4  Inside Spain

Forked
tongues

Those of us who grew up speaking one

language and have since struggled to speak
in other tongues look on with wonder and
envy as our children almost effortlessly
master two or more languages. In Barcelona
everyone grows up bilingual, but some
176 other languages are spoken in the old
city alone, so there is an increasing degree
of multilingualism. But is multilingualism
an unalloyed blessing, or does it come at a
price? Children and young people talk to
Deborah Rolph, who teaches translation at
the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, about
how being multilingual gives them a different
slant on the world.

Inside Spain  5
 A
language is much more than a body of
vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. It
shapes the way we see the world, it offers
possibilities that other languages do not. A
thing expressed in one language is not the same said in
another; like a piece of music transposed into a different
key, it both loses and acquires certain qualities. A language
is also an insight into the spirit of a people. Here are the
stories of some for whom other possibilities are a daily
reality. Theirs is a polychromatic world of linguistic
diversity in which they can access a whole wealth of history
and knowledge from more than one culture. As Alex,
10, comments: “At home I speak English with my father,
Catalan with my mother and Spanish with my brother, even
when we are all at the table eating dinner. It’s a bit strange
sometimes, but it’s OK.” Louis, his friend and classmate,
adds: “The language I speak to people in depends, if they
start speaking in English, I carry on in English. If they start
in Spanish, I go on in Spanish.” best illogicalities, that result from the policy of so-called
linguistic normalisation are considered reactionary. The
Language is intimately linked with cultural identity and it voice of such detractors may be a whisper in the hurly-
is an issue that in some parts of Spain ignites a fierce war burley of the clamour of its supporters, but for many who
of words, especially in the field of education. Those few rejoice in the bilingualism and multilingualism that is the
brave enough to point out the, at worst absurdities and at inheritance of the autonomous communities, the regional
languages have restricted use.

The policy of teaching primarily in the languages of the

autonomous regions makes sense when viewed from a
historical and political perspective. Catalan, for example
is viewed as belonging to the region, an integral part of its
heritage, while Spanish and the languages of immigration,
which also form part of the history of Catalonia, are seen
as a threat to its image as a homogenous and united society.
Education in regional languages has been the main agent of
their revitalisation, but there may be a high price to pay as
it may result in a higher school failure rate due to the semi-
lingualism of those individuals who fail to master either
language. In a reversal of Franco’s times, many children
consider Catalan the language of the classroom, formal
and associated with authority. They therefore have a social
language of fun and friendship marked by the release from
the classroom environment with many students reverting to
Spanish when the bell goes. The authorities may not like it,
but in Barcelona Spanish is the language of the playground:
Louis says: “I only speak in Catalan when I speak to the
teachers.” His brother Ruben adds: “I live in Catalunya but
I feel English because of my mum and dad and Spanish
because of my friends.”

The presence of diverse communities is often defined as a

problem with few positive consequences for the host society.
Concerns exist that linguistic, cultural, “racial” and religious
diversity threaten the identity of the host society. Oscar,
18, comments: “They are now trying to do the opposite,
trying to eliminate Spanish. The solution is not to impose

6  Inside Spain

Catalan and throw Spanish out.” In an era of globalisation,
a society that has access to multilingual and multicultural
resources is advantaged in its ability to play an important
social and economic role on the world stage. Languages,
like societies, have never been static and it is a naive illusion
to believe that they can be nailed down as monochrome
and monocultural museum exhibits for posterity. One of
the messages that emerges is that the perceived imposition
of languages may well prove to be counter-productive
if the objective is diffusion of the language and not the
maintenance of power in the hands of a linguistic elite.
Elisabet, 40, says: “I don’t see Catalan threatened by the
people, it is like an egg that is being held too firmly in an
iron grasp. It will be crushed by those who wish to protect
it.”
The idea of mother tongue carries with it the idea of a
mother country, but in the case of those interviewed it
is either not fixed to place or varies with context. Oscar
8  Inside Spain
(Catalan mother, English father) says: “I feel most
comfortable speaking in Spanish because it is a kind
of lingua franca, everyone speaks it. But I feel more
comfortable with it in general. In my family important
links have been forged that prove difficult to change and
I feel uncomfortable changing language with them. Social
situations can get complicated. But, because Spanish and
Catalan are so similar people don’t notice which language
they are using and it is more a case of what comes out.”
Pol, on the other hand says: “I feel equally comfortable in
both my mother tongues; Catalan and French. When I am
in France I need three or four days to acclimatise, then the
language transports me and I feel at home.”
Much also depends on the emotional context. Armance,
18, says: “Normally I speak Spanish to my twin sister, but
when we are sad we speak in French. Because it helps to
express how we feel. The truth is in Spanish the words
carry less strength and therefore do less harm. French is a
very strong language.” “Being able to not only articulate,
but even create the same thought in three or five or eight
different languages, that is magic,” says Bojana. “Yet, there
is always the mother tongue that. Serbian for me is the
reference point, it is my mother tongue and the language I
use to think and express myself in.” Marta, 44, comments:
“Spanish is the language of my internal child. Catalan
that of my analytical adult persona.” As for Amy, 10: “My
nightmares are in Catalan.” Alex gives context another
twist when he says: “When I am talking to my friends who
have very Catalan parents about normal things I speak in
Spanish, but when I am being a bit more serious I speak
in Catalan.” Lurdes (Moroccan mother, Catalan father)
says: “Personally, I don’t believe in national identities, I feel
cosmopolitan. At home I speak Spanish with my siblings
and Arabic with my grandmother. With my father I speak
Catalan and with my mother I usually speak a mix of
Spanish and Arabic. Finally, depending on the situation, at
university and at work I speak either Spanish or Catalan.
Normally, I express myself in Spanish.”
 Cati: “If I had to choose between Polish and
Spanish. Well I am Polish, I am from there, all of my
past is from there, but I see now that in Spanish
I am able to express all the feelings that I wasn’t
able to before. The vocabulary is so rich, I would
choose Spanish.”

Mariam: “Linguistically my life is completely

compartmentalised, the baggage of each
era comes in its own language. For me each
of the languages I speak represents a phase
in my growing up. I speak colloquial Persian
because it coincides with my childhood and early
adolescence in the home setting. I left for France
before learning formal Persian and my early
schooling was in French. I spent my adolescence
in Canada and struggle not to sprinkle my speech

Despite the active promotion of strong in-group identity

through the promotion of regional languages, this group of
people appear to feel secure in their own identity which is
reflected in their open and positive attitudes towards others.
They all had clear ideas of who they were, even if for many
identifying an overriding cultural identity proved difficult.

Amy: “It would be difficult to choose one language

because I like them both. Catalan it wouldn’t be.
I like to speak English with my cousins and here
I speak Spanish with my friends. If I didn’t know
Spanish I wouldn’t have all of my friends.”

with ‘awesome’ and ‘radical’. I went to university in

Spain which became my intellectual language as it
coincided with my political awakening. I fell in love
in Spanish.”

In the decades following the Second World War, there

was a theory that bringing up children to speak more than
one language confused them. Educators and psychologists
spoke out against bilingual education, considering that
exposure to more than one language could endanger a
child’s intellectual development. Those fleeing persecution
or looking for a better life wanted to provide their children
with all the advantages of speaking the majority language
and bringing up children who sounded conspicuously
“alien” in adopted countries may not have seemed wise.
Assimilation was the name of the game. Chasms developed
between generations with older people failing in many cases
to master new languages and children lacking the language
of their elders. Diverse mother tongues became secret,
private languages, granting the ability to talk to relations
without others understanding anything. One result is that
there appears to be some tendency for multilingual children

10  Inside Spain

to gravitate towards each other, not because they feel odd
or marginalised, but because they recognise something they
have in common. They also know they have something
the others don’t, and children are always alert to any way
of getting ahead of the game, as the following comments
reveal.

Ruben: “There’s a kid in my class from Pakistan who

speaks really good English and it is cool because I
can tell him secrets or jokes in English and no one
else understands.”

Alex: “I like to watch American action films and I

like them more in English than in Spanish. Because
in dubbed films sometimes you get a big guy with
the voice of a small guy.”

Louis: “With English you can travel all over the

place and if English isn’t the first language,
normally it is the second one. When I go to
England lots of people say that I am special
because I speak Spanish and here lots of people
think that I am very special because I speak
English.”

Cati: “I love speaking to my Russian and Polish

friends on the train. We speak Spanish, but so that
I am sure that they understand I often search for
words in Polish. We can talk freely about the guy
sitting in front of us.”

Pol: “90% of my conversations are in Catalan. I

make an effort to speak in Catalan. The most
practical thing would be to speak one language,
but then we would lose all languages and we
wouldn’t be here discussing multilingualism.”

There are challenges to growing up multilingual. For those

starting school at three years old, the memories of linguistic
confusion merge with the more general overwhelming
sensation common to all on their first day at school. But
for Alexandra and her brother Jamie, children of English
and Dutch parents, the struggle to understand and
communicate remains fresh and is associated with a loss,
of home, of family, of friends and of the familiarity of a
mother tongue. Alexandra says: “I moved here a year ago,
but it took me six months to learn Catalan. I like Dutch
best because I speak it best and it is what I speak with my
grandparents.” Then there is the burden of the immigrant thinks that I am going to translate everything but often they
parents whose language skills lag far behind those of their are jokes or something nobody will understand. It makes
children: Cati, 20, says: “I don’t mind if my parents speak me angry. I get fed up, perhaps they could speak better but
Spanish or not, but it makes me angry because I have to it is difficult, they won’t change now after two years.”
go with them to the town hall or the doctor’s and be there
translating everything that they say. I get angry with my Growing up multilingual isn’t all smooth sailing, however.
father because he always says things to me in Polish and he The occasional mental lapses we all suffer in searching

Inside Spain  11

for a word are more pronounced in multilingual speakers
due to interference where the required word is blocked
by its counterpart in another language. The younger
children blithely filled in gaps in their English vocabulary
with Spanish or Catalan words. What tends to happen
within the family is that they communicate with a tutti-
frutti of the shared languages. A classic from one child
was the phrase “that’s muy malament” (that’s very bad), a
masterpiece of trilingualism, perfectly intelligible in the
context. This works fine within the family, but doesn’t play
well in the wider world. Armance says: “I went to school at
the French Lycée and in the same sentence there would be
a word of French, a word of Catalan and a word of Spanish
and I loved it. But it is not very good for your vocabulary
because when you can’t find a word in one language you
look for it in another. So you lose a lot of vocabulary
because you are always looking for the easiest option. I see
it in my younger brother, because we speak in a mixture of
French and Spanish you end up not speaking either very
well.” Bojana adds: “It happens to me sometimes that I
put a word of Catalan, Portuguese or Italian in a Spanish
phrase; but by improving the knowledge, the awkward
mixtures disappear, and I learn to assign each word a proper
counterpart of the languages I deal with.”
Jamie: “I scored 3 goals, but I don’t like being the
porter.”
Inés: “There’s a dragon in the mazmorra.”
Ruben: “With my dad I speak spanglish.”
However, more than 150 research studies conducted
during the past 35 years suggests that bilingual children
may develop more flexibility in their thinking as a result of
processing information through two different languages.
When children continue to develop their abilities in two
or more languages throughout their school years they gain
a deeper understanding of language and how to use it
12  Inside Spain
effectively. They are also able to contrast the ways in which
their two (or more) languages organise reality. A change
of attitude has meant that contact with several languages
is now seen as both desirable and necessary, stimulating
intellectual development and far from stunting the
development of personality, fostering open minds.
The fact is that there are real advantages to having children
from a diverse range of linguistic backgrounds in both
the classroom and the community. Having multilingual
speakers in a school is much better than putting citizenship
or international studies on the curriculum. Language
choices are affected by a myriad of issues including identity,
attitude towards languages, languages spoken at home and
by friends and linguistic preferences. Emotions are also
influential. One thing that is clear is that even children as
young as two and a half do not mix languages randomly;
rather there is a pragmatic approach to language which is
reflected across all ages. Multi-lingual speakers adjust their
language choices according to the people to whom they are
speaking and the communicative context.
A common thread running through the conversations I had
with all the contributors to this article was the pleasure they
took in the linguistic diversity available to them and the
pragmatism with which they approached communication.
As Oscar put it: “There are no disadvantages to speaking
several languages, only advantages.” Although language is
inevitably bound up with their identity, their identity is
not predicated by language. This goes against the grain of
the linguistic normalisation philosophy in force in Spain’s
so-called historic nationalities: Catalunya, Galicia and the
Basque Country.
Tina: “I don’t mind what language I use, I want to
be understood so I use the language which the
person listening to me feels most comfortable
and understands best. When it is important to
communicate I use the language that the other
 person speaks and not the language I feel most
comfortable expressing myself in.”

Alex: “Sometimes when I am playing with my

toys I play in English and sometimes in Spanish. It
doesn’t depend on anything; I will start in English
and change to Spanish without even noticing until
I go ‘Oh look I’ve changed language.”

Oscar: “It is not a case of what language to speak,

but rather how best to communicate the message
fast and comfortably.”

In this simple insight, Oscar reflects the views of all those

to whom I spoke. That language is an instrument of
communication that does not necessarily involve choices
of a conscious political nature, but rather the small
quotidian decisions of daily life. Those emotional ties built
up over time in one language prove resistant to change;
as such change implies not just a change in language but
a change in the intimacy of the relationship. All these languages are spoken in the old part of central Barcelona.
factors contribute to the linguistic wealth of homes and Clearly this throws up challenges to the educational system,
communities where several languages, each with their but overall it is something that should be celebrated as an
unique shades, are spoken simultaneously. Some 176 asset rather than fretted over as a problem.

A brief overview of language use in modern Spain

The early languages spoken by the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula comprised Basque, various Celtic tongues
and Iberian, of which few traces remain. During the centuries following the Roman invasion Latin was gradually
adopted by all but the Basques who, isolated in the valleys of the Pyrenean mountain range, continued to speak their
original language. With the decline of the Roman Empire this Latin diverged and evolved into the various Romance
Languages of Europe. With the Muslim occupation from the 8th century and the inclusion of Arabic words in the
vocabulary the peninsula continued its journey towards the languages that we recognise being spoken today. Along
with Basque, five languages emerged in the region; Galician, Asturian, Castilian, Aragonese and Catalan. At the
end of the 15th century with the union of Castile and Aragon and the final recapture of the peninsular from the
Muslims, Castilian became the principle language of the Spanish state.

During Franco’s dictatorship, in an effort to impose national unity the public use of languages other than Spanish
(Castilian) was prohibited, thus hastening a process already in progress. Spain is a nation of many realities and
despite the trend towards the use of one language, many people continued speaking their own languages without
the approval of the Generalisimo. Some schools that taught in Basque or Catalan also managed to slip beneath
the net. Since the return to democracy Spain has undergone a transformation, moving away from the slide into
monolingualism common in many European countries. The introduction of the policy of ‘linguistic normalisation’
encouraged the use of regional languages in public spheres where previously Spanish was spoken (see overleaf ). Thus
giving the autonomous community languages Basque, Catalan and Galician co-official status in their regions has
created bilingual communities in an ideal supported by the Spanish constitution. To the linguistic diversity already
present in Spain is added, with the inversion of the tendency from emigration to immigration an array of languages.
It is estimated that there are 300 in Catalonia alone. In Spain, in addition to the immigration from developing
countries, there has also been a current of immigration from other European countries whose peoples tend to arrive
speaking languages with a high level of social prestige, such as English, French and German. This immigration and
population mobility is creating generations of multilingual, multicultural children who are growing up exposed to
several different languages at home, school and in the community. As such it provides a rich environment for the
observation of language acquisition and multilingualism.

14  Inside Spain