Words in and on the wind.

Galicia nearly got blown away in the night. I understand the average wind speed in Vigo was 130 kilometres an hour, with highs of 140. And some parts of Galicia had even stronger winds by all accounts. They closed the port of Vigo and then had to send tug boats to rescue a ferryboat under construction which was blown off its moorings and almost carried out to sea.

I can’t even say I slept through this bit of weather, unlike the snow. In the small hours of the morning it almost felt as though our tower block was swaying in the wind. It certainly sounded as though it should be. This morning the streets were strewn with oranges blown off the trees, billboards have been blown down and I swear the tree in the gardens of our complex leans at a more interesting angle than it did yesterday.

So with the wind having blown the cobwebs away, it’s the perfect time to air a few opinions. Here goes.

Back in the day, when I was a bright young thing applying for higher education, (some would say when educational standards were higher) you needed a qualification in a modern foreign language if you wanted to study anything at all at a British university. Scientist friends of mine struggled to get themselves an O Level in French, only to find that German would have been more useful. Those of us wanting to study modern foreign languages had to have a qualification in Latin. In fact if you went back far enough in time everyone who applied for anything would have needed Latin.

All of that has gone now but I read yesterday that the Spanish government wants new applicants to the teaching profession here to have a qualification in a foreign language. Reading between the lines, what they really mean is English but nobody has said this in so many words. Neither has it been made absolutely clear what level of qualification is required. Some have already acknowledged that having bachillerato level English and being able to deliver a school subject in that language are quite different things.

And that is what is really behind it. If parents can choose the language they want their children to be educated in then the teachers need to know how to speak, read and write that language to a high enough level to be able to assess their pupils’ work properly.

Oh, the big dilemma! It’s the same one that the UK is facing with the admittedly excellent idea of teaching some primary school subjects in a foreign language, by far the best way for the youngsters to learn it. And it works fine if you have the staff; otherwise it can be a nightmare. And the farther up the school you go, the more difficult it is. I know some quite fluent gallego speakers working in schools here who don’t feel confident about marking high level essays written in gallego.

It’s another example of a good idea not quite thought through. Of course, what it needs as well is a big input of money and enough time to train teachers to do this properly. But then we can't expect mere politicians to understand either of these factors. There's that strange dichotomy: great admiration for those who CAN speak foreign languages well and complete incomprehension of the time and effort that's needed in order to learn to do so.

Still on the subject of languages and good ideas, here’s another one. I caught the tail end of a debate on TV news the other day about the need for translators in the Spanish parliament. If diputados from Galicia, Cataluña and El País Vasco are to be able to exercise their right to make speeches and participate in debates in their own regional languages, then translators are needed so that everyone else can understand what they say. Fair enough, except that these galego, catalán and euskera speakers can all speak perfectly good castellano!!!!

Jobs for the boys?! Money that could be better spent on other stuff?!

Meanwhile, I am still amazed at some Spaniards’ apparent inability to even try to understand gallego. I went to the Club de Lectura Español/Gallego at the library last night. (Yes, this is the one I am officially a member of.) We were given a new book, a collection of poetry in gallego, written by a local Vigo school teacher. Protests ensued from some quarters as people declared it was really difficult to read gallego. My neighbour in the class asked me how I got on and was surprised when I pointed out that it was not too hard because I know Spanish, French and Italian and as they are all Latin languages I can usually work it out. She told me that she didn’t see how that helped at all as the grammatical structure of gallego is COMPLETELY different from those other languages.

Well, that’s news to me. Those years of studying the history of the language as part of my Spanish and French course were clearly wasted. The very enthusiastic young teacher who ran the obradoiro galego, the gallego conversation workshop I went to last year, was also obviously misled as well.

I must say, I was quite blown away!