There are quite a lot of errors – which I attribute to sheer ignorance of linguistics and Spanish politics from the journalist – in this article, but at least it’s not *outright vicious* lies like we get in some Spanish newspapers here in Spain.
When the Guardian or any foreign news organisation has to deal with Spanish issues, it’s quite cringy, so I expect that they have the same level of ‘accuracy’ when they’re dealing with matters anywhere in the world.
But hey, all publicity (as long as it’s not outright false information) is good publicity…so they say.
For example they try to imply that Asturian is not an actual language because it’s similar to Spanish and easy to understand, or at least that’s the impression an unwary foreign reader could take from these paragraphs:
>Just how many of Asturias’ one million inhabitants speak Asturian daily is a moot point. Any Spanish speaker would find it easy to understand.
>While it has grammatical differences, many common verbs are either the same or vary only slightly: hacer (to do or make) is facer in Asturian; hablar (to talk) is falar. Many nouns differ only by a letter: harina (flour) is farina in Asturian; gato (cat) is gatu.
>As a spoken language, many argue that Asturian is little more than a Spanish dialect. But then, as others may counter, a language is simply a dialect with an army and navy.
For comparison, Portuguese has: facer, falar, farina, gato. But as a spoken language, I don’t think many argue that Portuguese is little more than a Spanish dialect with a funny accent.
There’s no debate among linguists about the genetic classification of Asturian: it belongs to the Astur-Leonese language family, so a sister language family to the one that Spanish belongs to. But just as Portuguese is not a Spanish dialect, Asturian isn’t a Spanish dialect either. Portuguese, Asturian and Spanish all evolved directly from Latin.
>Basque separatists laid down their arms more than 10 years ago and with the Catalan independence movement currently running out of steam, it seemed that Spain, a nation state at risk of unravelling along regional and linguistic lines, had stitched itself back together. But national unity could face its next challenge from this small and mainly rural region best known for its dairy products, cider and, until recently, coal mining.
No. There’s no threat to national integrity. Asturias has never had a serious or even important nationalistic movement. Ever. Not before the Civil War, not during the Spanish dictatorship, not after in the Spanish democracy. It simply doesn’t exist – which is a shame, it’s possible the Asturian language would have been more protected and supported if there had been an Asturian nationalist party that promoted its cause in the parliament.
Making Asturian official is something supported by a variety of people from a variety of political backgrounds.
This hyping up of political threats is doubly ridiculous because 1) Asturian is a deeply minoritised language. It can’t threaten anyone or anything. It’s struggling to *survive*. Spanish nationalists and British journalists that want to portray this little language as if it posed any kind of threat is just stupid. 2) Asturians who want to make Asturian official also want to make the Galician language spoken in the west of Asturias official as well, so the movement is demanding the officialisation of two languages. But *Galician* is already official in the neighbouring community of Galicia, it’s been official there ever since the changeover of the dictatorship.
So Asturians are only demanding something that’s already the case elsewhere in Spain. If making Asturian and Galician official in Asturias poses a threat to Spanish unity, then making Galician official in Galicia was a threat, making Basque official was a threat, making Catalan official was a threat etc. If you follow that logic, then the best way to maintain Spanish unity is to return to a certain Spanish dictatorship and make only Spanish official.
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There are quite a lot of errors – which I attribute to sheer ignorance of linguistics and Spanish politics from the journalist – in this article, but at least it’s not *outright vicious* lies like we get in some Spanish newspapers here in Spain.
When the Guardian or any foreign news organisation has to deal with Spanish issues, it’s quite cringy, so I expect that they have the same level of ‘accuracy’ when they’re dealing with matters anywhere in the world.
But hey, all publicity (as long as it’s not outright false information) is good publicity…so they say.
For example they try to imply that Asturian is not an actual language because it’s similar to Spanish and easy to understand, or at least that’s the impression an unwary foreign reader could take from these paragraphs:
>Just how many of Asturias’ one million inhabitants speak Asturian daily is a moot point. Any Spanish speaker would find it easy to understand.
>While it has grammatical differences, many common verbs are either the same or vary only slightly: hacer (to do or make) is facer in Asturian; hablar (to talk) is falar. Many nouns differ only by a letter: harina (flour) is farina in Asturian; gato (cat) is gatu.
>As a spoken language, many argue that Asturian is little more than a Spanish dialect. But then, as others may counter, a language is simply a dialect with an army and navy.
For comparison, Portuguese has: facer, falar, farina, gato. But as a spoken language, I don’t think many argue that Portuguese is little more than a Spanish dialect with a funny accent.
There’s no debate among linguists about the genetic classification of Asturian: it belongs to the Astur-Leonese language family, so a sister language family to the one that Spanish belongs to. But just as Portuguese is not a Spanish dialect, Asturian isn’t a Spanish dialect either. Portuguese, Asturian and Spanish all evolved directly from Latin.
>Basque separatists laid down their arms more than 10 years ago and with the Catalan independence movement currently running out of steam, it seemed that Spain, a nation state at risk of unravelling along regional and linguistic lines, had stitched itself back together. But national unity could face its next challenge from this small and mainly rural region best known for its dairy products, cider and, until recently, coal mining.
No. There’s no threat to national integrity. Asturias has never had a serious or even important nationalistic movement. Ever. Not before the Civil War, not during the Spanish dictatorship, not after in the Spanish democracy. It simply doesn’t exist – which is a shame, it’s possible the Asturian language would have been more protected and supported if there had been an Asturian nationalist party that promoted its cause in the parliament.
Making Asturian official is something supported by a variety of people from a variety of political backgrounds.
This hyping up of political threats is doubly ridiculous because 1) Asturian is a deeply minoritised language. It can’t threaten anyone or anything. It’s struggling to *survive*. Spanish nationalists and British journalists that want to portray this little language as if it posed any kind of threat is just stupid. 2) Asturians who want to make Asturian official also want to make the Galician language spoken in the west of Asturias official as well, so the movement is demanding the officialisation of two languages. But *Galician* is already official in the neighbouring community of Galicia, it’s been official there ever since the changeover of the dictatorship.
So Asturians are only demanding something that’s already the case elsewhere in Spain. If making Asturian and Galician official in Asturias poses a threat to Spanish unity, then making Galician official in Galicia was a threat, making Basque official was a threat, making Catalan official was a threat etc. If you follow that logic, then the best way to maintain Spanish unity is to return to a certain Spanish dictatorship and make only Spanish official.