Cataluña and the Spanish language

The news from Cataluña is electrifying. A pride of politicians at the peak of politics have decided that education in Catalan schools shall be conducted in their regional language – Catalan or Catalá. Reading, writing and arithmetic; children of Catalans may learn English if they like, or German, or even Mandarin in the state schools. Catalan fee-paying schools (the almer mater of the pride of politicians) may continue learning the three Rs in Spanish as well if they like. At fee-paying schools it is the parents who pay who decide.

The fact that the Catalan Constitutional Court has ordered education to be conducted in Spanish and Catalan is of course of little importance to that diminutive pride of politicians.  Más (private educated as are his children) and Trias (private school) and others of even greater self-importance ignore Spanish institutions such as their own Constitutional Court.

But hey! The news from Catalunya has inspired the following: In the United Kingdom the Cornish from Cornwall have voted to educate their children in Cornish, a Celtic language still spoken by a few. The English language is to be banned from Cornwall, except on the tele, where even the Cornish prefer their tele-filth to be expressed in a common language

The news from Belgium is similar. Belgians speak Belgian-French or Low Country Flemish (an ancient tongue), but the Belgian Parliament* opts for the banishment of French altogether. Now everyone in Belgium must speak Flemish. If the family has to move from north to south or out altogether in order to accommodate this indulgence, all the better – the Belgians too have discovered globalism.

But wait! Others follow suit – in France the people from the South have remembered that they have Provençal! And the Bretons Bretonnais, which even Roman Consuls had to understand when Gaul was being divided into three parts. In Normandy the more hysterical I mean historically-minded politicians have suddenly been reminded of their Viking past (Normandy  once pullulated with Forkbeards and Magnussens). So Le Français must vanish from state schools from Cherbourg to Caen to Courtonne-la-Meudrac.

In the United States, where English has always been murdered, astute politicians now advise their President that it would be wise to return to Siouxan, though there may be trouble with the Apaches, who prefer their own clicking version of the Castellano they learnt in the fifteenth century from Iberian soldiers with funny helmets. While in Canada, half the enormous country has decided to return to Quebec French, which is really Louis Quatorze’s French but with an American accent.

In New Zealand, classes are starting up everywhere in Maori. In China there are so many regional and provincial tongues the Chinese Government has decided to introduce English as a national language, with Mandarin as a tolerable option.

Back in Spain, however, politicians from a northern region of great beauty called El País Vasco where their own tongue is older than Latin, have realised that forced teaching of that antique language to the entire population under ten might possibly be just a little bit stupid, especially when all Basques, like all Catalans, speak Spanish to each other from birth. The only difference is that the Basques do not (so far) think it wise force Catalans to speak/write Catalan at the cost of Spanish. Perhaps the Basques, who have never been irrational, consider the Catalans insane. They are too polite to put it like that. And besides, to use one of ex-President Zapatero’s favourite phrases, the immense majority of Catalans are not in agreement with these privately-educated, self-important, mal-intentioned, proud, selfish, self-centred satraps at present in power in Barcelona. But they too, are too polite to say so.    

* Now wait a moment, at present there isn’t one)