Bla bla bla

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nooj
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Fri Oct 29, 2021 10:41 pm

But not only of the Aragonese people. Aragonese - like any language - belongs to all of mankind


By this I mean that all languages have something to offer to humanity as a whole. By belong to humanity, I don't want to mean that all of humanity has a legal right to possess any language.

I'm not in any way in favour of outsiders to the community coming in and taking the language for themselves. In fact I believe in the concept of ownership of languages by their speaker community in certain cultures and that needs to be respected.

Anyway, today I want to speak about another Spanish language.

One of my colleagues at work, Laura, is Extremaduran. She comes from the Autonomous Community of Extremadura, in which four languages are spoken, although only one of them is official (Spanish).

Image


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Laura was born in a town called Valverde del Fresno. Her parents moved to Cáceres, and so she grew up outside of the town, but she went back regularly to visit and continues to do so.

Laura's first language is not Spanish. Her first language is a language spoken in only three towns in the far northwest of Extremadura, in the Valley of Jálama (Xálima).

The towns are Valverde del Fresno (Valverdi du Fresnu), Eljas (As Ellas) and San Martín de Trevejo (Sa Martín de Trevellu). In the language, these three towns are called os tres lugaris, the Three Places.

Outside of the brackets are the official and solely official Spanish names. Inside the brackets are how speakers say their topography. In my opinion of course, these are the names to be privileged.

Native speakers rarely call their language a Fala meaning simply, the language. Usually, they call their language according to the three varieties spoken in each respective town. Valverdeiru is spoken in Valverdi du Fresnu, Lagarteiru is spoken in Ellas, Manhegu/Mañegu is spoken in Sa Martín de Trevellu. All in all, the language is spoken by 8000 to 10000 people. About 5000 speakers in the valley and as many as 5000 descendants living outside, far flung across Spain, Europe and the world. Laura is one of them.

What kind of language is it? To put it one way, I talk with Laura in the work place in Galician and she talks with me in Valverdeiru and the intercomprehension is total. In fact, the locals of the three towns used to regularly cross the border, or have dealings with Portuguese people who crossed the border, each in their respective languages, with no problem.

It is clearly a Galician-Portuguese language, more or less influenced by its Extremaduran language speaking neighbours. But linguists still disagree on the specific classification and origins. Was it brought by Galician speaking colonisers in the Middle Ages, along the great north-south vertical commerical route of the Via de la Plata? Is it, like some linguists believe, an independent third branch of the Galician-Portuguese language family?



In this video, you can hear a talk between three locals from Sa Martín de Trevellu talking in Mañegu. They're talking about the increasing Spanishication of their language and the threat it poses to its very survival. At 2:00, the man on the left mentions that his sons were born in Paris, but speak Mañegu. Their first language, Mañegu, then French, and the last language they learnt was Spanish. Imagine that, maintaining a language of less than 10 000 speakers in the capital of France.

The video is part of an incredible cross-frontier language documentation project called FRONTESPO, documenting various frontier varieties of Galician-Portuguese.

Among the many noteworthy characteristics of this language, you will notice is the sibilant system, it has the full range of voiced and palatal sibilants: [ʒ], [ʃ], as well as the voiced alveolar [z] and affricate [ʤ].

Notice how the language deals with etymological /dr/ consonant clusters, which it reduces to -ir-. The woman says comu meu pairi in 1:17 or mairi instead of pai/mãe/nai in Galician and Portuguese. That's like in Extremaduran. Another shared trait with the Extremaduran language is the treatment of final /r/, which becomes [l]. This happens in ayer which becomes ayel (3:43), ordenador becomes ordenadol (0:43) and this also occurs in the infinitives, e.g. vamos falal en mañegu.

What's surprising is that until very recently, the Fala was absolutely dominant in the Three Places. Up until the 1990s or so, Spanish was only a language learned in school and practically all parents spoke to their children only in the Fala. The intergenerational transmission was near total, despite the language not being written down nor having any public official presence.

The fidelity to their language was especially true in Ellas and Sa Martín de Trevellu, but somewhat less so in Valverdi, owing to a couple of factors.
First, the best way into the Valley is a highway that passes into Valverdi. Second, there's more monolingual Spanish people there. It's in Valverdi where the high school is, and the kids from the two other towns go there. Teachers from all over Extremadura teach there. The Fala, not being an official language (only Spanish) is not taught nor even used in class.

Today, from what I've heard, despite the intergenerational transmission still going relatively strong, the picture has become concerning. There is little work to be had in the three towns, motivating youth to leave the towns. The reach of TV and internet puts Spanish into their very homes, which was a safe space a few decades ago. The use of Spanish among peers has now socialised among youth, which was unheard of and unthinkable before. That is, kids are talking in Spanish together, and speaking to each other more in Spanish than in the Fala.

The Fala is not official, is rarely written down, has no standard orthography and has no standard variety whatsoever. When people do write in the language, each person writes in their variety, and how they best see fit. Notice how I wrote above mañegu/manhegu. Some people use a Galician orthography, some use a Portuguese orthography, some use a combination, some use a Spanish orthography... it's a big mess. The centuries long diglossia with Spanish as the H variety meant that they never had to write their language. I don't know how long it can keep on going like this though. Yes, it's survived for ten centuries without ever being written down, but that doesn't mean it'll survive the next fifty years.

No published dictionaries, grammar, no media, very few published books or reading material means that this is a language that in order to learn, you really need direct contact with a speaker.

I haven't visited the Valley of Xálima yet. But I asked my work colleague to take me with her when she next goes to visit her town.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:35 pm

Image


One of my favourite Basque poets is Bitoriano Gandiaga (1928-2001). He had a sensibility towards nature that I identify with, as well as a religiosity that permeates his works. He was a Franciscan monk.

Lurra hartu dut esku barruan,
eskutada lurra,
herriko neure lurra,
neure asaben lurra,
lurreko neure lurraren
lur puska ziurra.

Harriaren arreba
lurra hartu dut esku barruan,
euskaldunen ama lur,
uraren kideko lur,
suaren sostengu lur
zuraren orpoko lurra.

Lur hotza, lur beroa;
lur hila, lur bizia;
lur nabar, lur argia;
lur astun, lur arina;
lur samin, lur atsegin;
lur gogor, lur gozatsu;
lur iraindu, lur maite;
lur jator samurra.

Lurra hartu dut eskuan
mun emateko,
besarkatzeko,
bularrean herstutzeko
luzaro.

Eta gero,
neure burua baino
gorago jasoz eskua,
burutik behera utzi dut
sorbaldaz behera jausten,
neure lur guztiz behera,
lurrezko bataioaren
seinaletan.


I took earth in my hand
A handful of earth
My people's earth
My ancestors' earth
A solid chunk of earth
From the earth of my earth

Earth, sister to stone
I took earth in my hand
The mother earth of the Basques
Earth that is companion to water
Earth, support to fire
Earth, the foundation of wood

Cold earth, hot earth
Dead earth, living earth
Dim earth, bright earth
Heavy earth, light earth
Painful earth, pleasant earth
Hard earth, pleasurable earth
Damned earth, beloved earth
Earth true to itself

I took earth in my hand
To kiss on the hand
To kiss
To press it close to my chest
For a long time

And then
Raising my hand higher
Than my head
I let the earth fall
Down my back
Down to my very low earth
As a symbol of baptism
in earth

Zuraren orpoko lurra - I translated orpo as foundation. Literally it means the ankle, and also the bottom part of a plant that connects to the soil. The 'ankle' is the foot of a plant.

Zur is wood, the material, fitting in with the tripartite elements of earth, fire, but by metonymy he is referring to the tree.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Mon Nov 01, 2021 12:00 am

Obrigad@ is one of those words that even if you don't know Portuguese, you know it. It's the most widespread way to say thank you in Portuguese, although not the only one. Agradecid@, grat@(s), gratidão, bem-haja, reconhecido...

Many learners never have to learn another way to say thank you, by sticking to obrigad@. What might come as more of a surprise to Portuguese speaking natives and learners alike is that it's a recent formula in the history of the Portuguese language. As the Portuguese linguist Fernando Venâncio writes:

'Só por 1700 encontramos giros do tipo de «Fico-vos obrigado». Mas mesmo o grande Morais, de 1789, dá obrigado como mero particípio. Só a partir de 1830 se documentam obrigados de feição moderna. «Obrigado pelo elogio», diz uma personagem de Garrett. «Muito obrigado pela agradável surpresa», escreve o próprio numa carta. Os testemunhos brasileiros são ainda mais tardios.'


So obrigad@ as we know it, as a formula for thanking, was only fossilised in the 19th century. Camões for example never thanked anyone with obrigado.

And yet within two centuries the word came to dominate the Lusophone world. Kind of hard to imagine our Portuguese language without it, and yet...I talked with a Portuguese man from the Alentejo who assured me that his grandparents did not say obrigad@, instead using any one of the expressions I mentioned above. His grandparents grew up in a society where obrigad@ still wasn't socialised as a catch-all formula.

My belief is that our generational memory really isn't all that trustworthy when it comes to languages. What we firmly believe our grandparents spoke isn't necessarily accurate to how they actually spoke. And what the grandparents of our grandparents spoke, might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Prior to obrigad@, what would people in Portugal have said? We don't have very many early texts reflecting conversational speech, whereas letters and formal documents abound in the surviving corpus. It doesn't seem very plausible that people went around saying 'muito venerador' like they wrote at the end of their letters.

It doesn't seem like there was one option at all, but various options. If we go back to the Galician-Portuguese of the medieval ages, one of them was graças.

In this lovely corpus of Galician-Portuguese cantigas, you have a list of giving thanks, dar/render graças.

dar graças 'dar grazas, agradecer'
1411.21 mais tant’é grand’a nossa folia / que nulhas graças lhis ende non damos||1645.15 E a Deus devemos graças a dar / deste ricome que nos presentou
render graças 'dar grazas, agradecer'
1344.9 Nen ũas graças non rendo / a quen lhi deu tan gran renda


However, these uses of graças, like the mui grandes graças in the next cantiga de Santa Maria 34, are not a fatic use of thank you. They don't record the actual moment of saying thanks to someone. That's not the same thing. Like 'fico obrigado' is not exactly the same thing as saying 'obrigado'.

Mui grandes noit’ e dia/ devemos dar porende/ nos a Santa Maria/ graças, porque defende/ os seus de dano/ e sen engano/ en salvo os guia
.

Ideally we'd want an example of a fatic usage. Someone saying "thank you", and not "I thank you". The epigraph to the cantiga 202 records such a moment:

Esta é como un clérigo en París fazía ũa prosa a Santa María e non podía achar ũa rima, e foi rogar a Santa María que o ajudasse i, e achó-a lógo. E a Magestade lle disse “muitas graças.”


This use of graças as a expression of thanks continued long after Portuguese and Galician went their separate ways.

Take this letter I was reading. It was sent by the Portuguese King Sebastião I to Pope Pio V in 1572, congratulating him for the great victory at Lepanto. You can see that he says dar graças, exactly how a Galician would say it today.

Image

To this day graças is catalogued in Portuguese dictionaries with that meaning of thanks. Even if it is not used widely today, if it is used at all, there it is in the dictionary:

Interjeição que indica agradecimento ou gratidão. = BEM HAJA, OBRIGADO


I was reading the letter because Don Sebastião uses an expression that interested me, dar as emboras. Specifically he writes: e por isso, ainda que eu logo mandasse ao meu Embaixador nessa Corte de V. Santidade, lhe desse da minha parte as emboras desta taõ desacostumada victoria.


Embora, everyone knows what embora means in its most common usages. 'embora fosse assim, não iria' etc. But perhaps few Portuguese speakers know that it also means congratulations. A meaning more commonly expressed today by parabens.

Etymologically embora and emboras comes from the phrase: em boas horas. From there it gained a host of new meanings and uses. The reason why I think it's interesting is because in modern Galician, alongside parabéns, we still use the expression. It's not archaic in Galician, it's current.

It exists in two forms. You have enbora (en boa hora) or you can have it in a different order (en hora boa), which is basically the same thing.

Examples: A famous author is being celebrated. O autor está de en hora boa (= estar de parabéns).

You can congratulate someone. Dei-lle en hora boa a alguén (= dar parabéns).

Bringing it back to graças and saying thank you. In modern Galician, the most common way to say thank you is exactly the same word as thank you in Spanish, gracias. It's a clear case of borrowing from Spanish, symptom of centuries of Spanish language domination. But it's also one of the easiest examples to find a replacement word for. The creators of normative Galician only needed to look back and recover the medieval graças, adapting it to their orthography as grazas.

Unfortunately finding a replacement word was the easiest part. Getting everyone to actually abandon gracias for grazas was only a partial success. It turns out it's hard to erradicate Spanish borrowings in Galician in the current sociolinguistic situation.

There are other expressions for saying thank you. Galician and the northern Portuguese dialects preserve a curious way of saying thank you, beizón/beiçom (c.f. Portuguese benção 'blessing'). You can hear it in the mouths of old Portuguese people in the Alto Minho. I say old people because young Portuguese people in the Alto Minho no longer say these words, conforming themselves to the univocal obrigad@.

Here is an example from the FB page Lá de Riba, run by Portuguese people from the vila of Monção in the far north of Portugal, where they attempt to reproduce the dialect of the old people in their own improvised orthography to account for the phonetical features not present in standard Portuguese but shared with Galician:

Segadas de feno (os picadores)

- Ó Rosa, o xeu home está?
- Porra, que m’acanhaste. Tu que le quêres?
- A ber x’ aminhan bai picar as gadanhas prá xegada de meu pai en Xant’ Antone.
- Ó Tone, tchêga aqui que está aqui o rapaz de Zé de Linda!
- E ele que me quêr?
- Mandou-me aqui meu pai a ber x’aminhan le bai à xegada picar as gadanhas.
- Estás un pimpôn rapaz! Eu ja nun te bia há muito mais tirei-te ben por a pinta. Cando eras piqueno eras meio enganidinho mais agôra estás un home. Tamén ja xegas?
- Ja xe xinhôr!
- E ende começamos?
- Diz q’uê no lameiro da burra.
- Entôn, esta certo. Diz-le a teu pai que pode contar.
- Esta ben! Beiçôn e entê aminhan.
- Bai cum Deus!

Diziam os antigos que, em dia de segada, “a gadanha tinha de comer tantas bezes c’mó xegador”, ou seja, tinha de ser picada 3 ou 4 vezes.
As grandes segadas de feno de Sto. António (que se realizavam durante o mês de Julho) contavam, em média, com uma dezena de segadores e um picador. Cada segador tinha de levar duas gadanhas para que quando uma tivesse de ser picada, pudesse continuar o trabalho com a outra. Havia pela freguesia picadores profissionais que eram chamados para as grandes segadas, onde ficavam o tempo que ela durasse a picar as gadanhas, umas atrás das outras.


Apart from these one word formulas, Galician and Portuguese share common phrases to thank people that involve God. The most common of these is to say that God will pay someone back. "May God reward you" is Deus cho pague (Galician) or Deus te pague (Portuguese). In Galician you can even get diminutive forms Deu-lo pague -> deulopaguiño, Deus cho pague -> Deuschopaguiño.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Sun Nov 07, 2021 12:02 am



A song by the band Rodeo from the Gipuzkoan town of Zestoa, played over a video of the 2021 Youth Socialist Gathering, held in the Nafarroan town of Altsasu.

Organised partly by the student organisation Ikasle Abertzaleak (the Nationalist Students). They campaign for a Basque national education that is free and of good quality, and organise strikes and direct action to improve working conditions, financial help for students etc. They have a reach and presence in every single high school and university in the Basque Country.

For me it's impressive to see the turnout. It's easy to gather 10 000 screaming fans for any old music concert or a football match. It's not easy nowadays to get 2 000 young Basques to discuss and plan their communist vision for the Basque Country. You can see one banner: sozialismoa edo basakeria. "Socialism or savagery".

I saw a map that showed that per capita there were more metal bands in the Basque Country than anywhere in the Iberian Peninsula. It would not surprise me if that was also true for punk bands. I know personally two front singers of punk bands, they sing in Basque. One of them is my town's librarian! He was telling me that he orders books depending on demand from library users, but he also orders books to expand the haul beyond the new crime novels that the users always ask for. For example he sneaks anarchist literature in there :)

I also wonder why hip-hop is not popular in the Basque Country. Basque hip-hop is not totally absent, but in comparison to the rock, metal, punk, ska genres in the Basque Country, or the hip-hop scene in Galicia, Valencia, Catalonia, it might as well be...

Garai beltza datorrela
Inoizko eta arinen
Gu ibiltzen hemen hasi ginen

Garai beltz honen aurrean
Ze hautu egin daiteke
Haren kontra oldartu ez beste?

Behinola bukatu gabe
Gelditu ziren iraultzak
Sugai dira orduko errautsak

Gaurkoan atzo bezala
Sentitzen dugun hau zer da
Mundu zahar batekiko herra


As dark times come
Faster than ever
We've already started walking

In the face of this dark time
What choice do we have
But to rise up against it?

The revolutions that stopped
Long ago without being finished
The cinders of then are today's kindling

Today like yesterday
What we are feeling is
The rage against an old world

Heltzen dionak norabide bati
Nora heldu nahi duen badaki
Eskuz esku eta zatiz zati
Bihar berri bat gaurtik eraiki


The one who holds onto a direction
He/she knows where he/she wants to reach
Hand by hand, piece by piece
Build a new tomorrow from today

Zabal hedatu dadila
Kale hutsetan barrena
Goiz berriak gorri dakarrena

Abiatu, antolatu
Diziplina ta kemena
Soilik ditu ezer ez duenak


What the new morning brings
In fresh red
Let it spread far and wide

Put into action, organise
Discipline and commitment
Only the one who has nothing has these
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Sun Nov 07, 2021 3:39 pm

Today is the 45th anniversary of the death of Xalbador. Here is a clip from the biographical documentary Izena eta Izana (Name and Being).

At the very end you see the three nieces of Xalbador singing one of his verses, and it sends literal chills. Like he requested, they've not forgotten this gift from their ancestors. I don't provide an English translation because rarety of rareties, they've provided English subtitles!



Ene haur onak, badakit
Luzaro gabe engoitik
Joanen naizela mundutik.
Arbason ganik ukan dohaina
Ez utz sekula eskutik,
aldegitean hemendik
heier erraitea gatik
Etxea han dago xutik
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Mon Nov 08, 2021 12:56 am

A poem from Xalbador's book, Odolaren mintzoa. Forget the bucolic, apolitical image of a shepherd. Xalbador saw very clearly the unity of the Basque nation.

Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of his death. And it was also the Diada of North Catalonia. Here is a picture from Perpinyà with the estelada, the flag of Catalan independence, projected onto the walls of the Castellet fortification:
Image

Many North Catalans came out on the street to challenge the same treaties and border stones that are talked about in this poem. Instruments used by France and Spain to carve the Catalan nation into two, like they carved the Basque nation into two.

Goizean jeiki ohetik eta non nagon eginik galde;
diot: <<Aurrean Baztan daukazu, gibelean Erroalde;
ezkerrerat Eugi herria; eskuin alderat Luzaide;
zure guziak Naparroaren hegalen azpian daude.>>


When I wake up in the morning and ask myself where I am, I say: You have the Baztan Valley in front of you, behind you you have the Erro Valley, to your left you have the town of Eugi, and to your right the town of Luzaide. All that is yours can be found under the wings of Navarra.

Ene amatxi zendu maitea Auritzberri'ko izanik,
napartarraren odol kartsua zainetan senditzen dut nik;
eta artzaintzan Sorogain mendi zoragarritzat iganik,
norbaitek <<Atzar hadi!>> diola entzuten dut urrundanik


As my dearly departed grandmother was from Auritzberri, I feel the hot blood of the Navarrans in my veins. And when I have climbed the stunning Sorogain mountain to put the flock to pasture
I hear someone shout "Look alive out there!" from the distance.

Ene sortzeko agerietan ni naiz baxenabartarra,
titulu horrek lehen hitzean galtzen du bere indarra;
ni beheretar zendako deitu; nerez banaiz orotarra?
Goi ta beherik ez da enetzat Naparro bat da bakarra.

In my birth certificate, I am a Low Navarran. This title loses its validity in its first word. Why am I called a Low Navarran, if what I am is from everywhere? There is no High or Low: there is only one Navarra.

Bere zainetan sendi duena hastapeneko odola;
eman dioten izen mendreaz nekez ditaike kontsola;
ezin onartuz bizi naiz beti murrizturikan dagola;
bere itzala Baiona'raino hedatzen zuen arbola.
He who feels in his veins the ancestral blood is ill satisfied with the meager name they have given it. I live perpetually unable to accept that the tree that spread its shadow to Baiona has been pruned.

arbola - the tree metaphor may also be a reference to the Gernikako Arbola, which had become a symbol of Basque unity already by the late 19th/early 20th century.

Bainan enetzat; o Naparroa, ez da ezin igarria
izena nola gorde duzun zuk eta guk hartu berria:
enbor sendoan sartu baitzuten aizkora beldurgarria,
zure laurki bat bertzerik ez da ni bizi naizen herria.


For me, oh Navarra, it's not hard to guess how you have preserved your name or how we have taken a new one. For they have swung a terrible axe into the tree's stout flank. The land I'm living on is but one of your four parts.

Betitikako arrain haundien lege okaztagarriak
gaitu napartar anai arrebak bi taldetan ezarriak;
bainan ele huts dira tratuak, itxura huts zedarriak,
hitzez ta harriz ezin hautsiak dira gure lokarriak


The nauseous laws of the 'Biggest Fish In The Pond' have put us Navarran brothers and sisters into two groups. But treaties are meaningless words, and border stones are empty images. By word and stone, our familial bonds are unbreakable.

Bi aldetarik nagusi bana jarriz geroz Naparroan;
ez dakit gure etorkizuna zoin ateri buruz doan;
ez eta ere gaur zer hainetan zauden zu euskaldungoan;
bat gineneko egun ederrak ditut bakarrik gogoan.


Since one lord was installed on each side of the border, I don't know what door our future goes towards. Nor do I know to what extent you exist today among the Basque population. I only have in mind the beautiful days when we were one.

O Naparroa; banatorkizu otoizko fagore galdez:
urrikal zaite ukatu nahi zaituzten seme alabez;
bertze koroka batek estaltzen bagaitu ere hegalez;
Baxenabarrak Ama zaitu; guk nai izan ala ez.
Oh Navarra, I come to you to plead a prayerlike favor. Have pity upon your sons and daughters who want to deny you. Even though another brood hen may cover us with its wings, it's you that the 'Low Navarran' has as mother. Whether we want to or not.

Image
Here's a picture from the 2018 Nafarroaren Eguna (Day of Navarra), held annually in Baigorri. Occasion for all Basques to come together under the Arrano Beltza's wings. No Spanish eagle. No French cock.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Wed Nov 10, 2021 10:58 pm

Galicia entered the 19th century with the majority of its population as peasants, living and working pretty much as their ancestors had for the last eight hundred years. To give you an idea, the 1920 Spanish census recorded a population of 2 124 244 people in Galicia, and out of that number an active working or workable population of 1 164 860, of which 967 614 were working In the agricultural or forestry business. This meant 83% of Galician workers were agricultors, farmers and so forth.

Many of them still worked under an exploitative system of land renting that literally came from the Middle Ages, called foros (not related to the foros of the Basque Country). In this system, farmers rented the land that they worked from absentee landlords. The rent was usually paid in the form of produce grown on the land, or more rarely money. They never owned the land itself, and the contracts were lengthy, sometimes stipulated in the conditions as "valid for as long as the reigns of several kings". In practice, it was perpetual. It was a kind of slavery, basically. Until the Spanish state's reappropriation or expropriation of Church properties in 1836, the Catholic Church - via its monasteries for example - held the majority of these foral contracts. The Church was the biggest landowner in Galicia until the 19th century.

It's in this context that arose the first agrarian collectives, agricultural syndicates, farmer organisations in Galicia. One of their key demands was precisely the abolition of the foros, so that farmers could actually have personal ownership of their lands. Moderates called for a buy back of the lands from the landowners. Radicals simply called for the nullification of the accrued foral debts and expropriation. At the height of their activity between 1918-1924, in the midst of arrests, riots and dozens of deaths (for example, the death of an alguacil or sherrif in 1896, thrown into the public oven of the town of Toén and burned alive), there were around a thousand of these agrarian/agricultural organisations in Galicia, which represented 15% of all such organisations in Spain. Check a Galician newspaper from that period or an annuary from any town from the early 20th century. Alongside the usual clubs and societies, there will invariably be the advertisements and contact details of one or more agrarian syndicates.

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One such agrarian organisation was Acción Gallega, created in 1909. The founder and leader was the incendiary and socially engaged priest, Basilio Álvarez (born in 1877 in Ourenese, died in 1943 in exile in Florida, the USA). Given what I said about the Catholic Church being into the exploitative property business, it might seem ironic that a Catholic priest became a star leader in the anti-foral, pro-peasant social campaign. It becomes even more surprising when you know that the Church was closely aligned with the monarchist positions and caciquist (strongman politics) practices of the time.

But Álvarez saw this political commitment to be part and parcel of his Christian mission. The following quotations are from his 1913 book Abriendo el surco, in which he explains how as far he's considered, all the stuff he advocates for is but a reflection of what he finds in the Gospels. He says elsewhere that charity (love), true charity, inevitably goes together with justice. Therefore he sees no contradiction between being a Catholic and advocating for peasant liberation.
At one point he compares the long suffering Galician people with the crucified Christ himself:

Cuanto he dicho, y os pueda decir, no es más que un atisbo de lo que yo contemplo deslumbrado en el Evangelio.

Fue preciso que atado de pies y manos el pueblo, nuestro generoso pueblo gallego, y en el momento que lo iban a crucificar, en su mismo estertor, se agitase en convulsión aterradora hasta romper sus ligaduras.

Nuestro catolicismo prejuzga —entrometiéndose imprudentemente en cosas que debían tenerle sin cuidado— los actos de las instituciones políticas que no rinden tributo a la realeza. Diríase que, amén de ciudadanos católicos, somos forzosamente soldados de las ideas tradicionalistas y auxiliares meritísimos de todas las monarquías.

Y hay que deshacer este equivoco. El católico, por el título de serlo, no es republicano ni monárquico. Es buen ciudadano y nada más.
Nuestra impudicia condúcenos a creer que podemos cubrir nuestras ideas políticas con el pabellón del catolicismo. Si los católicos son sostén de las monarquías, que lo sean porque su condición de exactos cumplidores de las leyes le impone el respeto a la autoridad constituida, pero jamás como aspiración de sus cristianas creencias. El catolicismo no debe ser nunca amparador de determinada forma de gobierno. La enemiga de las gentes de la izquierda, está, hasta cierto punto, justificada. Muchas veces no nos aborrecen por católicos, pero siempre tienen que odiarnos por monárquicos. He aquí nuestro mal. Irrogamos a la religión el sambenito de nuestro sentir político, y eso no debe ser.


You can get a sense of his prose. His oratory skills drew thousands of agricultors at a time. People waited hours to hear him attack the foral system. He harangued the Catholic Church hierarchy, the caciques, the monarchy, Spanish centralism.

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Álvarez did not start off as a Galician nationalist per se, but he did identify many of the same problems as the Galician nationalists. It's one of Galician history's great missed opportunities that the concerns of the agrarian movement were not taken up by the fledgling Galician nationalist movement as a core part of their demands, because if they had, the Galician nationalists would have had an unshakeable rural demographic behind them.

Ni una sola ley salió del poder central que fuese beneficiosa para Galicia.

España se compone de regiones y que cada una de ellas tiene un carácter peculiar, constituyendo verdaderas nacionalidades.

Nos arrebataron nuestro lenguaje dulce y mimoso, nuestras costumbres poéticamente patriarcales, nuestras tradiciones gloriosas, nuestras creencias cristianas y hasta nuestra independencia brava y adusta. Nos uncieron al carro del centralismo.


Álvarez mentions the outrage done to the Galician language, but he himself writes consistently in Spanish, both in his books and in the Acción Gallega newspaper. That doesn't mean he spoke in Spanish to his parish faithful in the church or to his other group of faithful, the farmers. All his preaching he would have done in Galician. It's how Galicia lived the diglossic situation in the late 19th century. Serious written stuff like journalism was written usually in Spanish, whereas Galician was left for poetry.

If you read his works in the early 20th century, when Álvarez was at his most radical stage, he is threatening and revolutionary. He warns that if the powers-that-be leave no recourse for justice, people will and should use violence.

Se impone una repulsa absoluta contra el poder central, llegando hasta la revolución. Y si no os parece bien esta última posición, me allano a variarla de esta forma; donde se dice la necesidad de emplear la violencia, poned el motín, la sonada, la subversión del orden, la revolución en una palabra.


Campesinos: Cuando haya un villano que intente arrebataros el voto con procedimientos de malvado, matadle. Merece mayor castigo que el ladrón y el asesino”.


Peasants! When a wicked man tries to steal your vote via evil schemes, kill him. He deserves a greater punishment than the thief or murderer.

Álvarez did not describe himself as a socialist, but he was pragmatic and was more than happy to make political alliances with the Spanish republicans (with a small r) and socialists during the Restauration period, and then the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, and when the Second Spanish Republic was created, he was a supporter of that too. When the Spanish Civil War occurred, he was a supporter of the legitimate Republican government. After the Nationalist victory, he fled on the advice of his friend Castelao, who I've already talked about in my log (Castelao is the father of Galician nationalism).

Whatever it took to save his beloved flock, the absolute misery of whom he could see in his pastoral work in Galicia. The foros, the poor living conditions, the political corruption, forced hundreds of thousands of Galicians to migrate to the Americas or elsewhere in Spain in degrading conditions.

Yo sabía del sufrir del campesino cosas que horripilaban, yo sabía del ansia labriega cosas espantosas. Mis andanzas de cura rural por lo más intrincado de la provincia de Orense habían sido para mí una revelación y una fragua. Allí me enteré de lo inaudito de su esclavitud y allí me vigoricé también con el oxígeno de la indignación.

Pero yo no había visto a mis hermanos en su éxodo más penoso, yo no los había visto en la llanura de Castilla cuando un sol implacable retostaba sus sesos y un salario irrisorio coronaba su odisea; yo no los había visto siendo el blanco de los desprecios más groseros ni podía soñar siquiera que para muchos la palabra gallego fuese sinónimo de bestia de carga.

Desde entonces pensé que no tenía otra misión en la vida más que
ayudar a vindicar mi Patria y mi raza.



Let me translate this quote because one of the images that Álvarez uses, the sickle, segways into what I really want to talk about.

Y tengan muy en cuenta aquéllas ansias nuestros gobernantes, porque ahora los labriegos cayeron en muchas cosas que antes ignoraban. Saben que el azadón, al tropezar con la piedra, produce un chasquido trágico, y
que la hoz, lo mismo troncha la hierba que sabe poner espanto en el mayoral de la cuadrilla, y que ese fuego que arde en sus pechos, noble como el de las luminarias de la sierra, sirve Igualmente para hervir el caldo que para quemar el robledal donde se guarnecen las fieras.


Let our leaders be well aware of those concerns of ours, because peasants have now become aware of some things that they didn't realise before. They know that the mattock when it is swung and accidentally strikes a rock, produces a tragic cracking sound. They know that the sickle can cut grass, but (used differently) it can just as well put fear into the foreman of a workcrew. And they know the fire that burns within their breasts, as noble as the stars up in the sierra, can either heat up their daily soup...or burn down the oak grove where the cattle is corralled.

Though it might sound strange for any agricultural organisation to have its own anthem, Acción Gallega had one created for it by the Galician poet Ramón Cabanillas in 1910. It became so popular that it was a competitive choice to become the Galician national anthem, which in the end was chosen to be the much more peaceful Os Pinos.

Here is the poem, whose content and style is very appropriate to the combative spirit of Acción Gallega.

Irmáns! ¡Irmáns gallegos!
¡Dende Ortegal ó Miño
a folla do fouciño
fagamos rebrilar!

Que vexa a Vila podre,
coveira da canalla,
á Aldea que traballa
disposta pra loitar.

Antes de ser escravos,
¡irmáns, irmáns gallegos!
que corra o sangue a regos
dende a montana ó mar.

¡Ergámonos sin medo!
¡Que o lume da toxeira
envolva na fogueira
o pazo siñorial!

Xa o fato de caciques,
Iadróns e herexes, fuxe
ó redentor empuxe
da alma rexional.

Antes de ser escravos,
¡irmáns, irmáns gallegos!
que corra a sangre a regos
dende a montana ó val.


Brothers! Brothers of Galicia!
From Ortegal to the Miño
Let us make the blade of our sickle gleam!

Let the rotting City
Den of vile men
See the working Village
Ready to fight

Before ever becoming slaves
Brothers! Brothers of Galicia!
Let the blood flow in streams
From the mountain to the sea

Let us rise up without fear
Let the flame of the gorse brushes
Turn the lordly palaces
Into tinder!

The pack of caciques,
Thieves and heretics
Already flee the redemptive push
Of the regional soul

Before ever becoming slaves
Brothers! Brothers of Galicia!
Let the blood flow in streams
From the mountain to the valley

Dende Ortegal ó Miño - Ortegal is a Galician region at the very north of Galicia. The Miño is at the very bottom.

toxeira - the Ulex europaeus plant, abundant in Galicia and Portugal.

o pazo siñorial - a pazo is a Galician palace, a manor house, legacy of the medievam feudal system. It's where the lords would live and it was the visible symbol of noble privilege. Here is a well known example, the pazo de Meirás (well known because Franco bought it as a summer house, and it stayed in the Franco family's ownership until last year):

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The Galician rock band Nao made a cover of this poem, which is as the kids say these days, an absolute bop.



For the song, Nao includes new verses:

Has berrar comigo, has berrar de boa fe


You will shout with me, you will scream with me, yes you will.

And in the new song, the first to be called to the revolution are the sisters of Galicia "Irmás, irmás galegas!". Finally they have some Basque and Catalan collaborators that add new verses at the end. The Basque is straightforward:

Oihu egin zazu nirekin
Borroka ezazu gurekin

Shout with me!
Fight with us!


The Catalan contribution is the genius part, because it's the Catalan national anthem, which is very thematically appropriate:

Quan fem caure
Espigues d'or
Quan convé
Seguem cadenes

Que tremoli l'enemic
Bon cop de falç
Bon cop de falç
Segadors de la terra
Bon cop de falç!


When we cut down golden ears of wheat
When the time is right
We shall reap chains

Let the enemy tremble
A good blow with the sickle!
A good blow with the sickle!
Reapers of the land
A good blow with the sickle!
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nooj
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Fri Nov 12, 2021 10:59 pm

In the Nao song, you can hear that they sing denantes de ser escravos, a slight modification of Cabanillas's original poem where he used antes. The word choice is a homage to the beautiful heraldic blason that Castelao created for Galicia in 1937.

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The official Galician blason:

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While tthe Spanish Civil War raged on, Castelao wanted to create a new symbol for a new Galicia.

A secular symbol to replace the religious symbolism of the official Galician heraldry, which as you can see above has crosses, a calice, a consecrated host or a crown. He wanted one that paid hommage to Galicia's peasantry (the sickle) as well Galicia's marine history (the siren). Land and sea.

Around the blason, you can see the words denantes mortos que escravos. Rather dead than slaves. Inspired by the Celtic warriors of Cantabrian Wars, who after losing the Battle of Medulio in 22 BCE against the Romans, chose to kill themselves rather than become slaves. Some poisoned themselves with the same toxo plant that is mentioned in the Acción Gallega poem. The Roman historian Lucius Annaeus Florus writes in his Epitoma de Tito Livio:

Postremo fuit Medulli montis obsidio, quem perpetua quindecim milium fossa comprehensum undique simul adeunte Romano postquam extrema barbari uident, certatim igne, ferro inter epulas uenenoque, quod ibi uolgo ex arboribus taxeis exprimitur, praecepere mortem, seque pars maior a captiuitate, quae morte grauior ad id tempus indomitis uidebatur, uindicauerunt.


The term denantes has the same etymological origin as antes. Namely de + in + ante. In fact this might have given rise to the very different word delante via dissimilation.

Closely related forms exists in the Spanish spoken both in Spain and in America (denantes, enantes), as well as much more minoritarily in Portuguese, as well as in Astur-Leonese (denantes, anante, antias). In Extremaduran (ananti, andenanti, endenantes).

These are just a mere handful of the terms I mention, but if you look into attested forms, the variations are infinite. This is just one word. Before the Iberian Romance languages were standardised, my God, what a paradise/nightmare it would have been for a lexicologist or dialectologist.

Today in Portugal and Brazil, you can still hear inantes (em + antes) and dinantes. In Portugal, usually among rural, aged people. Whilst they may not be accepted in the written Portuguese standard, they are related to dantes, which IS accepted in the Portuguese norm, although with a different meaning in this case, meaning antigamente or outrora. Here's an example of inantes/emantes in the História da Literatura Brasileira by José Veríssimo (member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras) in 1916. Unfortunately I doubt a form like this would ever be allowed to be published by an editor in the 21st century.

Ainda em antes de findar o primeiro quartel do século, começaram a manifestar-se em Minas sintomas de descontentamento da metrópole e de hostilidades aos seus propostos à governança da capitania.
Last edited by nooj on Fri Nov 12, 2021 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tractor
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby tractor » Fri Nov 12, 2021 11:35 pm

nooj wrote:Jorge Pueyo is a speaker of an eastern dialect of Aragonese, and he recently gave a very interesting talk in the prestigious cultural centre Ateneu Barcelonès in Barcelona.

The talk is entirely in Aragonese but to a Catalan speaker, 90% of his Ribagorçan dialect is comprehensible.

I only watched the first few minutes, but I'd say it's higher than 90%. I'm not a native Catalan speaker, but I had no trouble understanding. It felt like a mix of Spanish and Catalan with some unique traits of its own. I guess It's harder to understand for a Catalan speaker from North Catalonia who doesn't speak Spanish than for someone from south of the border.

I think this is the first time I've heard someone speak Aragonese who wasn't old. Nice to see that the language may still have a future.
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nooj
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Fri Nov 12, 2021 11:59 pm

Ribagorzan Aragonese forms a dialectical continuum with Ribagorçan Catalan, and so it's not surprising it's highly understandable. Jorge himself has no problem understanding Catalan.

But I think the Ribagorzan/Ribagorçan varieties are a bit unique, if we look at other, closely related eastern Aragonese varieties like Chistabin, but which is geographically further away, things start to look less familiar. And if talking about the central Aragonese dialects, like the Pandicosan dialect, i find there's quite a bit of difference. Of course they're still closely related Romance languages but at that point my Catalan brain no longer functions smoothly and I have to pay serious attention.

The video is from a speaker of Pandicosa and the poem is by the Chistabin poet Nieus Luzía Dueso who passed away in 2010.



Al rustil del sol

Al rustil del sol, la piel cremá…

La saya remangada á la ranera.

Cargando’l faixo garba, asta la era,

t’e bista, per La Suerz, esnabesá.

A tú no te paixeba, que mirabe,

cómo lebabas la carga la primera.

Y á garra cabo allegabas la zaguera,

más que t’al puesto anque t’asperabe.

¿Tendrás augua ta la sé que me permena?

¿la ixecarás, me deixarás morire?

¿Te’n pasarás per yo nenguna pena?

Si querrén, si tú quiés, podén mirare

es dos, un camín, chuntos, ta que biengas

ascare tú, con yo, la misma strela.
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