THERE’S STILL TIME

The im­mi­nent demise of a lan­guage is never an­nounced with an of­fi­cial state­ment. There’s no press con­fer­ence where a solemn-faced gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial de­clares: “We re­gret to in­form you that Cata­lan has been placed in pal­lia­tive care. Fam­ily and friends are ad­vised to visit while they still can.” No, lin­guis­tic death is a far more sub­tle af­fair. First, there’s a bit of ero­sion – shop signs qui­etly swap­ping Obert for Abierto or Open, restau­rants of­fer­ing menus solo en castel­lano y inglés be­cause “every­one speaks Span­ish and Eng­lish,” and that awk­ward pause when a young Cata­lan-speaker au­to­mat­i­cally switches to Span­ish upon hear­ing the slight­est hint of an ac­cent that isn’t local.

As high­lighted by var­i­ous ex­perts in this month’s issue, the signs have been there for a while. There’s been an alarm­ing drop in the num­ber of chil­dren who speak Cata­lan at home. Schools, once a fortress of lin­guis­tic preser­va­tion, are in­creas­ingly see­ing Span­ish take cen­tre stage in play­ground con­ver­sa­tions. Even in the work­place, where Cata­lan is still legally pro­tected, there’s a creep­ing sense that, out­side of gov­ern­ment forms and of­fi­cial meet­ings, Span­ish is sim­ply more… prac­ti­cal. It’s the lan­guage of ease, of con­ve­nience, of not hav­ing to ex­plain why you’re in­sist­ing on speak­ing a lan­guage that, let’s be hon­est, the rest of the world isn’t los­ing sleep over.

And then, of course, there’s the dig­i­tal age. If lan­guages had a nat­ural preda­tor, it would be the al­go­rithm. The In­ter­net is an ecosys­tem where the strong thrive and the niche per­ish, and Cata­lan is at risk of be­com­ing the lin­guis­tic equiv­a­lent of a rare bird whose only re­main­ing habi­tat is a pro­tected na­ture re­serve (or, in this case, a cor­ner of the Gen­er­al­i­tat web­site). Are Cata­lan teenagers re­ally scrolling Tik­Tok and say­ing, “Oh wow, an­other fan­tas­tic viral video in my beloved na­tive tongue!” The very forces that dic­tate cul­tural con­sump­tion are gen­tly nudg­ing Cata­lan to­wards the lin­guis­tic attic.

And yet this de­cline seems to be met with an odd sort of fa­tal­is­tic shrug. Is re­sist­ing just too much work? By way of com­par­i­son, and as Neil in­ti­mates in his col­umn on page 31, the French may be many things, but lin­guis­tic pushovers they are not. France has spent decades ruth­lessly erad­i­cat­ing every mi­nor­ity lan­guage within its bor­ders, and if you try to order a baguette in any­thing other than French – in­clud­ing Eng­lish – you’ll be met with a glare so in­tense it could cur­dle milk.

Per­haps the most tragic part of Cata­lan’s slow de­cline is that it is, in many ways, a vic­tim of its own speak­ers’ kind­ness. Ever the ac­com­mo­dat­ing hosts, Cata­lans switch lan­guages at the drop of a hat, en­sur­ing that no one ever has to suf­fer the in­dig­nity of being mo­men­tar­ily con­fused. The re­sult? A cul­tural gen­eros­ity that is slowly stran­gling the very thing it seeks to pro­tect.

But Cata­lan isn’t dead. Not yet. It’s still a lan­guage of lit­er­a­ture, of pol­i­tics, of a fiercely proud his­tory. It still has mil­lions of speak­ers, a deeply rooted pres­ence in so­ci­ety, and – at least for now – a gen­er­a­tion that knows what it feels like to speak it with­out self-con­scious­ness. But for how much longer? Will fu­ture gen­er­a­tions hear Cata­lan only in nos­tal­gic old record­ings, a lin­guis­tic relic of a by­gone era?

There’s still time to re­mind peo­ple that lin­guis­tic sur­vival is an ac­tive choice, not a pas­sive hope. Cata­lan doesn’t need a grand rev­o­lu­tion, just a lit­tle stub­born­ness – per­haps a touch of that in­fa­mous French lin­guis­tic ar­ro­gance, a re­fusal to fade po­litely into his­tory.

After all, Cata­lan is a lan­guage that has sur­vived dic­ta­tor­ships, re­pres­sion, and more than a few wars. It would be a shame if, after all that, it ended up lost to the ir­re­sistible lure of La Casa de Papel and What­sApp voice notes in Span­ish.

Opin­ion