Features

opinio

A timely warning for all Catalan speakers Catalan losing migrants

Number of newcomers studying Catalan falls by 44% in past five year with only 4.2% habitually using the language

Polls sug­gest Cata­lan is in a healthy state, with ever more peo­ple using the lan­guage on a daily basis. Yet stud­ies also point to a blind spot: the slow progress in the spread of the lan­guage among mi­grants. The sur­vey of lin­guis­tic use for 2013 found that 4.2% of res­i­dents use Cata­lan ha­bit­u­ally, well below the 56% who use Span­ish reg­u­larly. What's more, the fig­ures are in stark con­trast to the 68% of peo­ple (in the same sur­vey) who claim an in­ter­est in learn­ing or im­prov­ing their Cata­lan.

Nor are the num­bers on courses of the Con­sorci per a la Nor­mal­ització Lingüística (CPNL) en­cour­ag­ing: in five years the num­ber of stu­dents has fallen by 43%, a higher per­cent­age than that of mi­grants who have left the coun­try due to the ef­fects of the cri­sis.

The ques­tion is how to ex­plain this de­cline at a time when Cat­alo­nia is im­mersed in a process that could lead to in­de­pen­dence, and with in­te­gra­tion leg­is­la­tion (llei d'acol­l­ida) grant­ing res­i­dency in ex­change for pass­ing basic qual­i­fi­ca­tions in the Cata­lan lan­guage.

A nec­es­sary tool

So­ci­olin­guists have long warned that the lan­guage will only be more widely used if it is seen by its po­ten­tial speak­ers as nec­es­sary for every­day life, which is still clearly not the case in Cat­alo­nia. To this must be added the ef­fects of the eco­nomic cri­sis, which ac­cord­ing to the CPNL and the Cata­lan cul­ture de­part­ment, has been cru­cial in keep­ing new­com­ers from tak­ing the plunge and learn­ing Cata­lan. High un­em­ploy­ment has led many mi­grants to re­turn to their own coun­tries, but also fewer for­eign res­i­dents are ar­riv­ing, who are the peo­ple who can ben­e­fit most from Cata­lan courses. At the same time, those mi­grants who have stayed now have a lower stan­dard of liv­ing, and there­fore less dis­pos­able in­come and less free time.

A ‘nor­mal' de­cline

Eulàlia Buch, re­gional co­or­di­na­tor for Acol­l­ida Lingüística of the Plataforma per la Llen­gua, says it is “nor­mal” that the num­bers signed up with the CPNL should go down due to the cor­re­spond­ing fall in the num­bers of new­com­ers ar­riv­ing in the coun­try. Buch also points out that “there is now a wider range of op­tions to learn the lan­guage, such as on­line courses or the Vol­un­tariat per la llen­gua pro­gramme, which last year in­cluded 10,189 lin­guis­tic pair­ings.

Mean­while, Javier García Bonomi, pres­i­dent of the Fed­eració d'En­ti­tats Llati­noamer­i­canes de Catalunya (Fede­latina) says the issue should not be seen in purely eco­nomic terms: “Study­ing Cata­lan has to be done out of an in­ter­est in the coun­try and for per­sonal de­vel­op­ment,” he says, re­fer­ring to the links of “af­fec­tion” often cre­ated be­tween lin­guis­tic pairs.

The Fede­latina pres­i­dent also says that it is a dif­fi­cult time for many mi­grants: “There are a lot of peo­ple at risk of so­cial ex­clu­sion, who do not have the money to buy the Cata­lan text­book, while there are oth­ers who have to do two or three jobs to get to the end of the month, and who can­not find courses at the week­end,” he says. Bonomi calls on the au­thor­i­ties to make a greater ef­fort where new­com­ers are con­cerned: “Mi­grants have been over­looked by the Cata­lan sov­er­eignty process,” he con­cludes.


The IEC re­port warns about a de­cline in the so­cial use of Cata­lan, and about a dif­fer­ence in the num­bers of those who ha­bit­u­ally use Cata­lan and those who use Span­ish. The news that Cata­lan is no longer at­tract­ing as many for­eign new­com­ers is it­self an in­di­ca­tion that the in­ter­est in and the use of the lan­guage is stag­nat­ing. The data pro­vide a warn­ing about where this issue may end up if the process to­wards in­de­pen­dence does not progress, or if it be­comes bogged down in in­ter­minable dis­cus­sions about can­di­dates and elec­toral strat­egy. The lan­guage is at the heart of who we are and these warn­ing about a de­cline in its use on the part of mi­grants should not be un­der­es­ti­mated. The in­sti­tu­tional threats against Cata­lan in places like the Balearic Is­lands and Va­len­cia may have dis­ap­peared, but there are plenty more at home here in Cat­alo­nia.

Integration law at a snail's pace

In April 2010, the Catalan parliament passed a migrant integration law that, among other things, grants residency to foreign newcomers who manage to obtain a basic Catalan language certificate after doing a set course. However, the final stage of the legislative process was not completed until last November. Only now are some local authorities beginning to put the new regulations into effect.

Nevertheless, the director general of the immigration department, Xavier Bosch, is convinced that the “ambitious and pioneering” law will eventually lead more migrants to sign up for Catalan courses.

Newcomers to the country who want to get the certificate have to complete a 90-hour course. Passing the course accredits their Catalan language skills at the basic A1 and A2 levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The standard by which language proficiency is judged on a European level.

Catalan with a Honduran accent

Although they work from Monday to Friday, each Saturday a group of women of Honduran origin get together to study Catalan in the Sortidor civic centre in Poble-sec. They come from all over the greater Barcelona area with the aim of aiding their integration by learning the local language. Yet, they are the exception rather than the rule: “There are almost no Catalan courses on Saturdays and Sundays,” laments Jorge Irías, president of the Federació d'Associacions d'Hondurenys a Catalunya, which years ago reached an agreement with the Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística to do Catalan courses for its member on Saturdays, from 4 to 8 pm in Poble-sec.

“The timetable is limited. In Barcelonès and the surroundings there are enough courses, but further afield it is hard to find any,” says Maria Lapasset of the CPNL.

Brenda and Ilsa are studying Catalan because they believe it could be useful for finding work and as a tool to “integrate into Catalan society and culture”.

“Everyone has their own reasons for learning Catalan: some for work, other to help their children's studies, and so on, but in every case we value it as personal development,” says Irías.

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.