Catalan kids don’t know their Spanish geography!

I was born in Barcelona and raised in a Catalan-speaking family. I learned Spanish at school and in front of the TV. I am bilingual. I can speak perfect Spanish.

I don’t see the point in living in Barcelona, taking your children to a Catalan school and not wanting them to learn Catalan. They will end up speaking good Spanish when they need it for their daily lives.
Banning is ALWAYS a stupid thing to do.

What would you think if there were not a single school in the whole Wales, even private ones, were your children could learn in English and they must attend classes in Welsh? What would you think if your children in Wales could attend classes in Spanish or German at private schools but English education was banned? What would you think if during the breaktime were teachers controlling they speak Welsh when playing and not a single word in English escapes? What about if your children attend a Welsh school and they are mocked by the teachers for speaking in English? Now substitute Welsh for Catalan and English for Spanish and you’ve got the picture.

The “attack against Catalan” is that the Supreme Court has dictaminated that parents and School could choose if they want their children to be taught in Spanish, what raises Spanish in Catalonia to the same level than English, French or German.

By the way, lemon, what you say is true only in theory. We both know that the Gestapo of Catalonia Regional Government only reports on shops with Spanish-only signs, leaving alone Catalan-only or another languages. (For the people who don’t know Catalonia: Yes, actually there is a sort of Gestapo controlling that all the signs are written in Catalan as well as a deep racist nationalist ground on all this anti Spanish matter)

I attended University in Brittany, France and it would be just ridiculous if I were to learn Breton instead of French. Learn Catalan by all means, but not at the expense of Spanish, because whether you like it or not, we’re still talking about Spain.

Wow what a muddle I had reading all of this! And it´s admin who started it all!
I´ve never found any English (except tourits) who complain about Catalan, it´s just some people are not tuned in the right way. Because just living in Catalunya and understanding the catalans, (well most of them), you should know to respect them and understand them. Being British doesn´t help, as Britons have never had problems with their language, so it´s not easy to understand how catalans feel living in a country which is not entirely like them. We are different(as many other groups of people) and NO ONE will ever change us. So you have to live with this and if you don´t like it, there is always the option to leave for somewhere better.
And people should stop complaining about if their children know this or that, if they are really interested in something they´ll learn it, and if they don´t learn it at school you can always teach them yourselves. Also remember the more languages one knows the better even if it´s only spoken in 10 villages! You´ll always learn something you never knew.
Please look at my website(which is mainly spanish… http://www.pacma.es) about animal defense, which we don´t like bullfighting, not because it´s spanish! as some might think!
Adam Macià-Parris

Hello everyone.
There many interesting viewpoints about the language situation in Barcelona and Catalonia from all of you. One of the problems is that each of us have a different idea of what Catalonia is, has been or what it should be in the future. I do want to ask some questions to people that do not hesitate to compare measures taken by the Catalan government with those taken by the Spanish government when Franco was head of state. Is Spanish completely banned from school, public life, T.V.. radio, music, administration,etc..? Are kids physically punished, humiliated or sent out of school for speaking Spanish as my father had been for speaking Catalan? Are Spanish speakers asked to stop barking and use Catalan as the reverse situation happened during Franco’s regime? Are entire generations of Catalans illiterate in Spanish due to the current school system?
For those who compare Catalonia with Nazi Germany, I can just say that you probably know the stupidity what you are doing, and if you don’t you have a serious problem.
Catalonia, as any place, is far from perfect, and the affirmative action measures taken to protect Catalan language are, of course subject to debate, as it should be. Catalonia, though, has managed to survive without the violence or social tensions that have occurred in many other parts of the World with similar situations, and it does have a strong history of respect, tolerance and democratic values. I believe that if someone chooses to live in a place should make the effort of learning its language/s in order to adapt, and I really don’t understand why some people who seem to be against the Catalan people, language, culture and political system chose to move there in the first place. If they want to experience real Spain they could be happier somewhere else. Or would they prefer to live in Franco-ruled Catalonia, ? I doubt they would prefer pre-Franco Catalonia, when the percentage of Catalan speakers in Barcelona was about 90%, twice as much as now.
Salut.

Why do all the nationalists finish their arguments, regardless of the subject matter with a ‘Visca Catalunya’?? For God’s sake, it sounds so ridiculous. Well, God save the Queen, bye.

From the linguistic point of view there is no problem to “ban” Catalan at home. I understand that your wife is native in Spanish (or any other language than Catalan) and you are native in English, so you can leave your kids to learn Catalan out of home, which all together will make them perfectly trilingual.

Ah, and if you don’t mind, I’ll link to this page and maybe another one of yours from my blog.

Candide
cataloniawatch.blogspot.com

It is a very interesting discussion about the language diversity and education. I am Canadian and my childrend are taught through the Canadian system abroad. I did want to put my children in the system here but I found out that the Education system standards are lower. I would have put my children in Private school but it was too expensive. I have had the opportunity to speak to several Catalans and they advised me to keep my children in the system and just enroll my children in language training Courses here. I have experience the same situation in reference to children not being taught the essentials in Geography from an experience with my daughter´s friend. She was talking about a child who born in another country that is not part of Spain (Unfortunately she was refering to the “Basque country”.) In other words she really did think that the Basque country was not in Spain. That is really scary. My children has the opportunity to learn about Every country in the world through the Canadian system and not just about North America. By limiting language and knowledge we make our future generation Ingnorant and less tolerant. We are at this moment trying to get used to the Catalan life and we are making a lot of friend whether from Catalonia, Basque, Madrid, and other regions. It is unfortunate that other autonomous provinces could not do the same.

Catalonia is in Spain?…yeah!, so far politically still is though, emotionally many of us don’t feel it that way.

I guess it is an action-reaction thing, Why Welsh study their language, why Irish do the same, Brettons, Corsicans, Vasques, Gallegos et cetera?…because that is what identify us and we refuse to loose it.

You are not a Catalan, Spaniard, French, English, Irish…You feel that you are that thing and, once you do that, then you take things that help you to understand that thing that you feel, like language, political symbols ( flags,national anthems), music, poetry, gastronomy et cetera, all those things make you Catalan, American, Japananese etc, things that you don’t feel you don’t pay too much attention to them, I guess that’s why we don’t care much about the Spanish language ( though I’m not saying that is not important to learn it )

@ Diego – Hello, Diego. I wouldn’t call Catalan useless, especially if you plan on making Barcelona or Catalunya home. You have every right to be proud of your language, culture and land. Like you I love the sound. My biggest problem is the debate is presented as either/or many times and I feel there are other solutions that neither put one language above the other or has the decision imposed by the government.

I come from California where there is no official language. Spanish and English have lived side-by-side, not to mention many more languages. Look at these examples of how different ways to teach bilingual education.

http://www.cal.org/jsp/TWI/SchoolSearch.jsp
http://www.dual-language.org/

To John Smith:
Shops that only have this things in English shoould be fined, yes, because by law they are required to have it both in Spanish and in Catalan. If a shop has its signs only in Spanish, it can be fined. If a shop has its signs only in Catalan, it can be fined (there haven’t been any case, I have never seen a shop with only signs in catalan, althoug I have seen many without any catalan signs), and if a shop has its signs only in english, then it can be fined (don’t know if even double fined, for lacking both Spanish and Catalan signs).
Many, many times I have been attended in Spanish although I wanted to be attended in Catalan. But as I can speak both, it’s not a big problem (although it’s at least a lack of respect to me, not being able no speak my native language, which is as way one of the two official languages here).
Part of my family does not come from Catalunya, and they don’t speak Catalan, of course. Never any of them had any problem, anywhere, speaking Spanish.

And, about catalan kids not knowing the Spanish geography… well, it’s sad, of course, but you can as well talk about “spanish kids not knowing the Spanish geography”, because it’s a fault of the general Spanish education system, and kits from other regions have exactly the same problem.
I, and most of my catalan friends, can speak and write spanish perfectly, of course much better than most kids from any other spanish-speaking-only region can. Catalan people from my generation can speak spanish as well as people from any other region. Catalan kids today speak spanish as bad as kids from any other region. Perhaps not better, but not worse either (and knowing one language more is always good). El saber no ocupa lugar.