Galicians of my acquaintace are already expressing concern that the new president of the region, Feijoo, will speed the decline of the use of Gallego. His proposals about parental choice of the language in which their children should be educated also worry some people. What, they wonder, will be the future of bilingual nurseries? And what will become of their friends who are currently training to be bilingual nursery teachers? Will they have difficulty finding jobs, especially if they want to live in smaller towns?
Now, according to statistics from the Seminario Linguistico de la Real Academia, comparing the situation in 1992 with that in 2004, Gallego speaking certainly seems to be on the decline. In 1992, 10.6% of the population of Galicia never spoke Gallego; by 2004 this had increased to 25.8%. While villages of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants still have 76% of their population speaking mainly or indeed solely Gallego, in places of over 50,000 inhabitants this figure is only 24%.
Even though Gallego is more regularly used in rural areas, even these are seeing a decline; 55.3% used Gallego as their main language in 1992 whereas only 40.5% did so in 2004. The trend is also noticeable among the young; in 1992, 46.5% spoke mainly Gallego compared with 29.4 in 2004. The Seminario Linguistico also revealed that 32% of the total population never speak Gallego at all: in Ferrol 85% speak mainly or only Castellano while in Vigo and La Coruna the figure is 81.9%.
The ladies in my Club de Lectura, some of whom are very committed Gallegophones who insist on speaking Gallego even when addressed in Castellano, were discussing these figures this evening. On the whole they took them as proof that the politicians were wrong to state that there was prejudice against the use of Castellano in Galicia but rather the opposite: Gallego is under seige. This despite the fact that almost all local government dcouments and websites appear in Gallego first!
Now, to me this decline seems natural and inevitable. I can understand the concerns about the loss of traditions and culture and a part of me can sympathise with Rosalia de Castro's statement that Gallego is "una lengua que sigue siendo extranjero en su propio pais" - a language which continues to be foreign in its own country. The fact that there are modern novels written and published in Gallego must be going some way to remedy that situation. However, the presence of national television in in almost every home must lead to some standardising of language use, despite the existence of regional channels. The English writer Melvyn Bragg apparently grew up speaking Cumbrian, a language/dialect which has largely disappeared. While regional accents abound in the UK, many local and regional expressions have disappeared, to be replaced by more nationwide expressions spread by soap-operas and pop songs to a large extent. At any rate, that is my view of the matter.
In the meantime Feijoo wants all parents to have the right to choose the language of their children's schooling, provoking this cartoon in the local free (Gallego-language) paper.
The teacher is saying, "Right, today we are going to revise Maths topic 6. Those pupils who want to follow this subject in Castillian, press button 1 of the automatic translation system, those who want to do so in English, press button 2, those who want ...."Is Senor Feijoo, I find myself wondering as I note the presence of a chalkboard behind the teacher, going to ensure the installation of the necessary technology to make this possible?
I'd love to have a chat about this as iI also find this very interesting.
ReplyDeleteHaving some Gallego friends here, who are becoming good friend of mine, I find them occasionally chatting in Gallego. They will apologise and return in castellano... although this is very rare. I don't know whether to believe that they actually speak in Gallego with each other or, do so, to encourage the use of Gallego and promote it. May be it's because of the Catalan language here, they want to remind others and Catalans that they are bilingue tambien. Sometimes, they question their grammar or vocabulary in Gallego but manage to , from time to time, make sure that their Facebook status in Gallego.
Ouu we could talk about this for a long time! haha:-)