Iversen wrote:I visited Valencia a few years ago, and in the town itself I heard very little Valencià - except in the most touristy areas (like around the cathedral or the aquarium), where the speakers may have been foreign visitors.
IIRC in the central neighbourhoods of Valencia you'll hear more Valencian than in the outer suburbs. This happens in most of the larger historically Catalan-speaking cities in Spain due to the pattern of settlement of the Spanish-speaking migration in the 60s and 70s.
In the Southern coastal town Alacant (Alicante) I didn't catch a single word in Valencià in spite of the fact that there were bilingual official signs everywhere.
In Alacant language shift started among the upper class even before the Spanish Civil War, and has indeed spread to all levels of society, whereas in most of the rest of the language domain (well, the parts under Spanish administration) the use of Spanish increased primarily due to immigration and the locals and their descendants mostly kept speaking Catalan.
If you go to work in a state school, I would expect them to define the main language as Valencian rather than Catalan so I'd be interested to hear if it really is the case that they talk about Catalan.
As far as I know in the education system they call it Valencian (as does pretty much everyone in the Valencian Country outside of academic contexts), but they also accept it's the same language as Catalan.
Ogrim wrote:The former insists on Valencian being different from Catalan and will stress the differences, whilst the latter think Valencian should recognise its close relation (linguistically speaking) to its neighbour in the north and aim at staying close to Catalan standard.
What I've heard from Valencians is that this conflict was big during the transition to democracy but it's kind of become less and less important over the years, especially now that Compromís is in the government despite being accused to be "Catalanist" by right-wing press.
Also, people who accept Valencian and Catalan are the same language will often call themselves valencianistes (even the small minority that wants to create a federation of independent republics with Catalonia and the Balearics uses that term), and call the ones who don't blavers (because of the blue stripe that differentiates the flag of the Valencian Autonomous Community from the senyera nua or quatribarrada shared with Catalonia, Aragon and the Balearics) or secessionistes (lingüístics)