The text below is a summary of the main ideas that capture the origins of the Catalan language taken from gencat.cat and then after there is the main idea that revolves around the controversy of the language and its use.
Catalan is a Romance language from the Neo-Latin group, appearing between the eighth and tenth centuries in a part of Catalonia, in Northern Catalonia and in Andorra, in the territories of the Carolingian Empire that formed the counties of the Spanish March.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it spread to the rest of Catalonia, most of Valencia, the Balearic Islands, La Franja (Aragon), to the Sardinian town of Alghero and to the Carxe county in the region of Murcia. The linguistic borders were established by the end of the reign of James I.
Currently, it extends over an area of about 68,730 km2, inhabited by 13,740,000 people in four countries: Andorra, Spain, France and Italy.
The earliest known texts written in Catalan are fragments of the Catalan version of the Forum Iudicum and the Homilies d’Organyà sermons, both from the twelfth century.
Catalan expanded considerably as a language for creative work and government (the Royal Chancellery) between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, a time when the The Crown of Aragon extended its domains through the Mediterranean to Sicily, Sardinia, Naples and even Athens. The period saw the appearance of a number of literary works whose importance has been internationally recognised. They include the works of Ramon Llull, a contemporary of Dante, the four Cròniques (the Llibre dels fets, dealing with James I, the chronicles by Bernat Desclot and Ramon Muntaner and the chronicle written at the instigation of Pere el Cerimoniós), the works of Francesc Eiximenis, Anselm Turmeda, Bernat Metge and Ausiàs Marc, and Tirant lo Blanc, considered the first modern novel in western literature.
Between 1939 and 1975, during the dictatorship that followed the Civil War (1936-1939), the persecution of Catalan was intense and systematic, particularly during the forties and fifties. Franco’s regime prohibited the use of Catalan in education, in the publication of books, newspapers and magazines, in the transmission of telegrams and even in telephone conversations. In other words, it was banned both in public and in some strictly private communication. The screening of films was required to be in Spanish and theatre had to be presented in that language, the only one that could be used on television and radio. Administrative, notarial, judicial and mercantile documentation was exclusively in Spanish and anything in Catalan was considered null and void. Road and commercial signs, advertising and, in general, all exterior images in the country were in Spanish. During the fifties and sixties, at a time when none of the Catalan-speaking regions had educational resources or democratic freedoms, the large numbers of immigrants from the rest of Spain had few opportunities to become familiar with and learn the Catalan language, apart from some voluntary and semi-clandestine initiatives.
After Franco’s death (1975), when democratic freedoms were restored, the Constitution of 1978 recognised linguistic plurality and established that Spanish languages other than Castilian could be official in accordance with the statutes of autonomy for different regions. The statutes of Catalonia (1979) and the Balearic Islands (1983) recognised Catalan as the language of these areas and declared it the official language jointly with Spanish. The statute for Valencia also made the language official (1982), with the legal name of Valencian, while Catalan was established as the official language of Andorra in the country’s 1993 Constitution.
In accordance with these statutes, the autonomous parliaments of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia passed laws supporting the Catalan language, introducing it in schools, government and the media.
In Catalonia, the Language Standardisation Act of April 6, 1983, began a process that promoted the recovery of the knowledge and use of Catalan in three main areas, institutions, the media and education, which have determined the main lines of action on the path towards normalcy.
The Catalan Government, Parliament and provincial and city councils adopted Catalan as the language of everyday communication, both internally and in their relations with the public. This institutional commitment was reinforced by the creation of the Directorate-General for Language Policy within the Government of Catalonia as a body for the analysis, steering, planning, coordination and implementation of language policy. The Government also strengthened support for the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and created organisations such as TERMCAT, which has overseen terminology since 1985, and the Consortium for Language Standardisation, which works to extend the knowledge and use of the Catalan language.
In the twenty-first century Catalan has confirmed its place as one of the 100 most widely spoken languages in the world.
The social presence of Catalan in Catalonia at the beginning of the century was affected by two significant events: the flood of immigrants (in 2015, there were just over 1 million, 13.7% of the population) and the emergence of information and communication technologies. The first event had an impact on the general level of knowledge of Catalan and highlighted the need to continue working to give all newcomers access to knowledge of the language.
Where is the controversy?
The controversy in the use of the Catalan language lies in the fact that a lot of newcomers don’t necessarily feel that the local language is shared with them in the same way that Spanish is. Spanish is the de facto language of communication in Catalonia, however, a whole load of new people don’t feel that the local culture is shared enough with them and this creates a sense of separation between Catalans and the rest of the population.
Residents from neighboring countries feel exactly the same way. They feel they are being antagonized unnecessarily because of their lack of language skills when in reality the lack of assimilation is the fault in most cases of the local community as in not opening enough to include newcomers in the realm of their linguistic social circle. There was the very telling case of a famous Greek polyglot who made a trip to Catalonia and tried to use and polish his language skills, but who couldn’t find anyone who would speak back to him in Catalan.
Oftentimes, if not most of the time, speaking the local language opens secret doors into the culture that weren’t obvious at the beginning. It takes a lot of expertise to understand how to do it.
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