You can see it is a bit complicated!To return to Pau Casals – he refused to return to Catalunya while Franco was in power and this sadly meant he never lived to see the return of democracy nor was able to come back in his lifetime.

I found this wonderful recording of his music.

And here he is playing El Cant dels Ocells (the song of the birds) a popular Catalan song