#catalan langblr

[useless-catalanfacts]

I have added English subtitles to this video posted by Helena Sotoca on Instagram. She's from Madrid (Spain) but has been living in Catalonia for 7 years. As she explained in another video, she didn't learn any Catalan the first 3 years she lived here, but then realised how she was imposing Spanish on her group of Catalan friends and how important it was for her friends to keep their language, so she learned it. She is very happy about this decision which has allowed her to integrate more in Catalan society and culture.

In this video, she gives her personal opinion on why languages are not only "a way to understand each other". This sentence is something that we speakers of discriminated languages have to hear all the time (in fact, I was reminded of this video a few days ago because @beautiful-basque-country got that comment). Many times, they'll say: "why are you so annoying about wanting to be able to speak your language? A language is only a tool to understand each other, so if you speak both [the local language and the imperial language], why not just always speak [the imperial language]?".

This mindset is what leads to language extermination. First of all, because it assumes that our languages are less worthy of existence and thus that the language's community is less worthy of existence. If I stop speaking my language, I stop being a part of me. If all my culture stops speaking our language, we stop existing. Language is deeply tied to culture, it's through language that we think and transmit our worldview, and there are many aspects of our culture and our landscape that we can only describe in our language, because only we have the specific words to describe it or because the translation loses nuance, context, and connotations. Remove language, and the rest of the culture will soon follow.

Secondly, it erases the reason why we speak the state's language, which is usually because of imposition through violence, and justifies this imposition because the imperial violence of the past that made the imperial language more widely spoken is now the reason why speakers of the imperial language deserve more rights than those who suffered the imposition.

But besides these more social reasons, I like how Helena explains her personal relation to the language in this video. She also shows us one of the reasons why it's so important to promote discriminated languages to be used in public (and not only hidden at home): when you meet someone speaking a language, you form a bond with them in that language and it can be difficult to change. Speakers of minoritized languages often meet each other in contexts in which they're socially pressured to speak the state's language, and so we find the situation where a group of friends who are all native speakers of the minoritized language will form a bond in the state's language. Thus, slowly, because of the state's language imposition in the public sphere (this is what the "speak the state language if there's even 1 person who might not speak the local language! Languages are only a tool for communication!" mindset pushes us to), the local language gets pushed aside more and more, until we can't have a normal life in it and the state's language imposition becomes absolute, and the local language dies, taking with it its culture, history, and connection to the land and ancestors.

With some work, it can be reversed. I've explained this before but I'll say it again because it's relevant. My parents met in Spanish, because they met in high school and back then speaking Catalan in schools was strictly forbidden and punished. They were speaking in Spanish even when they started dating, but they realised how absurd it was that two native Catalan speakers spoke Spanish to each other and how it was a result of Francoist policy. They decided they don't want Francoism to infiltrate our personal lives, so they made the effort and switched. Maintaining the language of their surroundings, their culture, their land, they became even closer. And, thanks to their decision, when I was born I had the luck of being a native speaker of the language too, because it's what we've always spoken at home. But they did it because they had a political antifascist conscience, many people don't think much about it and just go with what is easier. If they had done that, the language would have lost them and also me. Multiply this for how many people meet each other in settings where social pressure or social rules promote speaking the imperial language instead of the local one that is closer to their hearts.

So no, a language is not only a tool to understand each other. It's also what allows us to speak according to our own understanding of the world (instead of assimilating into another's worldview), it gives meaning to our surroundings (both nature, the names we give to places, etc), every word is an unbroken chain with all of those who came before us, it allows us to understand our ancestors whether that be through their writing or songs they passed down or legends, it's an integral part of the human relations we establish, and so much more. Every language is worth everything. Every language has the right to exist and to thrive.

[brazilspill]

Latin languages are typically easy to learn because most of the languages follow very specific sets of rules with only a handful of exceptions that once you memorize you're good to go.

Also, they use accents, which help with figuring out how to pronounce the words and, alternatively, how to spell words.

French is, of course, the exception to the rule.

Because of course it is.

[gwendolynlerman]

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! Happy New Year! Bonne année ! Frohes Neues Jahr! ¡Bon any! С Новым Годом! 新年快乐！Buon anno! Feliz ano novo! 🎉✨

[wannawrite999]

[lavieenlangues]

hey everyone! i'm new to langblr and I tend to be introverted but I decided to make this account to help me branch out. i speak English and Spanish fluently, and am currently learning French and German. i am also interested in learning Catalan and Portuguese sometime in the future. if anyone wants to be mutuals/friends feel free to dm!

[mortola]

hey im new to language learning on tumblr but can anyone rec me the best way out of romance languages? like what non-romance lang to start learning if ik or am already working on like spanish french portuguese?

[factoidfactory]

Random Fact #6,552

How different Romance languages say ninety eight when translated back to English:

Portuguese: Ninety and eight

Galician: Ninety and eight

Romanian: Ninety and eight

Spanish/Castilian: Ninety and eight

Catalan: Ninety-eight

Corsican: Ninety eight

Italian: Ninetyeight

French: Forty-twenty-ten-eight

[tequeguava]

One of my favourite ways to practice my reading skills in TLs is to read books in languages I'm A2+ in which I've already read in my native language (English) in the past.

Right now I'm working my way through The Lightning Thief in Portuguese (O ladrão de raios), Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone in Catalan (Tothom a la meva família ha matat algú), and All Systems Red in Spanish (Sistemas críticos). The Spanish has been pretty easy which (makes sense since it's my most advanced L2 with the highest amount of study time), but both the Portuguese and Catalan books have been quite a bit of a challenge!

To encourage myself to read more, I'm planning on making vocab lists like this for unfamiliar words I come across in my reading (in any TL but mainly Portuguese and Catalan). Some of the words listed may have other meanings that I didn't include, but I'm only adding definitions for the context they appear in in the text. I'm putting them in the order the words appear instead of in alphabetical order because I'm lazy lmao. For verbs I'm providing them in the infinitive even if they appeared conjugated in the text, and adjectives are given in the masculine singular form regardless of how they appeared inflected in the text.

Unfamiliar vocab from my Catalan reading practice, Chapter 1 of Tothom a la meva família ha matat algú:

Aleshores - then, so (compare to French alors or Italian allora)

Enroscar - to curl up

Avantbraç - forearm

Atropellar - to run over (with a car)

Trucada - (telephone) call

Cremallera - zipper

Trepitjar - to step on

Gometa - rubber band

Llambregada - glance

Nítida - sharp

Clariana - clearing

Lluentor - shine

Gebre - frost

Centelleig - twinkling (n.)

Xarxa - net (in context describing a spiders' web)

Teranyina - spiderweb, cobweb

Bellugar - to fidget

Passamuntanyes - balaclava, ski mask

Xifra - numerical figure, number

A la gatzoneta - crouching on one's heels, squatting; (from "agotzonar-se" meaning "to crouch down")

Tallagespa - lawnmower

Enganxifós - sticky

[napoleonyaoi]

[myteastainedpages]

hello tumblr people who read books originally written in languages other than english, i have a request

i have to write a book review for my reading in translation module at the end of november and i’m trying to find a book to use for it. i’ve not (to my knowledge) read any books that have been translated to english from another language - besides one i also read in its original spanish but i don’t wanna use that for this - so i have literally no ideas.

basically i’m looking for book recs, it’s a translation to english i’ll need to use but if you don’t know whether it’s been translated that’s fine i can easily find out myself :) thank you to anyone who helps! <3

[tecnobabushka]

En 2020 publiqué un videoensayo en mi canal de YouTube sobre la novela de Eduardo Mendoza "La ciudad de los prodigios". En el vídeo relacionaba alta cultura con baja cultura y relacionaba la novela con mis experiencias vitales: ¿qué tiene que ver la literatura con el turismo masivo, los repartidores de flyers, alquileres abusivos en Barcelona y el paso del tiempo? Decidí adaptar ese guion a formato cómic para un concurso en el que se fomentaba el uso del catalán en la novela gráfica, así que mandé esta propuesta bajo el título "de Barcelona encara és la ciutat dels prodigis". Mil gracias a mi amiga Alba por la corrección ortográfica. ❤️

[useless-catalanfacts]

Sweden saying they'll vote against allowing the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union Parliament because "there's lots of minority languages and we can't allow them all" is so funny because CATALAN HAS MORE SPEAKERS THAN SWEDISH

Catalan is the 13th most spoken language in the EU. It has more than 10 million speakers, which means it has more speakers than other languages that are already official EU languages like Maltese (530,000), Estonian (1.2 million), Latvian (1.5 million), Irish (1.6 million), Slovene (2.5 million), Lithuanian (3 million), Slovak (5 million), Finnish (5.8 million), Danish (6 million), Swedish (10 million), and Bulgarian (10 million).

Neither Galician (3 million) nor Basque (750,000) would still be the least spoken languages to be allowed in the EU representative bodies.

But even if any of them did, so what? Why do speakers of smaller languages deserve less rights than those of bigger languages? How are we supposed to feel represented by the EU Parliament when our representatives aren't even allowed to speak our language, but the dominant groups can speak theirs?

It all comes down to the hatred of language/cultural diversity and the belief that it's an inconvenience, that only the languages of independent countries have any kind of value while the rest should be killed off. After all, isn't that what Sweden has been trying to do to the indigenous Sami people for centuries?

[cecinestpasunlangblr]

Supongo que es hora de hacer una publicación aquí. Vaig a explicar per que volia fer un Tumblr, and I’m sure that we can get things going:

Salut Je suis nouveau ici. Je suis queer et j’ai envie de partager les langues, la linguistique et la grammaire avec quelqu’un qui veut y écouter. Sento-me confiante em Catalão, inglês do Inglaterra e Castelhano europeu. Queria saber mais de Francês, português e italiano… in futuro vorrei sapere più delle lingue che non sono de latine. Io so che hanno errori dentro questa pubblicazione ma spero che voi possiate aiutarmi con questa avventura. ^^

Lo que pongo con «me gusta» siempre será abierto porque podéis verlo because I’m a human being and like other things than language, who knows you might find something you like too.

Commençons avec les mots/ phrases que les gens queers disent par exemple les brésiliens disent « você é do vale? » qui signifie « êtes-vous de la vallée ? » littéralement mais quand une fille m’a dit ça je ne l’ai pas compris. Maintenant je comprend que ce signifie « êtes-vous gay ? ». Dites moi votre propres histoires. :)

[gwendolynlerman]

And Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates! 🎄

¡Feliz Navidad! Joyeux Noël ! Frohe Weihnachten! ¡Bon Nadal! С рождеством! 圣诞快乐！Buon Natale! Feliz Natal!

[tobacconist]

not enough love for this excellent TRILINGUAL short film.

english, cornish & catalan

[dialmforolrik]

normalize learning languages by reading wikipedia articles