Catalan language

“ In the 13th century the name given to the vulgar tongue of eastern Spain was Catalanesch (Catalaniscus) or Catald (Catalanus) —the idiom of the Catalans. [11] By Catalanesch or Catala was understood, essentially, the spoken language and the language of prose, while that of poetry, with a large admixture of Provencal forms, was early called Lemosi, Limosi or language of Limousin—Catalan grammarians, and particularly the most celebrated of them, Ramon Vidal de Besalú, having adopted Lemosi as the generic name of the language of the troubadours. ”

“ I did not know the Catalan language well enough for that. At first people gave me alms; but, when a Spaniard passed, he would say to the people of the neighborhood:
"'You have a Moorish woman among you.'
"And they would turn me away. I wandered from valley to valley.
"One day I found myself on a highroad—I learned afterward that it was the Pau road—and there it was that heaven caused me to fall in with a woman even more unhappy than myself. She was the mother of the child before you, who has become mine."
"Go on," said the marquis. ”

“ But, even though one may know the Spanish language, Catalan is not intelligible without explanation. The people talk rapidly, with closed teeth, without supplementing their speech by gestures, so that it is difficult to get the sense of the simplest sentence, and it is a great thing to catch a few occasional words. However, the common people can speak Castilian when it is convenient, but they do so utterly without grace, although much better than the common people of the northern Italian provinces speak Italian. ”

“ In the fourth place, to call a man a “Spaniard” is not a sufficient definition, for there are wide differences in blood and language as well as in feelings in the various regions of Spain; the serious-minded, progressive, European-blooded Catalan is certainly farther apart from the easy-going, pleasure-loving, improvident, part Moslem-blooded Andalusian than is the Englishman from the American, or perhaps the southern Frenchman from the North Italian. ”

“ The people speak as the scholars write: the differences in the pronunciation of the cultured classes and the people of the town are very slight.
And, even leaving these four cities out of the question, the Spanish language is much more used and much more common, and consequently much more vigorous and forcible, in the daily press, on the stage, and in the popular literature than is the case with the Italian language. There are in Spain the Valencian, the Catalan, the Galician, and the Murcian dialects and the very ancient language of the Basque provinces. ”

“ The animals in the Zoological Gardens also are known by their Catalan, and Castilian as well as Latin names! Barcelona will have no dealings with Castile, its people speak their own language and address the foreigner in French. Barcelona is go-ahead. In the houses of the new suburbs l'art nouveau screams at one, and everything is up-to-date!
The Spaniard is well-known to be lazy, not so the Catalan. I have never seen a Spaniard running, but I have seen a Catalan walking fast!
GERONA THE siege of Gerona is as celebrated in the Spanish history of the Napoleonic wars as that of Saragossa. ”

“ In addition to Castilian, or Spanish, there are the distinct languages of the Catalans and Basques, with a great many variants, or dialects, from the Castilian and Catalan. Nevertheless, it is true that all are “Spaniards.” Castilian is generally understood, and, until the recent reappearance of Catalan, was the only literary language; the people are patriotic to the country, even though the fire of local attachments is still uncommonly strong in them; the bull-fight and the national lottery are popular in all parts of Spain ”

“ The main part of the peninsula uses languages that have arisen from Latin, one on the west coast which is known in the two forms of Portuguese and Galician, one along the northern portion of the east coast which is called Catalan, and is more nearly related to the langue d'oc than to Spanish, which is the language {31} of the great plateau of the peninsula, and has become also the language of Andalusia and of the non-Catalan east coast. ”

“ Catalan art is no new thing in Spanish tradition, and is in a measure descended from that which was formerly the art of the Kingdom of Aragon before the national union. The Catalans have confined it entirely to their territory, have cultivated it with enthusiasm, and have created a Catalan school of Spanish Art. ”

“ The Catalan or Limousin, the earliest dialect cultivated in the peninsula, bore a strong resemblance to the Provençal, and when the bards were driven from Provence they found a home in the east of Spain, and numerous celebrated troubadours arose in Aragon and Catalonia. But many elements concurred to produce a decay of the Catalan, and from the beginning of the sixteenth century it rapidly declined. It is still spoken in the Balearic Islands and among the lower classes of some of the eastern parts of Spain, but since the sixteenth century the Castilian alone has been the vehicle of literature. ”

“ In exploring Barcelona one notices unfamiliar names on the shops, here are no longer Alvarez, González, Pérez, García, but strange Catalan names, such as Bosch, Cla, Puig, Catafalch, Llordachs, Petz. On every side, in shops, in the tramcars, one hears the dialect spoken, rather rough sounding and wholly unintelligible to the traveler who knows only Castilian. In no other of Spain's provinces is so much made of local differences. ”

“ The Catalan girls, up in these Pyrenean heights, are perhaps more often seriously beautiful than in Barcelona, though here, too, they are well endowed with the substantial, homely, good-humoured Catalan graces. ”

“ Catalan fell to the rank of a patois and was written less and less; lettered persons ceased to cultivate it, and the upper classes, especially in Valencia, owing to the 16th–18th Centuries. proximity of Castile, soon affected to make no further use of the local speech except in familiar conversation. The 16th century, in fact, furnishes literary history with hardly more than a single poet at all worthy of the name—Pere Serafi, some of whose pieces, in the style of Auzias March, but less obscure, are graceful enough and deserve to live; his poems were printed at Barcelona in 1565. ”

“ Barcelona may be a shrewd commercial center, that in its material pride, in order not to be classed with the improvident, brutally repudiates most of the cosas de España; she may print books whose every word is an insult to government and religion; she is still deeply Spanish in the earnest piety of the larger proportion of her citizens. A Catalan may tell you, especially if you belong to a northern race and a different creed, that what you see is all form, lip-religion, that the men here, like intelligent men the world over, are free-thinkers. ”

“ There are two prime facts in the social history of Catalonia in this period: the uprising of the serfs; and the outstanding importance of the cities, especially Barcelona. The first marked the decline of the nobility and the appearance of a new social factor; the second indicated the direction which modern social organization was to take. Having lost their political power the nobles concentrated their interest on getting wealth out of their lands, especially through the tributes of their serfs. In this respect they had the enormous advantage of possessing the greater part of Catalan territory. ”

“ If for no other reason than for this alone I doff my beaver to the unversifying Catalan.
There is, however, another characteristic which accounts for their prosperity, and excuses the tone of superiority they adopt towards the people of the neighbouring provinces—they are not afraid of work. Since the thirteenth century, when the Catalans led the way to the whole world in maritime conquest and jurisprudence, they have never thought trade to be a degradation, but rather have ennobled it by their honesty and enterprise. The Spanish race generally has lacked the trading spirit. ”

“ My son, choose between the Roman Venus and the Catalan the one you prefer. The rascal takes the Catalan, and his choice is the best. The Roman is black, the Catalan is white. The Roman is cold, the Catalan enflames all who approach her. ”

“ They rarely glance through the window, though certainly there is little to see, and I am not sure that they go away for meals; I sometimes see them munching a roll, and the Catalan water-pot is always at hand to drink from. If it were not that I know how the Catalan can live by night as well as by day, I should say that this little group can know nothing whatever of the vast and variegated Barcelonese world in whose heart they live, that it is nothing to them that all last night Barcelona was celebrating St. ”

“ It is never preserved except when protected by the non-etymological t already spoken of {llegirt or llegi, but never llegir) ; the r reappears, nevertheless, whenever the infinitive is followed by a pronoun {donarme, dirho) . Rs is reduced to i (cos for cors, corpus) . H is merely an orthographic sign ; it is used to indicate that two consecutive vowels do not form a diphthong (vehi raho) , and, added to c, it denotes the pronunciation of the guttural c at the end of a word (amich) .
Inflexion.—Catalan, unlike Old Provençal and Old French, has never had declensions. ”

“ Persians, who poured their liquor from it into the hollow of the hand, and thence imbibed it in the fashion called, in Cataluña and Valencia, al gallet. For just as a certain class of American displays his marksmanship in spitting, so does the Catalan who is accomplished in the art, amuse himself and others by causing the ruby wine to spout from his porrón on to the very apex of his nose, continuing from this point, in the form of a fine and undulating rivulet, over his upper lip and down his throat.
Windows of Spanish houses were seldom glazed until about one hundred years ago. ”

“ Catalan is so singularly rich and varied that it might well deserve separate treatment: its inclusion here would be as unjustifiable as the inclusion of Provençal in a work dealing with French literature. For the purposes of this book, minor varieties are neglected, and Spanish literature is taken as referring solely to Castilian—the speech of Juan Ruiz, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Quevedo, and Calderón. ”

“ Three Romance or Roman languages were spoken in that portion of Spain which remained in Christian hands: in Catalonia and Aragon the Provençal, Catalan, or Limousin; in Asturias, Old Castile, and Leon the Castilian; and in Galicia the Gallego, whence the Portuguese had its origin. The Catalan was almost entirely similar to the Provençal or langue d’oc of Southern France, and the accession of Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, to the throne of Provence in 1092 united the Catalonian and Provençal peoples under one common rule. ”

“ Adieu, indeed, to the toga-like capes, to mantillas, to midnight serenades. A Catalan has no time to waste chatting by alluring rejas.
Catalonia has been called the Lancashire of Spain, and Barcelona its Manchester. If the comparison is fit in regard to commercial success, it is inappropriate in one respect, for, built by a Latin race, to whom is natural a sense of beauty, Barcelona, though as keen after money as the English town, has cared better for her interests. The sunlight is not darkened by the miles of factory chimneys that so oppress the heart in the black country. ”

“ It was here that I made my sketch, in which luckily, for a bit of colour, I was able to include the blue-bloused porters in their red caps who wait about for a job with the rope of their calling slung over their shoulders. Here too all the odd job men stand awaiting hire. House painters in white blouses with insignia of their trade—a whitewash brush on the end of a pole—held high, and others—an endless variety.
Barcelona, being a business town, is democratic to the core, it is also to the core, Catalan. The names of streets are displayed in Catalan as well as Spanish. ”

“ The union of Aragon with Castile, and the resulting predominance of Castilian throughout Spain, inflicted a death-blow on Catalan literature, especially on its artistic poetry, a kind of composition more ready than any other to avail itself of the triumphant idiom which soon came to be regarded by men of letters as the only noble one, and alone fit to be the vehicle of elevated or refined thoughts. ”

“ Aragon, a country of plains surrounded by mountains, is an inland province, and its inhabitants have remained for the most part herdsmen, agriculturists, and soldiers. Catalonia, on the other hand, possesses an admirable seaboard. Its natural wealth, joined to favourable geographical position, has developed commerce with neighbouring countries, and more especially with Roussillon and Languedoc. Indeed, seven or eight centuries ago, the Catalans were Provençals rather than Spaniards, and in their language and customs they were closely related to the people to the north of the Pyrenees. ”

“ However, I afterward discovered that there is in Barcelona a large number of hotel-porters, of waiters in the restaurants, cooks, and servants of all kinds—Piedmontese for the most part from the province of Navarre—who have lived in Spain from boyhood and{21} speak this dreadful jargon composed of French, Italian, Castilian, Catalan, and Piedmontese. However, they do not use this dialect in addressing the Spanish people, for they all know Spanish, but only to Italian travellers in a playful spirit, to let them see that they have not forgotten the speech of their fatherland. ”