[brlug-general] the short answer.

[Chopin Cusachs]

My impression is that the tension waxes and wanes, but goes back to
the extinction of the House of Barcelona after the death of Martin the
Humane.  Valencia supported the giving of the throne to Fernando de
Antequera in place of Martin's heir, Jaume el Dessortat (James the
Unfortunate), Count of Urgell.    I love the medieval nicknames, like
that of the founder of the House of Barcelona, Guifré el Pelós, or
Wilfred the Hairy.  They would have written it then lo Pelós, as the
article shifted centuries later.

My host when I taught in Valencia was a Gallego, but I never heard him
speak the language.  When I gave a lecture or two in Oviedo I noticed
some grammatical differences.

When you get north, along the Pyrenees, you notice gradual shifts.  In
the east, Occitan shifts initial "f" to "h" as in most Castillian words, but
in the west the "f" is retained.  Old Catalan, like Occitan, dropped the
"o" of the first person singular of the verb present, as is still, I'm told,
the usage in the Balearic Islands, though I never got to visit there.  I
have French relatives who lived in Aix en Provence when I was in Paris,
then Valencia, and I found I could understand the speech of the
gardener from Catalan.  Then for years they lived in Paris, but are now
retired to Bayonne, where I look forward to visiting.


My family in Barcelona is polyglot, but up the coast where many live,
it was appreciated when I got proficient enough to let a conversation
continue in Catalan.  It is interesting that when my great-grandfather
came to New Orleans about 1820 his older brother wrote back home
in Castilian, not Catalan.  Most amusing of all is that Columbus, or
Colon, is the only person I know to have been born in three countries.
His correspondence with his brother is in Catalan -- I suspect an
expert could distinguish between Mallorcan and Barcelona variants.

Choppy
(Lluís Cusachs i Chopin)



At 08:06 AM 9/23/07,Fernando Vilas  wrote:
>Strange.  I didn't realize the friction had 
>gotten that bad over there.  I can
>understand the idea of linguistic purity from the Valencians, but I figured
>the Castillians wouldn't care.  At the same time, La Xunta de Galicia, the
>government of the region just north of Portugal, is adding to the language
>requirements on most of their jobs, so that now, you need Spanish, English,
>and Galician