What to call a language, among other things.

A friend of mine criticised me yesterday for using the word castellano to speak about the Spanish language. As far as he is concerned castellano means “from Castilla”, not Spain, just another of its regions. He insisted that I should say español which is what I have always used until I picked up castellano from people here. To the gallegos it means Spanish but not from Galicia. For example, this evening new friends were introducing themselves; one said that she is a gallega, born in Teis, Vigo, but her friend, born in Salamanca, is a castellana, even though she moved here when she was about three years old.

It’s a complicated issue in some ways. After all, gallego, catalán and even vasco are all official languages of Spain and, as such, have the right to call themselves español I suppose. I’m not sure what a dedicated regionalist would feel about his local language being called Spanish however. My friend, a Peruvian, argued that in Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and other Spanish speaking countries they consider that their language is Spanish, español, rather than peruano, boliviano, argentino, chileno and so on, despite some differences in vocabulary and sometimes in grammar. It’s rather like the North Americans and Australians who speak English rather than "UnitedStatesish" or Australian.

Meanwhile defenders of gallego as a long established and distinguished language have recently been happily working in the University of Vigo Philology Department on the Ystoria dela Santa Yglesia de Iria Flavia y translacion ala compostelana, a document written in gallego in the early 18th century, one of the séculos oscuros (the dark centuries – like the dark ages). This document is very exciting as it provides evidence of the use of gallego as an official written language at the time. This is what the document looks like:

At the same time a certain Morace Park from somewhere in SE England recently bought a box of film on eBay and was amazed to discover some unseen footage of Charlie Chaplin: a bit of film made to encourage troops in World War I apparently. So, cultural discoveries in both countries.

My own linguistic development – and my ongoing moaning and groaning about the library – has also seen new developments. I was delighted to see a notice in the said library announcing enrolment for an Italian book club. Whoopee!! All last year I badgered them to start just such a group so that I could pratticare il mio italiano and now it was on the point of becoming a reality. Ah, but ..... and it's a big but ....

I am already enrolled in the castellano/gallego book club (there’s that word castellano again) and if I wanted to join the Italian group I would have to leave the other one. Now this is despite the fact that there is only one person so far on the list for Italian which means it might not happen after all. Surely, I reasoned, it had more chance of getting off the ground if they let people who are in other groups join this one as well. Maybe they could my name on with a question mark to indicate interest shown.

No, rules are rules and must be adhered to!

And, naturally, if I have my name removed from the castellano/gallego list and the Italian group does not come into fruition I might have lost my place on the original list.

Ooooh, this is getting too complicated.

I just LOVE bureaucracy!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!