What will happen to Catalonia?

Two or so weeks ago the poll on what readers think Catalonia should do ended, and it was surprisingly close to the actual results of the referendum / consultation:

Yes, I want Catalonia to become a State, and for it to be independent.	80 (57%)
Yes, I want Catalonia to become a State, but not independent.	25 (18%)
No, I do not want Catalonia to become a State.	33 (23%)

Nombre de votes jusqu'à présent : 138

So that was quite interesting. Now the consultation is over and Spain is not happy with the results, calling it a illegal, a waste of time, a clear sign that support for independence is low (taking into account the overall turnout), etc.

Okay, so one more question on Catalonia. What *will* happen to Catalonia? Will it stay in Spain, leave it, leave it and violence will occure, etc. etc. Sometimes referendums/a occur where independence later happens, but sometimes there are votes for independence that just end up with some extra automony and everyone decides that this is actually a fine state of affairs after all. Make your predictions!

Read more...

Catalonia independence referendum poll now up

The poll on the right has three answers because that's what the referendum/consultation in Catalonia is going to have.

• Yes, I want Catalonia to become a State, and for it to be independent.
• Yes, I want Catalonia to become a State, but not independent.
• No, I do not want Catalonia to become a State.

In Catalan the questions are:

• Vol que Catalunya esdevingui un Estat?
• En cas afirmatiu, vol que aquest Estat sigui independent?

Read more...

Draft law passes Galician parliament calling for stronger Portuguese-language ties

From here in Portuguese:

The Galician parliament unanimously approved the consideration of a draft law of a popular initiative calling for greater weight of the Portuguese language in the Spanish autonomous region. 

More than 17,000 Galicians signed a petition for more "access to the wealth of the Portuguese language". The initiative now passed puts into consideration the teaching of Portuguese in Galician schools, better use of the language in Galician public institutions, transmission of TDT (Televisao Digital Terrestre) television channels from Portugal, and access to national radio frequencies from the other side of the border. 

There is still no timetable for the proposal, which advocates the introduction of the Portuguese language at all levels of education, to become law, but Xosé Carlos Morell (the proponent of the initiative, known as Iniciative Paz Andrade) believes that a four-year period would be reasonable for the implementation of Portuguese in Galician schools.

Looks like the Facebook page for the initiative is here.

Read more...

How France views German

This article in French from Le Figaro is a good read. It touches not just on the numbers of students learning German in France but also the jobs that are going unfilled between the two countries: English is the first language students learn in both countries and those that choose a second will usually go for Spanish, in spite of its greater distance and smaller economy. Mandarin also gets a mention here. There is a definite silliness found in the vague idea among students that languages such as Spanish or Mandarin promise a future full of well-paid employment when the language of the economic power next door remains ignored. Personal preference should be the primary (if not only) reason to learn a language, and if personal preference is irrelevant then proximity is another important factor.

Language usefulness almost seems to work like gravity with the usefulness dropping by the square of the distance, except that it eventually reaches a certain baseline instead of fading into nothingness.

For the average French student, most likely located in the north of the country, Spain and its centre of population is actually quite distant:

And for a student in Germany, even more so. Spanish should be learned by students who truly want to learn it, not those with a vague notion that it is somehow the language of the future when there are well-paying jobs to be had now through knowing the language of the country next door.

Read more...

Inglés nivel medio

A video from last year (I think) that has just been subtitled and resubmitted:

Read more...

Catalonia votes today

Reminder: there's an election in Catalonia today that could play an important role in the future European linguistic and geopolitical map. Looking at a linguistic map of Europe shows how overextended Spanish is compared to Portuguese, which is in the opposite situation with a language (or very close fraternal language) extending beyond the border whereas Spanish is not quite dominant even within Spain itself.

Redrawing the borders along strict linguistic lines would make Spain look fairly awkward compared to today, with a country called Portugaliza all along the west side, Euskadi shrinking the coast on the north side, and Catalonia on the east shrinking the Mediterranean coast.


Not being involved with the area, I have no opinion on Spanish vs. Catalan and who should separate from or be united with whom, besides a bit of affection for Catalan and Occitan as languages that more closely resemble a lot of pan-Romance IALs than Spanish and French. I've often wondered what would have happened if France's official language had been Occitan instead of French and Catalan in Spain instead of Castillan. Then we would have had a much more mutually comprehensible region stretching from France to Spain and down into Italy.

Read more...

Spain has a particular liking for Chinese

From here in Spanish, an article with only about two citeworthy sentences:

According to data from the latest Eurobarometer, 24% of respondents in Spain (compared to the European average of 14%) believe Chinese should be the second language their children choose to learn. The survey shows that 13% of those in Spain believe Chinese to be a useful language for personal development, compared to 6% for Europeans in general.

Now where is that latest Europeans and their Languages from Eurobarometer? A quick search turns up one for 2006....ah, here's the one the article references (pdf) and it's actually from June. The bit about Spain liking Chinese in particular is not just because it's a Spanish article, as the paper itself references Spain here a number of times:

Respondents in all Member States are at least as likely, if not more likely than they were in 2005, to think that Chinese is useful for personal development. The most notable increases in the share of those mentioning it as an important language are in Spain (+11 percentage points) and the UK (+9 points).

Respondents in EU15, compared with those in NMS12, are particularly more likely than those in NMS12 to think that Spanish (17% vs. 3% respectively), French (18% vs. 8%), Chinese (7% vs. 1%) and Italian (5% vs. 3%) are important.

Those countries with the greatest likelihood of respondents thinking Chinese useful are Spain (13%), the UK (11%) and Ireland (9%).

...in some Member States, the perception that it (Chinese) is useful for children has increased much more than the perception that it useful for personal development. Countries with the most notable increases in the proportion holding such a view are Denmark (+25 percentage points), Spain and France (+23 points in each) and Ireland and the UK (+18 points).

Member States where the view that Chinese is a useful language for children to learn is most widespread include France (28%), Denmark (26%), Spain (24%) and the UK (23%).

and so on.

Read more...

Number of students learning Chinese in Andalusian language program up by 20% over one year

From here in Spanish yesterday on a Chinese language program in Andalusia. This one looks to be funded by Andalusia itself and doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Confucius Institute:

The number of students enrolled in the Chinese language in the autonomous community of Andalusia has increased by between 15% and 20% compared to the past year in which, for the first time, the subject was offered outside school hours in a total of 10 public primary and secondary educational centres. In the 2011/2012 there were 658 students enrolled in Andalusia, meaning that the current number should be 780...Classes are taught by Chinese teachers in selected centres in Andalusia with a workload of 20 weekly hours in the afternoon.

Read more...

German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, English on the rise in Galicia

From here in Spanish:

Students studying in one of the EOIs (Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas) in Galicia have increased by 38.8% in the last four years, reaching 32,256 in the academic year 2012-2013...Data from the Xunta also reveal how language preferences have changed.

German is the language that has gained the most adherents with a 96.2% increase since 2008, reaching 1415 students. Following German is Portuguese with an increase of 71.1%, and Chinese with a 70.7% increase. The number of students studying Japanese has also increased by 62%, English by 40%,

Russian by 35%, French by 24%, and Italian by 18%.

I've separated Russian and the rest from the others as they have gained by less than the 38.8% gain in the total number of students, thus losing ground proportionally to the others.

Read more...

Unemployed Galicians study Portuguese to facilitate emigration

From here in Portuguese with audio:

There are more and more unemployed Galicians studying Portuguese, a way to be prepared to emigrate to Portuguese-speaking countries.

Two days before regional elections in Galicia, unemployment and emigration are two strong themes in the election campaign. A Antena1 visited the headquarters of the Instituto Camões in Vigo, encountering various unemployed Galicians attempting to open a new door to the future.

The audio for the article has some quick interviews with students and the teacher at the Instituto Camões there, and what's interesting is that they also mention Portugal as a possible place to work along with Brazil and Angola, the two countries usually mentioned. Galicia has around a 20% unemployment rate, and since even Portugal's dismal unemployment numbers are better than those in Spain it makes sense.

That brings up a question: don't Galicians already kind of know Portuguese anyway thanks to Galician? Kind of:

Nowadays, Galician is resurgent, though in the cities it remains a "second language" for most. According to a 2001 census, 99.16 percent of the populace of Galicia understand the language, 91.04 percent speak it, 68.65 percent read it and 57.64 percent write it. The first two numbers (understanding and speaking) remain roughly the same as a decade earlier; the latter two (reading and writing) both show enormous gains: a decade earlier, only 49.3 percent of the population could read Galician, and only 34.85 percent could write it. This fact can be easily explained because of the impossibility of teaching Galician during the Francisco Franco era, so older people speak the language but have no written competence. Galician is the highest-percentage spoken language in its region among the regional languages of Spain.

In addition to that Portuguese is often seen as a more cultured version of Galician in the region. Add those two together and your average Galician probably understands just about anything said in Portuguese, but may be averse to sending an email to a company or going for an interview out of fear of coming across as uneducated or uncultured. I would expect that these courses at the Instituto Camões would have a large emphasis on orthography, punctuation etc. and paying attention to which Galician words don't have a Portuguese equivalent in order to avoid getting a blank stare in an interview and realizing for the first time that the word you always assumed was also Portuguese is actually not.

Read more...

Best language to learn for Madrid court interpreter: Romanian

That would seem to be the conclusion to draw from this article:

Romanian is the most requested language in the courts of Madrid with 28.29% of the total demand in the first half of 2012. Following Romanian were Arabic (15.28%), Mandarin (11.28%), English (7.5%), Wolof (4.89%), Bulgarian (4.44%), Portuguese (2.77%), French (2.67%), Russian (2.64%), and Bengali (2.5%).

It then continues with the ten least requested languages, a weird list to have in the first place because the least requested languages should be those that were requested a total of zero times: probably about 6000 or so languages should fit in there given that there are about 7000 total languages in the world. And one of the languages requested there is extra strange:

el azerí, el bamileké, el broken english, el chino gingtian, el dariya, el finés, el guaraní, el igbo, el luganda y el nepalí

el broken english?

No idea what that means. Unless somebody just wrote that down on a court document and it thus had to be recorded as an official request.

Read more...

Instituto Cervantes intends to concentrate on promoting Spanish in the United States

From here in Spanish, referencing a general gathering of Instituto Cervantes heads who talked among other things about strategy in the near future. There seems to be agreement that the United States is the best place to promote Spanish, which makes complete sense from their point of view. These international organizations (Alliance Française, Confucius Institute, etc.) usually do best promoting their languages in:

- Areas where there is a demographic or political reason to do so (Philippines for Spanish, Portuguese for East Timor and Macau, French for Tunisia, Algeria etc.)
- Areas of prestige (world capitals, world famous cities or places with prestigious universities)

It's much more likely though that the fate of Mexico (specifically the drug war and overall safety) and other nearby countries will have more to do with the future of Spanish in the US.

The Instituto Cervantes has given priority to its expansion in the United States with the opening of centres in Miami and Washington, aware that in the coming years "Spanish will play the role of a second language" in the country.

Director García de la Concha made this announcement today in Salamanca during a press conference before the annual reunion of the directors of the Institute.

De la Concha spoke of the presence of the Institute in Canada and Brazil as additions/appendices to this, complementing the projection in the United States.

Another one of the objectives is to open classrooms "in major universities in the north and some in the south and west coast of the United States."

De la Concha said he hopes that all countries of Hispanoamérica would feel the Instituto Cervantes as their own.

The Instituto Cervantes is present in 87 cities in 44 countries, with 1,200 employees. Its centers had 227,000 students enrolled last year and celebrated 6,500 cultural activities.

Read more...

Government of Aragon to call Catalan spoken in Aragon "southern Aragon" or "northern Aragon"

I know little about the details of eastern Aragonese vs. western Catalan, so this post will suffice with two paragraphs from this article in Spanish and no extra commentary...except this page on the Benasquese dialect which apparently is about halfway between the two:

The government of Aragon (PP and Partido Aragonés) has decided to abolish any legal recognition of Catalan, according to a draft of the lew language law presented yesterday, which will repeal the law passed at the end of the last legislature, which was led by the socialist Marcelino Iglesias.

The new text will affect more than 50,000 Aragonese in the eastern regions and who will from now, according to the new Aragonese text, speak "southern Aragon" or "northern Aragon", despite that the entire academic community has no doubt in calling the language a dialect of western Catalan.

Read more...

Chinese tourists increasing in casinos in Spain

An article here in French (automatically translated here) is superficially about an increasing number of casino employees learning Chinese, but there are no numbers provided besides an "increasing number of tourists since the Chinese tourist visa program was expanded". Not that there is any reason to doubt the increasing number, but the Chinese the employees learn is most likely to be vocation-specific and not very extensive. The part at the end about the number 4 and the facing of seats (north, east, south, west) is interesting though and is true to a certain extent in Korea as well.

Read more...

New Vesta video, trip to Berlin in September, El Huffington Post

Not enough to call this a link roundup, but three things I wanted to mention today:

--- First a new video of Vesta by JPL:




The northern hemisphere still isn't all visible, but it will be soon enough as spring is coming to the north and Dawn doesn't have to leave until August.

--- The trip to Berlin: not me - Deutsche Welle is looking for people learning German to visit Berlin in September. Or rather, to go on a 10-day trip across the country that culminates with an arrival in Berlin.

--- After French, we now have El Huffington Post in Spanish. This is not US Spanish: it is Huffingtonpost.es and focuses more on news from and relating to Spain (but I see some US election news in there already today). A US-based Spanish version is in the works, they say.

Read more...

Confucius Institute at University of Leon expects 200 students next year, up from 150

A year ago I wrote a post about the opening of a Confucius Institute in León in Spain, the smallest city (about a third of a million) to receive one. The number of students this year was 150, and this should increase to 200 next year. Nothing else in that article is really worth going over: it discusses a prize that gives students free tuition, the makeup of the faculty there, and some other details.

Read more...

More Chinese test-takers in Madrid, au pair and domestic service for Chinese speakers in Spain

From here in Spanish, an article that begins with an unsourced swipe at French.

The Chinese boom is gaining adherents, with an increase of 40% last year for Mandarin classes in the country and more than 15 centres in Madrid to learn the language as an extracurricular activity.

 In the Madrid region 1883 people took tests last year in the city's Confucius Institute.

 With the growing demand of Chinese, Raquel Rubio and Xiaojuan Liu have created "Enjoy Mandarín", a company that manages the hiring of domestic workers, au pairs and playmates for children. It began with Raquel looking for a way for her son to learn Mandarin. "Although there are numerous companies in the UK and US that offer localization for Chinese caregivers, we could not find any in Spain. Without intermediaries, we had to find a person with a good knowledge of Spanish and ensure that this person had a good knowledge of proper Mandarin and not other languages used in China.

 At the moment about a hundred families enjoy the benefits of Enjoy Mandarín. Au pairs and playmates are the most requested services. Generally the families that come to Enjoy Mandarín have children that already know English, or because one of the parents is a native speaker, or because the child goes to a bilingual school.

Read more...

Spanish government wants to aid Chabacano

Still sick today so here's one article in English, according to which the Spanish government wants to help preserve the language Chabacano, a Spanish creole spoken in the Philippines in the city of Zamboanga.

A bit reminiscent of the PVV in the Netherlands wanting to aid Afrikaans but without all the historical baggage and partisanship.

Read more...

Catalan is 14th-most spoken language in the EU, and other things

An article here in Spanish has some info on Catalan usage in the EU right now, and not just in terms of number of speakers but also where it is used and where it isn't. Some of the info from the article:

- Catalan has about 10 million speakers.
- The number of readers of Catalan daily newspapers increased by 29% last year
- The radio and TV audience for Catalan has also increased (doesn't indicate by how much), although only 3% of cinema in Catalonia are in Catalan.
- More than 30% of foreigners in Barcelona are learning Catalan, compared to 7% a few years ago.
- Education: 89% of primary schools in Catalonia use Catalan as a working language and all public universities there use Catalan in more than 50% of the courses given.
- There are 199 laws in the state that require labeling in Spanish, compared to 2 laws that require the same in Catalan.
- Justice is where Catalan is especially weak: 14% of sentences are written in Catalan, a decrease of 6%, and only 3% of the demands in court are in Catalan, even though 99% of the staff of the administration of justice in Catalonia know the language.

Read more...

Portuguese continues to be an important language for education in Extremadura

From here in Spanish:

The Ministry of Education and Culture will continue to develop the teaching and learning of Portuguese as a defining element of education in Extremadura...The Ministry will take effective measures to make sure that Portuguese is the second foreign language taught in schools funded by public money.

The first Portuguese bilingual area has been adopted this year at i.e.s. Francisco Vera school, in Alconchel. In addition there are some thirty primary schools and twenty secondary schools that teach Portuguese as a second language, and 14 secondary schools that teach it as a third language.

The Portuguese Language and Culture Program relies on an agreement with the Ministry that allows Portuguese to be studied in 31 centres in Extremadura, near La Raya.

Extremadura is the only autonomous region in Spain that has implemented Portuguese in its nine official schools of languages, and has the second largest number of students in these centres. In total, 1,892 students enrolled in these this school year.

Read more...