opinion
marcela topor. mtopor@cataloniatoday.cat
The project to turn English into Catalonia's third language continues
The situation of English today is not the same as 10 years ago. Even if the socio-linguistic objective of establishing a third language in Catalonia has not yet been fulfilled, there has nevertheless been exceptional progress.
Ten years ago, Catalonia Today was born, a publication that since the beginning aimed at publishing Catalan content in English, for the numerous English-speaking residents as well as the increasing number of locals for which the universal language has become indispensable– for work, social or academic reasons. From the beginning CT aimed to do something ambitious: to turn English into an everyday language that could be used to learn what was going on in the country.
A decade later, with the same ambition and objectives, we are renewing our project through a new formula that combines different formats. Since November 10, there have been daily pages in English in El Punt Avui newspaper, a daily hour in English on TV, repeated at weekends and available online, and a new website that includes all of this content online.
Catalonia still needs to improve its English for sure, especially as that is what most people want, and as it aims to become a new state within the EU. We hope this new project will help the ambition of establishing a third language to become a reality, sooner rather than later. It is said that languages die with their speakers, but they are also born with them. With English, we face a fortunate situation: we can assist in making the trilingual community a reality, where the native language, Catalan, exists alongside other official languages, such as Spanish and, hopefully, the emerging international lingua franca.
