Bla bla bla

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nooj
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:50 pm

A lot...a lot of things have happened recently but here's one thing. Lately I was in Zuberoa, in a small town and I met outside of a shop a young guy, my age, taking a coffee and looking exhausted. I talked to him in Basque and it turned out he also spoke Basque, but he was not Zuberoan, but from the neighbouring region of Bearn, specifically from the Valley of Aspa, a remote and mountainous area. He was working as a shepherd and had stopped in this town because his car had broken down and he was waiting to talk to some local farmers in order to ask for some equipment to lift the car and see what was wrong with it. When I learned he was from Bearn I spoke to him in Aranese, and he spoke to me in Bearnese: the first time in my life I've ever used and heard Occitan in real life. He spoke standard Basque, not Zuberoan Basque, because he had lived in Bermeo, a big fishing port in the South Basque Country as a fisherman and later in a restaurant, but I didn't ask him if he spoke the local dialect of Bermeo, a very distinctive Bizkaian dialect. I assume he learned it as well. He invited me to visit his little town of Bòrça (in French, Borce). I was a bit sad that he didn't speak Zuberoan Basque, I assume a few decades ago that Bearnese people would have spoken the neighbouring dialect of Basque and vice versa, Basques would have spoken Bearnese. Instead he went to the South Basque Country to learn Basque.

Later I went to La Pèira Sent Martin (La Pierre Saint-Martin), this time really in Bearn, and when I went to the refuge there, I asked if there was any Basque speaker there, given that it was a stone's throw from Zuberoa. The young man at the counter told me proudly that no, because we were in Bearn. So I talked to him in Aranese. But he didn't know Bearnese so he became quiet.

One Bearnese person, international traveller and worker, knowing the language of his land and also one of his neighbour. Another Bearnese person who knew to my displeasure only French and Spanish.

Sure, engage in regionalisms...wrap yourself in your flag if you want. But without the language, what are you?

I'm not saying you can't be Basque or Bearnese or Irish without speaking Basque or Bearnese or Irish... but don't you lose something? Isn't it less meaningful to proudly call yourself a Bearnese and only speak French, the language that has crushed the language of you, your parents and your grandparents?
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Fri Jul 02, 2021 5:08 pm

I was in Larraine (in French, Larrau) a small town in the Zuberoa province with 196 residents. I went to the only restaurant/bar/hotel in the town, in an hour when there wasn't anyone else. In Larraine, the Basque speaking population is 73.36% apparently (from 2010), so it's a majoritarily Basque speaking town even if most of these are elderly people.

I went up to the bar and a young man was there behind the counter. I asked in Basque, "euskaraz, bai?". He told me in French that no, no Basque. But Spanish yes. The language of the neighbouring state. But not the language of the town he was living in.

I stood there for about 3 seconds, told him in Basque 'lasai egoteko', to relax and walked out.

Later when talking with some of the town's Basque speakers, they mentioned that 1) the people owning the place didn't know Basque 2) way too expensive. They don't go there.

Indeed, as we were talking in front of their house various French people (tourists with cameras) came wandering down the street and politely told us 'bonjour', to which the Basque speakers politely replied to them 'bonjour', and returned to our conversation although I continued with the Basque greeting 'egün hun'. The Basque speakers tend to speak French to French speakers; I continue to speak Basque to French speakers even if they don't understand me, at least in this small thing like a greeting. Wherever in France they go back to, I want them to KNOW how to say hello in Basque...I don't want them to force me to change into their language in order to say something as simple as good day.

Anyway, the locals were telling me how these French tourists come to the town in their cars, hire a room in the hotel for one night (expensive), eat food in the hotel restaurant (expensive), have a wander and get back in their cars and go home...they may be perfectly nice people but when they come to Larraine, what they know is that one place which doesn't cater for locals, but for tourists.

The hotel/restaurant has the name of the original owner, an eminently Basque name on the front. But he never taught his children Basque, including - I suppose - that young man I met. Who knew Spanish and not Basque.

If these people won't understand the cultural and social reasons behind learning and speaking the language of the country, by God they'll understand the monetary reason. Let's be honest the amount of money they'll lose for not knowing Basque is miniscule, the waves of French tourists more than outweighs the purchasing power of some Basque speaking farmers enjoying their retirement, but they have to KNOW that it's not okay. I'm not saying make a giant fuss and flip tables. But they need to have it exposed to their face, someone needs to push it into their nose, they need to be pricked by an annoying mosquito. Whether in the South Basque Country or in the North Basque Country.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby Walinator » Fri Jul 02, 2021 6:55 pm

nooj wrote:If these people won't understand the cultural and social reasons behind learning and speaking the language of the country, by God they'll understand the monetary reason. Let's be honest the amount of money they'll lose for not knowing Basque is miniscule, the waves of French tourists more than outweighs the purchasing power of some Basque speaking farmers enjoying their retirement, but they have to KNOW that it's not okay. I'm not saying make a giant fuss and flip tables. But they need to have it exposed to their face, someone needs to push it into their nose, they need to be pricked by an annoying mosquito. Whether in the South Basque Country or in the North Basque Country.


I understand the pain, although the situation is a little bit different in my case. My parents and most of my family are immigrants from Afghanistan and have been living in the US for nearly 40 years now. While all the adults can speak and read fluent Persian, the children vary depending on age (at least in my family anyways). It seems like the older/first-born children are better at Persian than the younger ones because, for the older/first-born children, they had no one to talk to except their parents when they were young, so they were exposed to Persian at home. However, as the number of children would increase in the family, the kids would find it easier to just speak in English instead of Persian with each other. Meanwhile, the adults would either not care and force the kids to speak Persian or would just speak in English as well. This has led to an interesting situation where the older kids have near native level Persian, but the younger ones can barely speak it (although they do understand). Its starting to be the case where the really young ones (around 3-4 years old) dont even understand the language anymore.

Witnessing this definitely pains me and while I cant do anything about it with my non-immediate family, I have been been pushing my younger siblings to learn the language more and, let me tell you, its not easy. Sadly, my efforts seem to be an outlier and no one else cares that the next generation will know nothing of our native language. Nonetheless, I dont understand why this is "not okay?" Unfortunately, this is how life is and history is proof of this. Languages ebb and weave in and out of existence, however much it pains me, that is reality.
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nooj
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Wed Jul 07, 2021 1:42 pm

I've been walking in the Aragonese part of the Pyrenees for a couple of days now. About 3 more weeks left until I reach the end in the Mediterranean sea.

It's so beautiful I seriously could cry. I had tears welling up today walking through the mountains. They take good care of their environment, and make a point of telling travellers to treat nature right. Now if only the Aragonese government and political parties and Aragonese population as a whole spent 1/100th of that effort on their languages. Why, why, do we value our mountains but not the languages of the people who inhabit them?

Although the official cartographical maps correctly use the Aragonese names for the topography (and it's FANTASTIC, I think it's a recent iniciative so that the Aragonese names also show up on GPS), I haven't heard a single word of Aragonese yet in real life. Not a surprise, but still a disappointment. I've met a dozen Basque speakers so far. Basques come to Aragon en masse, because they love their mountains... The Pyrenees is like a vast summer camp for Basque mountaineers and climbers.

Every night, in my tent or dilapidated refuges, I turn on my mobile and read the Aragonese grammar that I downloaded. Studying a language that perhaps I'll never use, let alone hear. In one very special refuge, I read a comment by a visitor who had left Tibetan prayer flags. As the wind passes through them, the prayers written on them are transferred to other people. Another person wrote that that the air in the world has been in the lungs of every person living or dead, and has been used in the mouths of everyone, so that there's no need for prayer flags. The wind knows all our languages, living or dead. I hope that Aragonese doesn't become one of those languages that only the wind knows.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:32 pm

In the town of Sallent de Gallego (the town's name has nothing to do with Galicia), I stopped by the library and saw a small section for Aragonese literature. Talking to the librarian she told me that in Sallent de Gallego you don't hear a lot of Aragonese. When she was little when the teacher heard her use Aragonese words, she used to be 'corrected' and told not to use those words. This was during the dictatorship, but Spanish supremacism still exists today in Aragon. She herself was not an Aragonese speaker: in fact, none of the various Aragonese people I've met on the trail speak Aragonese, although they say they understand it.

Here's the library section (under 'Fabla').
Image

Here's a short story from a Benasquese book, possibly the first to be published in the Benasquese dialect of Aragonese, by Chusé María Ferrer Fantoba from the town of Sesué, although the back cover says he lives and works in the south of France (like a lot of Aragonese people).

In this fantastical (metaphorical) story, he puts himself in the shoes of a young child who has to face the punishment of the teacher from the capital (Madrid) who used to put a hat with donkey ears on the person she heard speaking Benasquese, and how he didn't understand why his parents punished him when the teacher told them that he had been caught speaking Aragonese: it was the parents who had taught him the language! And they chewed him out in...Benasquese. In the story the family's donkey eats his school books (all written in Spanish) and becomes 'smart', but useless, because the donkey suddenly doesn't understand or pretends not to understand the commands given in Benasquese. And given that at that time Spanish was hardly spoken in the valley of Benas, the donkey was useless. The family is forced to sell the donkey and the grandma says: if only the donkey had eaten books written in Benasquese!

Image

Image

Here is a nice poem from the same book:

Image

Som

Som coma ixes biejos queixigos,
que han resistiu a turberas repetidas,
que bienen de tems tan antiguos.

Som coma ixes campos,
tan chobes cad'an,
berts y fllorius de yerbas y fllors,
d'esperansas y de frens sudadas.

Som com'aquells llauradors,
eternos ara, que ban bibir, pocs tems,
de prats berts, pllenos de fragansias,
d'ilusions de camins despedregats y pllanos.

Som coma una palabra propia que llaura,
segura y fort, un futuro insierto,
per cada costau de la montaña,
per cada cabeza bllanca u rubia.



We are like those old oak trees
That have withstood many storms
And that come from such ancient times

We are like those fields
So young every year
Green and blooming with grasses and flowers
And with hopes and the sweat of our brow

We are like those workers
Now eternal,
That lived off of
For a short while anyway
Green fields full of fragrances
And dreams of smooth paths rid of stones

We are like our very own word that plows
Strong and sure
An uncertain future
On each side of the mountain
On each greying or blonde head.

In a refuge I found this written on the door:

Image

Deixar l'alberde como tos ese feto goi trobar-lo.
Bien escoscadet
Con güen cheta leña


Leave the refuge in the state that you would have liked to find it.
Clean
With a good amount of firewood.

I was there spending the night with four other people, one of whom was an Aragonese woman who lives in the Ribagorza region (but who doesn't speak Aragonese), although she uses words and frases, like "cal fer-lo". With me was a Valencian guy, and so he immediately understood that phrase. She had to translate for everyone else 'escoscau,' which means clean or organised.

I've come down from the mountains to the Benas Valley today. I still haven't heard Aragonese but that's not a surprise, it's not a language that people generally use with foreigners. I'm three or four days walking distance from the Val d'Aran. I hope to spend some time there practicing Occitan.

I've fallen madly in love with Aragonese nature and Aragonese towns... I could seriously live here, if I could find a job. The Pyrenees are awesome.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:46 pm

Image

Image
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby lingzz_langzz » Thu Jul 15, 2021 7:31 am

Hey nooj!

I see you are as interested in Spanish regional languages as I am. I saw your post about Aragonese. Where do you find material to read for the dialects? Or how are you looking for them? I would love to start reading in Aragonese but I don't want to go into fabla...

Thanks a lot in advance!
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nooj
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Thu Jul 15, 2021 10:37 am

Ordered a coffee and bread in Benasquese today. Went to a cafeteria that looked reasonably local, with two middle aged women working there who I imagined might have been born and raised in the town. I asked "ragonas patués?" and she said yes, so I did a little chat (in Aragonese!) while she made my café dan llet. "Ma fa goi sentir parlar el benasqués! Bla bla bla" 1.20€ to make my whole day better? Yes sir.

Obviously I don't mean to imply it's in the same situation as Basque or Catalan. Benasquese even in the towns of Benas is highly minoritised and very very endangered, if slightly less than other Aragonese dialects. But it does seem plausible that what I've read elsewhere in linguistic literature, that Aragonese is still 'alive' in Benas, is true...

Where do you find material to read for the dialects? Or how are you looking for them? I would love to start reading in Aragonese but I don't want to go into fabla...
For dialectical material I just read blogs by native speakers or speakers who have learned a local variety, and books written by native speakers. I also don't think there's anything wrong with reading 'fabla', mostly it's just Aragonese with as much of its features chosen to be not Spanish as possible which leads to lexical, morphological and syntactical choices taken from a variety of Aragonese dialects that are taken to be symbolically or indexically Aragonese (and there are good Aragonese linguists also who choose these parts for linguistic reasons as well).

Which is why the so-called fabla, despectively called as such especially by some speakers of oriental dialects of Aragonese, call it artificial. And it is. The total set of these choices has never existed in a natural dialect. But I still think it's a kind of Aragonese.

The thing to be careful of is using neologisms that are totally incomprehensible to native speakers, because outside of a narrow circle of neo-locutors it'll probably not be understood. Given that there's a limited amount of reading material anyway, I think we should just read everything we can get our hands on. Because honestly it's better to learn any kind of Aragonese than no Aragonese at all, and it's easy to transition from an artificial Aragonese to a natural dialect (it's a process of de-learning). It's not easy to learn a natural dialect from the ground up, it might be possible if you live in Spain and have access to material and native speakers but I imagine if you live elsewhere getting the books might be prohibitively expensive.

By the way, I remembered this photo I took.

Here's a visitor's entry written in Spanish, but with an Aragonese conjugation that slips past the speaker who lives in Chaca (Jaca in Spanish):

Image

Esperemos que el refugio siga (not sea!) así durante muchos años
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby lingzz_langzz » Thu Jul 15, 2021 2:56 pm

Well, I understand your point about fabla, it can be a good way of getting deeper into the language however I normally stick to most natural versions of the language (mainly because of practical reasons).

Would you mind sharing those blogs and books? I'd love to hear recommendations from someone, not just read random stuff I might find and wonder if it's fabla or not.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:15 pm

Victoria Nicolás writes in the Cheso variant of Aragonese. For example, "Plevias". Antón Collada writes in Baxorribagorzano de Fonz, for example "Per qué plloran las estrelas?". Carmen Castán Saura writes in Benasquese, for example "Cuando l'odio esbatega pel aire". Ana Tena Puy writes in Ribagorzano, for example "Ta óne im". Elena Gusano Galindo writes in Ansotano variant of Aragonese, for example "Yésica, un abrio d'agora". "Las zagueras trafucas de Marieta" by Quino Villa is written in Chistabin. "Alredor d'a chaminera" by José María Satué Sanromán is written in the dialect of Sobrepuerto.
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