EU countries resist Spain on making Catalan official language
EU countries resist Spain on making Catalan official language
www.politico.eu
EU countries resist Spain on making Catalan official language
47 comments
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In exchange for key support needed to form a new minority government in 2023, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez entered into an elaborate deal with Catalan separatist lawmakers in which he committed to getting Catalan, Basque and Galician recognized as official languages of the EU.
The move requires unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 member countries, and Spanish officials spent the past two years lobbying European capitals for support.
My understanding is that each EU member got to choose a single official language, and that the EU was obliged to support that language. Regardless of whether Spain is willing to pay in perpetuity, I have a hard time believing that Spain is going to get unanimous support, since it'd presumably create a can of worms for other governments who would then get political pressure from regional groups to fund their particular favored languages as official EU languages, and who may not want to fund that. I mean, kind of a slap in the face to various regional groups in other countries if Galician gets official EU language status, but a regional language in another EU member that has official status at a national level doesn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_official_languages_by_country_and_territory
There are a lot of official languages at the national level there.
EDIT: Maybe Spain could just commit to internally providing and funding Catalan, Basque, and Galician translations of EU official documents, as that wouldn't require sign-off from other EU members.
EDIT2: Huh. Apparently none of Catalan, Basque, and Galician actually have official language status today at the national level in Spain. If they were to become EU official languages, I think that they might be the only languages that don't have national official status, but do have EU official status.
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Well, Belgium has three official languages, it just happens to share them with its neighbors. Ireland also has two, Luxembourg three, Malta two...
Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people. That is more than the population of the smallest 8 EU countries.
If costs are a concern one could argue that all these countries shouldn't have things translated into their national languages either. Especially when another official language could do the job. While we are at it, might as well tell the Scandinavian EU members to just learn German. The Baltic countries could just agree on one language. What is up with Slovakia, Slovenia and Czech Republic anyways. Just merge and agree on one language duuh...
Political factors are also a major consideration. France, for instance, has a national policy against the recognition of domestic minority languages like Basque, Breton and Corsican.
I think this is more of the real concern here.
While Belgium, Cyprus, Portugal, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia supported granting EU recognition to the Spain’s additional official languages, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany and Sweden backed Italy’s demands for “further clarity on the costs and legal implications of the move.”
Belgium needs to balance Flanders and Wallonia. Cyprus has its Greek-Turkish situation with Armenians and Maronites in the mix. I think there is some Slovakia vs. Czech Republic beef from the separation of Czechoslovakia involved...
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Also Catalan is spoken as a first language by about 4 million people.
That alone does not make a good reason. There are 12 million speakers of Bavarian. Should that also become an official EU language?
Ned dass i do wos dagegn häd.
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Bavarian is not a language but a dialect (group), same as Alamanian. Reason being that they do have a common Dachsprache (Standard German) that is of the same language group (High German).
Contrast to Norwegian and Swedish which are more closely related than Bavarian is to Alamanian, but do not have a Dachsprache they could be dialect of, thus they're languages. Then there's Low Saxon which does share a Dachsprache with Bavarian and Alamanian (unless it uses Dutch as Dachsprache), but is more closely related to English than to Standard German.
In short: If you want to be more than a dialect you have to stop speaking Standard.
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Catalan is recognized as a language. For Bavarian it is contested and the majority of scholars consider it a dialect rather than language
Bavarian is commonly considered to be a dialect of German,[6][7][8] but some sources classify it as a separate language: the International Organization for Standardization has assigned a unique ISO 639-3 language code (bar),[9] and the UNESCO lists Bavarian in the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger since 2009; however, the classification of Bavarian as an individual language has been criticized by some scholars of Bavarian.[10][11]
Reasons why Bavarian can be viewed as a dialect of German include the perception of its speakers, the lack of standardization, the traditional use of Standard German as a roofing language, the relative closeness to German which does not justify Bavarian to be viewed as an abstand language, or the fact that no country applied for Bavarian to be entered into the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[12][13]
However if Bavaria would pay for it, i wouldn't mind them having EU documents translated too. However i doubt that they would want that, as their own laws are written in standards German and they would have to teach their entire legal system to also be able to read and write in Bavarian. This would be quite hilarious as the Bavarians would fail in their own supposed language, showing that the 12 million speakers are more casual dialect speakers instead of actually proficient in what is supposed to bei "their" language.
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Is Bavarian an official language of Bavaria? Are children taught in Bavarian most of their classes, are laws published in Bavarian, are movies released in Bavarian?
All of these are true for Catalan.
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So, you're saying the number of speakers alone is not a good reason?
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Is there a movement in Bavaria to get the language recognized as an EU language?
From what I've read, Bavarian seems to be mostly used for spoken communication, not written.
The Bavarian wikipedia project has 27k articles: https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hoamseitn
The Catalan one has 774k: https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portada
There is a TV channel in Catalan (https://www.3cat.cat/tv3/), and several newspapers written in that language (https://www.elnacional.cat/)
I couldn't find anything similar for Bavarian. https://www.br.de/index.html seems to be in German.
It also seems like children aren't taught in school in Bavarian, which makes quite a difference about passing the language to the newer generations and people who don't speak it at home.
I'm not saying that the number of speakers isn't a good reason, more that different languages are used in different context. Someone in Catalunya could live their own lives only in Catalan. Not sure if that's possible with Bavarian in Bavaria.
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I’m not saying that the number of speakers isn’t a good reason
No I'm saying the number of speakers ALONE isn't a good reason and you listing a myriad of reasons beyond just the number of speakers that you think Bavarian doesn't fulfill just further proves my point.
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Those aspects were already listed in the above comment, so not sure what point you are proving.
Curious why you don't want to answer my questions about the use of Bavarian, I was genuinely curious about it.
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Those aspects were already listed in the above comment
In this comment I originally replied to, where?
why you don’t want to answer my questions about the use of Bavarian
Because I thought they were rhetorical questions, as mentioning Bavaraian in the first place was rhetorical.
I never argued that it should become a recognized EU language, I used it as an example of why a large number of speakers alone is not a good argument.But since you're interested:
- Is Bavarian an official language of Bavaria? - No the official language in Germany is German.
- Are children taught in Bavarian - Official school language is also German but if the teacher and class speak Bavarian they also teach in Bavarian.
- are laws published in Bavarian - No, Laws are published in the official language of Germany, German
- are movies released in Bavarian? - Yes, movies set in Bavaria often use some form of Bavarian though usually in a way that would still be mostly intelligible to standard German speakers.
- Is there a movement in Bavaria to get the language recognized as an EU language? - Afaik not as an EU language but there are various language associations that do fight for more recognition and promotion of Bavarian.
see also: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Austro-Bavarian#Use
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I was talking about this comment
Is Bavarian an official language of Bavaria? Are children taught in Bavarian most of their classes, are laws published in Bavarian, are movies released in Bavarian?
Thank you for your answers. From what you said, and what I can see on the link you provided, the situations for Bavarian and Catalan are quite different.
You mention a few times "German, the official language of Germany". The main difference is probably that Catalan is an official language of Catalunya. All the other aspects are a consequence of that legal status.
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I was talking about this comment
Is Bavarian an official language of Bavaria? Are children taught in Bavarian most of their classes, are laws published in Bavarian, are movies released in Bavarian?
So the comment that listed multiple arguments besides the number of speakers? In reply to my comment about the only the number of speakers not being enough? To which i reiterated my point about only the number of speakers not being enough, causing you to list even more other arguments?
The main difference is probably that Catalan is an official language of Catalunya. All the other aspects are a consequence of that legal status.
I start to feel like you're trolling me but let me try one last time:
I am making the argument that THE NUMBER OF SPEAKERS ALONE IS NOT ARGUMENT ENOUGH.
Catalan having a different legal status is a DIFFERENT argument from the number of speakers.
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Why not?
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Galician gets official EU language status, but a regional language in another EU member that has official status at a national level doesn't.
At least Catalan (not sure about Galician or Basque) is a bit different from other regional languages. The education system in Spain is federated to regions, so children in Catalunya speak Catalan most of the time, Castillano/Spanish being a second language. In comparison, the French education system is monolithic, so all French children learn in French. There are a few schools who speak Breton or Catalan, but those are really minorities compared to Spain. Even from an official perspective, Breton or Catalan are not official languages of their regions in France.
EDIT: Maybe Spain could just commit to internally providing and funding Catalan, Basque, and Galician translations of EU official documents, as that wouldn’t require sign-off from other EU members.
That probably wouldn't be enough. Catalan, Basque and Galician speakers also ask for the right of their representatives to speak their languages at the European Parliament and other instances, which requires translators from those languages to all of the other languages.
Also, about the cost, the EU pays for translators for Irish, which has less than 2 millions L2 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language), Latvian with 1.5 millions speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_language), Maltese with less than 600,000 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language), why wouldn't the EU pay for Catalan, which has 4 millions of L1 speakers, and 5 millions of L2 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language)?
If the argument is "yes, but they are their own country", then that's just going to give ammunition to the Catalan independentists.
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The biggest issue here is that (nearly) all EU documents have to be translated into all official EU languages. It will be really expensive if spain introduces new official languages due to all the translators needed
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The EU pays for translators for Irish, which has less than 2 millions L2 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language), Latvian with 1.5 millions speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_language), Maltese with less than 600,000 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language).
Why wouldn't the EU pay for Catalan, which has 4 millions of L1 speakers, and 5 millions of L2 speakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language)?
If the argument is "yes, but they are their own country", then that's just going to give ammunition to the Catalan independentists.
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The argument seems to be "please, Spain, deal with your local seperatist movement without pushing those efforts and costs onto us"
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The EU pays for translations for a lot of languages with less speakers than Catalan.
If they logic is to "save money, let's use another language", then let's just drop all of them and just speak English.
Education in Catalunya is given in Catalan. Some people only speak that language, the same way some Croats probably only speak Croatian.
Recognizing a language isn't separatism.
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So they use catalan for "internal" communication and Spanish for "external" ones
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Kind of, in a similar way that a lot of European countries use their own language at a local level, then switch to English for United Nations communications: https://i.redd.it/p4d2mv7lnd1f1.jpeg
Because they can speak English in an international context doesn't mean that the local language isn't the dominant one locally.
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- write fewer documents
- push for legal grade AI
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47 comments