Bla bla bla

[nooj]

On Twitter, there was a Portuguese person who wrote:

A língua de portuguesa só tem o nome. Nasceu na Galiza, mora no Brasil e tem o futuro em África. Verdades têm que ser ditas.

The Portuguese language is only Portuguese by name. It was born in Galicia, lives in Brazil and has its future in Africa. Truths that have to be said.

On the one hand I think it's great that this person is jabbing at the wholly outdated and irreal view of Portuguese belonging to Portugal. Realistically Portuguese is pluricentric. Well no, that's a bit optimistic. Bicentric between Brazil and Portugal, given that little attention is given to other Portugueses.

But in poking at Portuguese linguistic nationalism, that is linguistic nationalism from Portugal, this person uncritically accepts (and maybe even celebrates) another kind of Portuguese linguistic nationalism, that is linguistic nationalism of the Portuguese language. It is much easier and much more socially acceptable to be a nationalist of the second kind, precisely because it doesn't appear to be nationalist, instead internationalisat, cosmopolitan.

For someone who sincerely believes that, as Pessoa declared (and I'll have more to say about thia famous quote) the Portuguese language is my nation, then the 'Portuguese nation' is really the Lusofonia.

Interesting to put this discourse in comparison with what Portugal used to do when it was a colonial power. This map is from 1934, in full Salazar dictatorship and reads 'Portugal is not a small country!'. When Portugal still owned many countries, notably Mozambique and Angola. Here, using the geographical size of their colonies to contest with other European colonial powers. A dick measuring contest. But perhaps even more importantly, for internal discourse by the fascist government, to reassure Portuguese that their country was important, that their penis size was perfectly okay.



Bringing me back to the original tweet. The message was written in Portuguese by a Portuguese person, for Portuguese speaking followers. In comparing the language to a living person, passing through the stages of life, it means to reassure: the Portuguese language is dead, long live the Portuguese language! In the form of a 'young, nubile, virile' African body contrasted with the 'old, weak, fading' Europe.

Africans are casualties in a linguistic demographic war between multiple postcolonial languages. English, Portuguese, Spanish, French have carved up much of the linguistic space. And they still jostle for power. Not a day goes by without French media reporting on Africa as the continent that will gift them hundreds of millions of new speakers, thanks to African wombs.

I replied in Galician:

Se o futuro do portugués se acha en África, entón as línguas africanas non o teñen. O portugués é tan alleo a Africa como o castelán a Galiza. Non me alegrarei do froito do colonialismo.

Non se pode ser un galegofalante coherente cos seus ideais, e ao mesmo tempo apoiar que en Mozambique e Angola, o único idioma oficial sexa o portugués.

If the future of Portuguese is in Africa, then African languages have no future. Portuguese is as foreign to Africa as Spanish is to Galicia. I won't take joy in the fruits of colonialism.

You can't be a Galician speaker that is consistent with their ideals and at the same time support the fact that Portuguese is the only official language in Mozambique and Angola.


Which brings me to another point I'd like to make. Reintegrationists understandably want to break out of the Isolationist mindset that traps the Galician language in its little corner of the Iberian peninsula. It is not the same thing to believe that Galician is a sister language to Portuguese, as to believe that Galician and Portuguese are sister dialects of the same language. With the second, from a 'piddly' million or so speakers, one can make the jump to join a fraternity (sorority?) of 200 million speakers, spoken on every continent.

And indeed this is a reoccurring point in the reintegracionist discourse. But it is an uncritical stance. Galician is closer, sociolinguistically speaking, to the position of Umbundu and the other indigenous languages in Angola than to Portuguese. A language being stepped on. Portuguese in Angola is now precipating an intense shift to monolingualism.

Hitching a ride on Portuguese's coattails will give an enormous aid to Galician, but Portuguese is still at the end of the day a postcolonial language. There is little difference between celebrating the global reach of Portuguese, and the Instituto Cervantes doing the same with Spanish. That is not to deny the practical benefits of getting a seat at the glorious Lusofonia table (if that day should ever come). But a warning, on your way to the top, don't forget the bodies you're stepping on.

[David27]

On Twitter, there was a Portuguese person who wrote:

A língua de portuguesa só tem o nome. Nasceu na Galiza, mora no Brasil e tem o futuro em África. Verdades têm que ser ditas.

...

Africans are casualties in a linguistic demographic war between multiple postcolonial languages. English, Portuguese, Spanish, French have carved up much of the linguistic space. And they still jostle for power. Not a day goes by without French media reporting on Africa as the continent that will gift them hundreds of millions of new speakers, thanks to African wombs.

I replied in Galician:

Se o futuro do portugués se acha en África, entón as línguas africanas non o teñen. O portugués é tan alleo a Africa como o castelán a Galiza. Non me alegrarei do froito do colonialismo.

Non se pode ser un galegofalante coherente cos seus ideais, e ao mesmo tempo apoiar que en Mozambique e Angola, o único idioma oficial sexa o portugués.

Muito interessante mesmo, o suo post. Eu não conheço a situação am Angola o Mozambique, além do que o portugues é a lingua nacional. Mas acho que só pode ser o povo do país quem escohle a língua que falam e a língua nacional, e não os forasteiros. Concordo com você que é mão quando extrangeiros de outros continentes colocam pressão para a prapagação de suas línguas em ex-colônias. Mas também si a gente do país agora escohle o ingles/frances/portugues/etc, é em suo direito de fazer-lo. Muitas vezes leio da importancia das línguas natives Africanas da gente quem mora em Europa o America, em jornais europeos o americanos, mas eles se perguntam que língua os nativos dos paises querem falar? Eu estou interesado nas línguas da Nigeria, é notei que muita gente joven prefeire o ingles, é quem sou eu a dizer que seria melhor de falar Yorouba/Igbo/Hausa/etc...

Eu não concordo em completo com este artigo, e claranente tem Africanos também brigando para os dereitos das suas línguas nativeis. Mas isso me fez pensar um pouco mas nisso.

https://intpolicydigest.org/2018/06/06/ ... ood-thing/

Disculpe pelos erroros do portugues. Escrevo com o meu celular brigando contra autocorrect, e ainda tenho muitos errores no meu portugues. Pode responder-me em Galego (se você quer responder), gosto de ler-lo e posso entender.

[nooj]

Mas também si a gente do país agora escohle o ingles/frances/portugues/etc, é em suo direito de fazer-lo. Muitas vezes leio da importancia das línguas natives Africanas da gente quem mora em Europa o America, em jornais europeos o americanos, mas eles se perguntam que língua os nativos dos paises querem falar? Eu estou interesado nas línguas da Nigeria, é notei que muita gente joven prefeire o ingles, é quem sou eu a dizer que seria melhor de falar Yorouba/Igbo/Hausa/etc...

Eu non digo nada que xa non se dixese por outra xente. Aquí hai un lingüista angolano que explica do que estaba a falar.

O portugués non é apenas unha língua nacional - o portugués nestes países é a UNICA língua oficial. Hai tentativas fracas de introducir o ensino bilingüe. É unha cousa bastante recente, digase de paso, pero actualmente é unha iniciativa que atinxe soamente uns milleiros de estudantes, deixando a maioría sen posibilidade de seren ensinado na súa lingua nai, con resultados xa tristemente conocidos: un fracaso escolar desolador.

Para por un caso, en Mozambique hai 5 millións que pasan polo ensino monolingüe (a maioria esmagadora deles falan unha língua mozambicana como língua nai, non o portugués!), en cuanto hai apenas 50 mil alumnos no sistema bilingüe. O contraste é brutal.

E non fai sentido ningún, esta escaseza do ensino bilingüe. Non falo da ideoloxía que cadaquén poida ter. Trátase sobretodo de utilidade: os cativos aprenden mellor, se a aula se lles dá nunha língua que recoñecen: si o si? Pois si.

Se en troques de metermos palabras nas bocas dos mozambicanos e dos angolanos, en vez de falarmos no seu lugar, escoitarmos os educadores e os lingüistas africanos, talvez atoparamos unha realidade sorprendente. Dende hai moito tempo, os linguistas africanos xa ían dicindo que a única maneira de avanzar pasa pola recuperación das línguas maternas, non polo monolingüismo institucional.

[nooj]

https://intpolicydigest.org/2018/06/06/ ... ood-thing/

Lin o artigo e despois de telo leído, arrepentinme da perda do tempo. Estou pronto para ler cousas que van no sentido contrario do que penso eu, pero o artigo que puxiste é unha tea de mentiras, falsedades e parvadas. Pero infelizmente, non me é allea esa liña de argumentación, porque a teño sentida moitas veces aquí en Europa desde nacionalistas supremacistas que queren matar os idiomas todos que non encaixen no seu ideario limitado.

Na verdade, gusto de entrar en debates pero xa non dispoño dunha computadora e vexome obrigado a escribir penosamente co telemovel. Vaia divertimento.

Entón non sei se quero facer unha disección detallada do artigo. Vamos lá ver se consigo escribir algo para explicar por que razón rexeito categoricamente a conclusión - as premisas tamén - e os preconceitos manifestados polo autor.

[nooj]

O autor *xeneraliza* para toda África. África é un continente inmenso. Entón collamos un caso en concreto. A xente de Cabo Verde identifícase moi forte coa súa lingua, o crioulo cabo-verdeano, lingua materna de practicamente todos os moradores das illas. De feito xa se está a levar a cabo un proceso xurídico cara a súa oficialización completa, en pé de igualdade co portugués. Alí non faría sentido falarmos da suposta daniña diversidade lingüística, xa que apenas hai dúas linguas.

Non todos os países africanos o teñen tan fácil como Cabo Verde, porque África se caracteriza pola súa diversidade lingüística, non só xeneticamente senón tamén respecto ao número de idiomas. A mesma Nixeria conta 500 linguas, como mínimo. Pero repito, e continuarei a repetilo ata cansanzo, África é un continente. Non xeneralicemos, sobre todo non. Non todos os idiomas africanos están en perigo de extinción, e na realidade moitos están en proceso de crecemento. O caso do wolof en Senegal é interesante, porque se fixo practicamente lingua nacional á custas do francés, a única lingua durante moito tempo a gostar do prestixio social. Esta situación privilexiada se está a derrubar, e é previsíbel que no futuro vexamos o wolof ganarse aínda máis espazo público.

Entón, eu mando ao carallo a idea de que todos os idiomas de África están a morrer. Tal afirmación xeneral non é unha observación, senón un desexo do autor. O autor tratalo de facer pasar como se fose un suceso inevitábel e dado, pero é un engano. Estamos perante de unha persona que quere matar as línguas activamente, o sexa, darlles un empurrón cara ao precipicio. E congratúlase por iso.

Dáme noxo emocionalmente sí, pero aliás é insensato, porque lendo este articulo, notáselle que le falta unha cousa importante que desfai o seu argumento todo: o multilingüísimo. Ningures vexo o autor destacar un dos trazos máis característicos de moitos países africanos, que é o multilingüísimo. E ollo, aquí non me refiro á haber moitos idiomas coexistiren en un lugar, senón a habilidade individual de falar moitas linguas ao mesmo tempo. En moitos sitios o raro é non falares 3 ou 4 (ou máis) idiomas! Dado que o multilingüísimo é unha capacidade humana que é teoricamente alcanzábel para todo o mundo, e que o multilingüísimo se verifica de feito como fenómeno real e corrente na sociedade, é cosa de parvos manifestarse en prol do *monolingüismo.* É literalmente negarse á unha realidade xa subxacente.

Non hai moitos modos que eu coñezo para obrigar a outra xente a pasar ao monolingüismo senón por forza, ben explícitamente (castigo corporal) ben de modo suaviño (desprezo social, despoboamento rural etc). De todo os modos, trátase de xenocidio. Xa que o autor se preocupa tanto pola unidade política de África, que fique claro o que vou dicir a continuación: a unidade obtida por xenocidio e por odio á diferencia do Outro, non merece o nome de unidade. Repito: non hai necesidade ningunha de optar apenas por unha lingua, cando é posíbel escollermos as dúas ou as tres ou as catro. Non é un soño, XA se dá.

Se o autor pretende que aqueles africanos multilingües se tornen monolingües (en inglés!) e abandonen as súas línguas, porque sí, polos santísimos collóns dun miserable monolingüe acomplexado, pois que vaia ele mesmo co desaparafusador a sacarllelas da cabeza.

[nooj]

Reason I give to others for why I learn Portuguese:

confluence of forces, it'll help improve my Galician because it holds up a mirror in the light of which castelanismos can be identified and rooted out, we need to normalise Portuguese as another valid norm, alongside RAG norm (binormativism), which might be the only way to reverse the hemorrhaging of speakers and the yawning chasm of language extinction.

Real reason why I learn Portuguese:

To follow the latest news from the Partido Comunista Português.

I have been listening to Portuguese, from Angola, Mozambique, Cabo Verde and Brazil and Portugal this past week, especially to find out more about the situation of the minoritised languages there, as well as politics, as well as other language issues (diglossic situation in Brazil). I'll go posting the stuff I've found interesting here.

The more I study Portuguese, the more I'm convinced of the necessity of preserving and celebrating the distinctiveness of Galician. Of course, the similarities are enormous between other Galician-Portuguese varieties (if there wasn't, linguistically speaking it would be difficult to justify even the reintegracionist belief that Galician is Portuguese), but seeing the similarities also makes you appreciate the genuine differences of Galician. It is for this reason that I absolutely oppose the reintegracionism of maximos, the 'hardcore' Lusists who advocate for Portuguese as the only educated norm for Galician, luckily they're a minority in the reintegracionist camp I feel, most reintegracionists support a pluricentric model where an educated Galician norm can take its place among an educated Brazilian and educated Portuguese norm.

It also makes you further realise how jarring the new interferences from Spanish are, because they don't feel like they belong. Once you learn Galician well (and you don't even need to know Portuguese to notice), Spanish words and constructions feels out of place, like an uninvited guest at a party, except here Spanish is everything but a benign guest.

[nooj]

Koll e yezh zo koll e vro
koll e vro koll e anv
koll e anv koll e vrud
takenn dour e mor an dud.

To lose one's language is to lose one's homeland
To lose one's homeland is to lose one's character
To lose one's character is to lose one's name
A drop of water in a sea of men.

A poem by the Breton writer Yann Ber Piriou.

[nooj]

An hour length documentary that has as its protagonists, the rural landscape and nature of Miranda do Ouro and its beautiful music, through the form of its endangered, indigenous language, Mirandese (a variety of Astur-Leonese). It's enough to make me fall in love with a language.

The title of the documentary is Anquanto la lhengua fur cantada, este puobo nun muorre - so long as the language is sung, this people will not die.



The opening poem is from one of the greatest, if not the greatest Mirandese authors of the past century or perhaps in all of its history considering its almost complete absence from the written record. The man was Amadeu Ferreira, who died in 2015 at the age of 64 years old from cancer.



Personally, for me it's another blow to the belief in some kind of cosmic or divine justice. A native speaker who encarnated a vast repository of knowledge of his language, born at the right time to become one of the principal agents of his language's emancipation, by all accounts a 'good human being' dies at 64, meanwhile cruel men who do cruel things reach the height of human power. They stuff their clogged arteries with hamburgers all day and are inexplicably still sucking in oxygen.

Anyway, here is the poem in Mirandese, called Dues Lhéngues (Two Tongues):

Andube anhos a filo cula lhéngua trocida
pula oubrigar a salir de l sou camino i tener de
pensar antes de dezir las palabras ciertas:
ua lhéngua naciu-me comi-la
an merendas bebi-la an fuontes i rigueiros
outra ye çpoijo dua guerra de muitas batailhas.
Agora tengo dues lhénguas cumigo
i yá nun passo sin ambas a dues.

.

For years on end I walked with the tongue crooked
From forcing it to leave its path and have to
Think before saying certain words:
One language birthed me I used to eat it
At snacktime I drank it in springs and rivers
The other language is the booty of a war of many battles.
Now I have two tongues with me
And I can't go without both of them

Stou siempre a trocar de lhéngua meio a miedo
cumo se fura un caso de bigamie.
Ua sabe cousas que la outra nun conhece
ríen-se ua de la outra fazendo caçuada i a las bezes anrábian-se
afuora esso dan-se tan bien que sonho nas dues al miesmo tiempo.

I'm always changing languages, half
Afraid
Like I was committing bigamy
One language knows what the other doesn't
They laugh at each other and sometimes
They get angry at each other
Apart from that, they get along so well that I dream in the two
At the same time

Hai dies an que quiero falar ua i sale-me la outra.
Hai dies an que quedo cun ua deilhas tan amarfanhada
que se nun la falar arrebento.
Hai dies an que se m’angarabátan ua an la outra
i apuis bótan-se a correr a ber quien chega purmeiro
i muitas bezes acában por salir ancatrapelhadas ua an la outra
i a mi dá-me la risa.

There are days in which I want to speak one and the other one comes out
There are days in which I have one of them so crumpled together
That if I don't speak it I'll explode
There are days in which they intertwine with each other
And then they burst into a run to see who arrives first
And many times they end up coming out tangled
And it makes me laugh

Hai dies an que quedo todo debelgado culas palabras por dezir
i ancarrapito-me neilhas cumo ua scalada
i deixo-las bolar cumo música
cul miedo que anferrúgen las cuordas que las sáben tocar.
Hai dies an que quiero bertir ua pa la outra
mas las palabras scónden-se-me
i passo muito tiempo atrás deilhas.

There are days in which I am completely doubled over
By the words that I have yet to say
And I step on them like they were a ladder
And I let them fly like music
Apprehensive that the the cords they know how to play are rusted
There are days that I want to translate from one to the other
But the words hide from me
And I spend much time going after them

Antre eilhas debíden l miu mundo
i quando pássan la frunteira sínten-se meio perdidas
i fártan-se de roubar palabras ua a la outra.
Ambas a dues pénsan
mas hai partes de l coraçon an que ua deilhas nun cunsigue antrar
i quando s’achega a la puorta pon l sangre a golsiar de las palabras.

Between themselves they divide my world
And when the pass the border they feel a bit lost
And they're always at it stealing a word from the other
Both of them think
But there are parts of the heart that one of them cannot enter
And when it draws closer to the door, the blood starts to spurt from the words.

Cada ua fui porsora de la outra:
l mirandés naciu purmeiro i you afize-me a drumir
arrolhado puls sous sonidos calientes cumo lúrias
i ansinou l pertués a falar guiando-le la boç;
l pertués naciu-me an la punta de ls dedos
i ansinou l mirandés a screbir
porque este nunca tube scuola para adonde ir.

Each one was the teacher of the other:
Mirandese was born first and I became accustomed to falling asleep
Rocked by its hot sounds, like a rope
And it taught Portuguese to speak, guiding its voice
Portuguese was born in my fingertips
And it taught Mirandese to write, because Mirandese never have a school where it could go

Tengo dues lhénguas cumigo
dues lhénguas que me fazírun
i yá nun passo nien sou you sin ambas a dues

I have two tongues with me
Two tongues that made me.
And by this point I can't go nor am I myself without both of them.


Language is corporal. Mirandese, his first language, is in his heart. Portuguese can knock at the door, but it cannot enter. Portuguese, language only learned at school and a language he is perfectly fluent in, belongs in the fingers.

[nooj]

One of the things that I haven't seen being discussed openly but I think people are thinking to themselves is the impact of the virus on language documentation.

Several months ago I wrote about Breton speaking elderly people in nursing homes. These are also places where the virus is hitting the hardest. When a language has 200,000 speakers and most of them are well over their 60s, the loss of a thousand people who die before their time is significant.

People have gone along thinking that they had time to record and document before the native speakers passed away. Well, now it's painfully clear that they're well short of time.

[nooj]

I held off posting about young Miquel Montoro because I wanted to see where it went.

He's a young Mallorcan youtuber who I've followed for years, who lives in a rural part of Mallorca and regularly posted videos about his life looking after animals, farming etc.

Well this year he exploded in social media due to some videos he did and I almost, almost posted something about it here, because for the hundreds of thousands of Spanish speakers in Spain and in America who started to watch his videos, the majority of which were monolingual videos in Catalan, it was the first time they actually heard Catalan (from Mallorca).

He was invited onto a very famous talk show, La Resistencia, where his frescura, innocence and humour skewered the veteran talk show host and effective stole the show from him, all the while proponing the message of supporting local producers and rural living.



He did that show in Spanish, with a Mallorcan accent to cut through to the bone, and apologised for not speaking Spanish too well, as his usual language is Catalan. That sparked a mini war on the Twittersphere from far right political parties who claimed that this was definitive proof that Catalan was taking over and threatening Spanish.

Which is absurd. Let me remind you that Miquel Montoro is bilingual (Catalan speakers are the only ones who are, Spanish speakers only speak Spanish) and though he described himself as a shaky Spanish speaker, he masterfully conducted a talk show for an hour and won the hearts of millions of Spaniards, all the while speaking in his second language. I'd like to see a Spanish speaker do that on a Catalan or English talkshow.

Again I wanted to post something here about that but I held off. Why?

Because I wanted to see what would happen to this wonderful boy next. I crossed my fingers and waited.

In the following weeks, some of his videos now started coming out with Spanish subtitles (my preferred option), some only in Spanish, especially when he started doing collaboration videos with more famous youtubers and influencers, all of whom were riding on the coattails of his newfound success (they had never set foot on a farm before obviously) and now for the the last few weeks, all of his videos and Instagram posts have been in Spanish - probably by his sister who acts as his 'agent' of sorts.

It's what I feared. From the first, there were comments on his videos asking him why he was speaking in Catalan (his first and mother language), and that asked him to speak in Spanish because he could reach a wider target audience in all of Spain and all of America. The possibility of *subtitles* seems to be an unknown or unwanted concept to these people.

And now it seems that Miquel and his family have accepted the logic of the monolingual market. It is hard not to be cynical and disappointed about it all.

Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong about him speaking and creating content in Spanish, but when someone immediately shifts from monolingual Catalan to monolingual Spanish (even though his Catalan accent can be heard from miles away) after becoming famous, what message does that send? That Spanish is the language of success and fame?

It's curious because in Mallorca, his home, in his rural part of Mallorca even more so, in his mouth, Spanish just doesn't *belong*. It sounds as out of place and out of time, as a Brutalist apartment looks in a cobblestone street in a medieval town like Albarracín.

Some followers in his latest videos accuse him of 'having lost the gràcia' that he had when he did his videos in Catalan, which I suppose cuts to the core of the issue, which is authenticity. People started following him because of a perceived 'authenticity' to how he described rural life, and Catalan was an integral part of his naturality. Now that he speaks in Spanish, people find that it comes off as artificial, forced for market influences.

I feel compassion for the kid, because who doesn't want to earn a bit money doing what they love? Which is showing off Mallorcan cuisine, animals etc. Even in Spanish it's an admirable goal.

But it doesn't have to be one or the other, like I said, subtitles or alternating Catalan with Spanish videos is perfectly doable. It seems Success however is a monolingual road. And I'm really, possibly unreasonably devastated.

For a brief time it was truly wonderful to see a Spanish language other than Spanish reach such stratospheric heights, and for Spanish monolinguals to actually sit through a video in Catalan.