# How easy is it to be bilingual in Spanish and Catalan?



## Philippa

From this thread:


			
				Belén said:
			
		

> ...children in public schools are taking all their classes in Catalan and they actually have a hard time writing and speaking Spanish. (which I find very sad, because it is completely possible to be 100% bilingual but I guess that's another thread)....I speak in Catalan to my whole family from the oldest to the youngest, to most of my friends in the island and when I am in Palma I use Catalan and Spanish the same.


How obedient of me to start another thread for this!!

How can Catalans end up bilingual if all their schooling is in Catalan, all their family speak Calalan and most of their friends do? How did you end up able to speak both, Belén? To me it sounds like it would be difficult to learn _castellano_ because almost all the influences are for Catalan? 

And on a related topic, I wonder how many other Catalans would agree with you that it's a pity not to be bilingual (and would be happy to only speak Catalan)?

Just wondering, not judging at all.....
Salut!
Philippa


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## Roi Marphille

Philippa said:
			
		

> From this thread:
> 
> How obedient of me to start another thread for this!!
> 
> How can Catalans end up bilingual if all their schooling is in Catalan, all their family speak Calalan and most of their friends do? How did you end up able to speak both, Belén? To me it sounds like it would be difficult to learn _castellano_ because almost all the influences are for Catalan?
> 
> And on a related topic, I wonder how many other Catalans would agree with you that it's a pity not to be bilingual (and would be happy to only speak Catalan)?
> 
> Just wondering, not judging at all.....
> Salut!
> Philippa


well, I tell you what: Monolingual Catalans DO NOT EXIST in XX and XXI centuries. This is a fact. If someones says the contrary, he/she lies.
It is IMPOSSIBLE not to learn Castilian in Catalonia. Even my grandmother, who is 95 years old and she is been living all her life in a small town speaks Castilian.
It is perfectly possible and (sometimes) common not to learn and speak Catalan in Catalonia.

Monolinguism is not a goal for Catalans. For me it is stupid. The more languages you know, the better. I'm proud to speak Castilian and other languages, I'd like to speak 10 or so..

Salut,
Roi


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## Outsider

Question: in which language are the TV stations you get in Catalonia? The radio stations? The newspapers?


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## belén

Two things:

My situation is different to the one children are living nowadays, my classes were in Spanish (that's the way it was just after Franco died) and I was taking only Catalan 2 days per week in school. Although I speak in Catalan with many people, and it is my mother tongue (if you call mother tongue to the language your mother speaks to you) as previously said, my skills in writing are limited, I am aware that I make many mistakes when writing and if I can choose between reading a book in Spanish or Catalan, I'll go for the Spanish, because it is more confortable for me.
I can write and read in Catalan, but I don't consider myself 100% capable, maybe 80%.  

Nowadays, I have the feeling is just the other way around, I see young people having a very hard time when speaking in Spanish and they make many mistakes when writing. Of course, they know Spanish, they are exposed to it, on TV, other people, inmigrant friends and so on, but I don't think that they handle the language 100%. 

Belén

Edit; Answering Outsider's question:

Question: in which language are the TV stations you get in Catalonia? The radio stations? The newspapers?

Both in Spanish and Catalan. There are the Spanish public and private channels, together with the Autonomic channels and Local Channels. In the islands we even get the Valencian channel (in Catalan) and the 2 Catalonian one plus three Balearic ones. 
Newspapers, there are I believe 2 or 3 in Catalan, plus all the nationals ones.


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## Roi Marphille

Outsider said:
			
		

> Question: in which language are the TV stations you get in Catalonia? The radio stations? The newspapers?


Both in Catalan and Castilian. You can choose.

Reg. what I said before,
you can go to the most remote area deep in the mountains and you will never find a grown-person who doesn't speak Castilian. It is impossible.
but..
It is perfectly common and easy to find Castilian monolinguals in Barcelona or any Catalan town. Even people born here. They went to school, well, I guess so. They speak Catalan? well, I guess they can say "adéu" to say goodbye and few other words.


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## Outsider

Barcelona is one of the biggest cities in Spain, and big cities are always exceptional. They tend to have many migrants, both from other parts of the country and from abroad. So, the significant number of monolinguals living in Barcelona does not seem necessarily threatening to Catalan...


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## Laia

Roi Marphille said:
			
		

> well, I tell you what: Monolingual Catalans DO NOT EXIST in XX and XXI centuries. This is a fact. If someones says the contrary, he/she lies.
> It is IMPOSSIBLE not to learn Castilian in Catalonia. Even my grandmother, who is 95 years old and she is been living all her life in a small town speaks Castilian.
> It is perfectly possible and (sometimes) common not to learn and speak Catalan in Catalonia.
> 
> Monolinguism is not a goal for Catalans. For me it is stupid. The more languages you know, the better. I'm proud to speak Castilian and other languages, I'd like to speak 10 or so..
> 
> Salut,
> Roi


 
I 100% agree


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## ampurdan

Back in School (to be more precise, in a Catalan class), I was told that a bilingual individual is only he whose mother speaks one language to him and whose father speaks another language to him. All the other languages an individual may learn do not account for making that individual "multilingual" since they won't be his or her "mother tongue".

I can add to this that most of the really "bilingual" people according to this definition, in fact, are much more fluent in one of their parents' languages than in the other.

I really think that no matter how many languages you learn, you'll remain monolingual in your native language, since that language was the one that structured your mind back in childhood.


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## ampurdan

Having said that, I think there are people in Catalonia (except Barcelona) who have problems when they have to speak Spanish; they don't feel confortable and they are not used to it; we Catalan-speakers tend to mix our own language constructions with the Spanish ones, when we are not careful; but everyone that has been in Catalonia since childhood will understand perfectly Spanish, written and spoken.


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## Mei

Hi there,

I was born in Barcelona and in the school I always spoke both, spanish and catalan. I had 2 friends and with one I spoke catalan and with the other one spanish. I have no problem to change the lenguage. Now I have a friend that sometimes we speak in spanish and sometimes in catalan, don't ask me why because I don't know... but that's the way it is.

I can tell you that all the catalans understand spanish but I'm not so sure if all of we can speak it... or they speak it so bad, and it's true! I have friends that understand spanish but they can't speak it so well as someone of Madrid, for example... imagine someone who lives in a village lost in the mountain... it's just my opinion.

Cheers

Mei


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## cirrus

I know just what you mean.  I have friends who live in the middle of nowhere between Alcoi and Sella.  According to the context their neighbours speak either castillian or valencia and sometimes mix the two up in the same sentence.


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## belén

My granma was not capable of making a whole sentence in Spanish, specially when she was getting older. She would start in Spanish but switch to Catalan without realizing.


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## ampurdan

Mei said:
			
		

> Hi there,
> 
> I was born in Barcelona and in the school I always spoke both, spanish and catalan. I had 2 friends and with one I spoke catalan and with the other one spanish. I have no problem to change the lenguage. Now I have a friend that sometimes we speak in spanish and sometimes in catalan, don't ask me why because I don't know... but that's the way it is.
> 
> I can tell you that all the catalans understand spanish but I'm not so sure if all of we can speak it... or they speak it so bad, and it's true! I have friends that understand spanish but they can't speak it so well as someone of Madrid, for example... imagine someone who lives in a village lost in the mountain... it's just my opinion.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Mei


 
Well, I agree with you Mei, but it's quite the same everywhere in Catalonia, since villages lost in the mountain have relatively very few population and, therefore, they are not significant.

Everyone who is brought up in Catalonia understands Spanish, some of them have difficulties when they have to talk. Not everyone who is brought up in Catalonia understands Catalan (but the number is decreasing), guess if they try to talk.


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## Roi Marphille

belen said:
			
		

> My granma was not capable of making a whole sentence in Spanish, specially when she was getting older. She would start in Spanish but switch to Catalan without realizing.


Yes, I must apologise to you Belén and to other members for my categorical comment when I stated that all people in Catalan-speaking-areas understands and speak Castilian in XX and XXI century. I must correct myself, I do state that nowadays it is impossible not to learn or speak Castilian. It is true however, that you may find old people who may have difficulties expressing themselves in Castilian, my 95-years-old grandma amongst them. This is logical as it is not their first language and some of them had few contact with the Castilian language other than TV. 

I myself have to admit that my first contact with Castilian was by TV, I always say that I learn Castilian through "Abeja Maya"  when I was a little kid. Of course, I was later taught in school and I spoke it with some difficulties until I could correct it with age and experience. Anyway, you can not expect anybody to speak perfectly a second language although 99.99999% Catalan-speakers can have normal conversations in Castilian. Some of them very well, some of them not that well. 

As an anecdote, my mother told me that her grandfather highly complained when the TV arrived in the village because he could not understand all they were saying. He used to yell at the TV-box saying" what the hell are you saying?"


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## Mei

Roi Marphille said:
			
		

> As an anecdote, my mother told me that her grandfather highly complained when the TV arrived in the village because he could not understand all they were saying. He used to yell at the TV-box saying" what the hell are you saying?"


 
He just could see one channel (TVE1, Televisión Española), right? He couldn't choose.


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## Roi Marphille

Mei said:
			
		

> He just could see one channel (TVE1, Televisión Española), right? He couldn't choose.


yep, and I remember that we just had few hours/week in Catalan when I was kid in the TV...I see you Mei are younger so you had more than me.. Anyway, "Abeja Maya" was cool. She was my first teacher!


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## ampurdan

Roi, your father lived in Barcelona in the 60's and 70's and he did not understand Spanish on TV?


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## belén

ampurdan said:
			
		

> Roi, your father lived in Barcelona in the 60's and 70's and he did not understand Spanish on TV?



Roi is talking about his mother's grandfather.


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## Roi Marphille

ampurdan said:
			
		

> Roi, your father lived in Barcelona in the 60's and 70's and he did not understand Spanish on TV?


noooo my friend  ..it was the grandfather of my mother..and they lived in a small village in "La Plana de Vic". I guess he lived there all his life.


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## ampurdan

Oops, excuse my misreading! Your last explanation makes all clear to me.

I, myself, I don't remember specifically through what I first learnt Spanish. I lived in a town on the sea, where many people spoke Spanish, but since there was some strange thing in the education in the first 80's, in the nursery school, those whose parents wanted their children to be taught in Spanish were separated from those whose parents wanted their children to be taught in Catalan.

Anyway, there were chances to find someone to whom I may speak in Spanish (obviously, I wasn't seeking at that age). My parents had a maid, whom I think I spoke Spanish to and I remember watching "Barrio Sésamo" (Spanish version of "Sesam Street") on TV every weekday, even though there were few chapters and they were repeated over and over again. Maybe this repetition made easier for me to learn Spanish.

Then I moved to other towns were I met more people, to some of whom I spoke Spanish to, and they no longer separated children according to language in schools... So we all learned both languages.


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## Mei

ampurdan said:
			
		

> I remember watching "Barrio Sésamo" (Spanish version of "Sesam Street") on TV every weekday, even though there were few chapters and they were repeated over and over again. Maybe this repetition made easier for me to learn Spanish.


 
Same here... (Espinete siempre desnudo y se ponía bañador para ir a la piscina... ,jajajaja)


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## valerie

One of the reason why people are here easily bilingual is , in my opinion, that both groups (people with catalan as primary language, and those with Spanish) are very mixed. There is little social specialization of the languages, in the cities at least, and it is very common that people of both groups are mixed at work, when doing sports, when going out, etc... 

When I compare with the situation in Montreal (Canada) (15 years ago), I see that there the social cohesion of the French speaking group on one side and the English speaking one on the other is higher. I got the feeling that people did not mix up so easily and incentives to learn the other language were not as high as in Catalunya.


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## Roi Marphille

valerie said:
			
		

> One of the reason why people are here easily bilingual is , in my opinion, that both groups (people with catalan as primary language, and those with Spanish) are very mixed. There is little social specialization of the languages, in the cities at least, and it is very common that people of both groups are mixed at work, when doing sports, when going out, etc...
> 
> When I compare with the situation in Montreal (Canada) (15 years ago), I see that there the social cohesion of the French speaking group on one side and the English speaking one on the other is higher. I got the feeling that people did not mix up so easily and incentives to learn the other language were not as high as in Catalunya.


well Valerie, you have a point with the analogy of bilinguism in Canada but I think it is rather different here as: 
-both languages are more similar between themselves (Romance L.) than French and English. Then, in theory, the "effort" is not that high.
-100% of Catalan speakers speak Castilian-Spanish too.
-you may have real bilingual conversations in Catalonia. It happens many times. In the Metro for example; a group of four people speak both languages at the very same time without problem and with normality. We can switch quite easily without even notice sometimes. 
Salutations, 
Regards, 
Roi


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## valerie

Yes, Roi, 
My point was exactly this one, the social mix between those two linguistic groups is such that being bilingual is very practical, useful, and there is an incentive to be bilingual.

I agree that the proximity of Catalan and Spanish make it easier for the vast majority of the people (although not for me). And yes, I was completely amazed at the beginning to see how people can change language just by changing the person they are looking at, in the middle of a sentence.


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## ampurdan

Valérie, mais si le catalan est tout à fait pareil au français! Au moins à l'écrit. Je pense que si vous parlez français comme langue maternel et que vous avez apris l'espagnol, il ne doit pas y avoir aucun grand problème avec le catalan! (Attention! Je ne te dis pas que tu dois l'apprendre, c'est seulement ton remarque sur la difficulté pour toi d'apprendre catalan qui m'a surpris).


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## valerie

Je lis et comprend le Catalan (après avoir pris des cours, ce n'est pas automatique pour les francophones, en tout cas pour comprendre la prononciation), mais mes essais pour parler ne sont pas brillants: je mélange beaucoup avec l'Espagnol. Il est vrai que je n'ai pas poursuivi les cours et qu'une éducation formelle m'aiderait certainement.


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## nanel

Yes, I speak a little of French and I can understand many things in Catalan because of that. For me Catalan is something between French and Spanish (of course it has his own words, grammatic, etc. but speaking French and Spanish is quite easy to understand it).


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## xymox

valerie said:
			
		

> One of the reason why people are here easily bilingual is , in my opinion, that both groups (people with catalan as primary language, and those with Spanish) are very mixed. There is little social specialization of the languages, in the cities at least, and it is very common that people of both groups are mixed at work, when doing sports, when going out, etc...
> 
> When I compare with the situation in Montreal (Canada) (15 years ago), I see that there the social cohesion of the French speaking group on one side and the English speaking one on the other is higher. I got the feeling that people did not mix up so easily and incentives to learn the other language were not as high as in Catalunya.


 
The difference between English and French is far from the similarities that Catalan and Spanish may have. The history behind Catalonia is very different from that of Quebec. The situations have very little in common. Catalonia was once a country. Canada is a "young" and recently formed country.
However, in an attempt to maintain the language in Catalonia, they sometimes tend to use Quebec incentives as an example, which, in my honest opinion, makes no sense at all. The situations cannot be compared. The number of French speakers in the world and the number of Catalan speakers cannot be compared. One is in the middle of a multilingual continent (Europe) and th eother id in the middle of another 350M English-speaking piece of continent.
One thing both places have in common is that the birth rate of local peple is extremey low, which increases the prbability of losing that language in a certain way.
I think the best policy is to learn both, for personal enrichment.


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## gato2

Estoy de acuerdo contigo jgagnon


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## Carlos Bergante

xD It is quite funny to me hearing about "Abeja Maya" as a way to learn Castilian, because it happened to me just the other way round with "Bola de Drac"... Anyway, I am not precisely 'bilingual'(in fact, I have not lived in Catalonia yet for a long time-but every summer) though I think this may not be very difficult, at least, to me(but I regard myself as a person with some kind of 'gift' as far as languages are concerned), and therefore I pretend to speak good Catalan -planning to live there in some time. So, trying to be consistent to the question, I think it is relatively easy to be bilingual in Spanish and Catalan, *if you begin the learning while being a child.  *
This always makes the real point.
Gràcies per fer-me millor persona, furerus xD


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## chics

valerie said:


> My point was exactly this one, the social mix between those two linguistic groups is such that being bilingual is very practical, useful, and there is an incentive to be bilingual.


Yes, I agree. It's now after living one year abroad, in a monolingual society by the way, that I understand perfectly this comment. First, it's not at all the same to be bilingual (for example, a person whose father speaks one language and whose mother another, and who's learned both since he was born) in a monolingual society that in a bilingual one -you know, bilingual in the same languages! In Spain, in most of areas where Catalan is spoken, we are in a *bilingual society*: that's very important and changes everything.

It means that we speak everyday in both languages, that we hear them, we see them, even if it's not a comment to us, we hear comments in the underground, of people sitting next to us, we read or at least see words written everywhere, etc.

So, only for this reason, I think that any normal person who have not social problems is able to understand Catalan and Spanish. I know people coming from Germany, Italy, France, etc. living in Barcelona and all of them can understand perfectly Catalan. Some of them speak it very well, others feel more confortable in Spanish and are a little ashamed to begin or to try Catalan, but anyway they are able to say short phrases in Catalan when speaking spanish or to write short emails. Of course if they take some classes they learn it very quickly without great efforts.


On the other side, I know only one person in France whom I can speak Catalan, and we don't meet very often. When we do, we have to use French most of times... However, I can speak in Spanish almost every day, although it's not much. I see Catalan tv sometimes and I read newspapers in Catalan (internet is great!), I've read some books in Catalan, too. Others in Spanish and French. My personal balance is that: I have not problems with Spanish but yesterday I had difficulties to speak Catalan (my mother tongue) with my Catalan friend, I didn't remember some words and I made some strange grammar structures... my friend, too. I wouldn't want you to see it only as a matter of forgetting languages (yes, I know there's another thread about it) but to illustrate with a real example the importance of practice and of hearing a language every day. It's important to learn it, but even more to keep it.

So learning languages (Spanish, Catalan) at school wasn't useful at all if after we wouldn't practice actively but also pasively out of classes, every day, for all our live.

I mean, as a conclusion, that we can't compare to be bilingual in Catalan and Spanish in Catalogne, València or Balear Islands with being bilingual in Madrid or London, for example. Or being bilingual in German and Spanish in Catalogne, etc. And the difference is just our daily environment.




valerie said:


> And yes, I was completely amazed at the beginning to see how people can change language just by changing the person they are looking at, in the middle of a sentence.


Yes, it seems that our brain is like this, we associate every person with a language and change it automatically, without realising. After, it's difficult to change and talk to this person in another language. We have to break some sort of barrier of our brain and we feel as we're doing theatre. But it's not a Catalan thing, just a human one.


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## dafne.ne

Hi there!

I'm from Barcelona, and like and love to speak Català. I also speak Castellano (or Spanish). But what most people ignore is that bilingual spanish citizens are the best Spanish speakers! We completely finish the words while spoken, we use the correct tense in verbs, etc...

It's really a pity the low level of Spanish used in most of the Spanish TV stations.

But this does not seem to be important. If I would consider myself Spanish instead of Catalan I would be much worried about this problem, but unfortunately they are too busy and worried about Català.


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## TraductoraPobleSec

My answer to the original question of the thread is the following: it can be as easy as one wants it to be. Only narrow minded people (from both sides) decide not to take advantage of bilinguism and fall behind with one of the two languages.

I am a proud Catalan and adore my language, but do not mind switching into Spanish depending on the situation. I have to admit, though, that my daily "sources" are mostly Catalan: I hardly read or listen to the news in Spanish, but that is not due to a linguistic reason but because of quality and because I identify more with the way things are told over in Catalonia.


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