[Other] The languages of Spain, Portugal and Andorra

[kaixokaixo]

i have learnt spanish for many years but only last year i only really found out that some parts of spain speak languages too. my old school never told me that or taught much of spanish culture . so i would get confused because i kept getting told catalan was spanish when it came up on some dvd movie titles , then i would say i thought it was castelleno.


when i tried researching more on the internet there are loads of cool languages in spain like aragonese, types of basque and gallician . people who speak these use both spanish and the other language. i would like to learn them all if i could ,but learning basic phrases is good for now .

what interests do you have in district languages spoken in these countries?

[Premium]

Originally Posted by kaixokaixo

i have learnt spanish for many years but only last year i only really found out that some parts of spain speak languages too. my old school never told me that or taught much of spanish culture . so i would get confused because i kept getting told catalan was spanish when it came up on some dvd movie titles , then i would say i thought it was castelleno.


when i tried researching more on the internet there are loads of cool languages in spain like aragonese, types of basque and gallician . people who speak these use both spanish and the other language. i would like to learn them all if i could ,but learning basic phrases is good for now .

what interests do you have in district languages spoken in these countries?

Some of them sound very nice, but I don't fancy putting the required effort in it. I'd start with Portuguese or Italian when I achieve a reasonable level in Spanish and English.

[Sancho Panther]

Basque is said to be virtually unlearnable - if you weren't born to into you'll never learn it; or so they say! Linguistic experts say it is most closely related to Magyar, the national language of Hungary, they don't fully understand its historical origins. I've also read that that it is so circumlocutory that most speakers prefer Castellano, but preserve Basque for reasons of cultural regional identity and pride.

Gallego, the regional language of Galicia is no more and no less than Portuguese, although some Gallegos deny it!

Catalán is spoken not only in Cataluña (Barcelona, Gerona, Lerida (Lleida) and Tarragona and also Andorra, but right down through Castellon, Valencia and Alicante where they call it Valenciá (or Valenciano).

It's also spoken in Mallorca (Mallorqín), Menorca (Menorquín) and Ibiza (Ibicenco) and also is widely spoken in SW France.

Then there's Aragonés and Asturiano!

(Edit)
Mi señora tells me that Asturiano and Aragonés are variants of Basque.

[pjt33]

Originally Posted by Sancho Panther

Catalán is spoken not only in Cataluña (Barcelona, Gerona, Lerida (Lleida) and Tarragona and also Andorra, but right down through Castellon, Valencia and Alicante where they call it Valenciá (or Valenciano).

Valencià. It uses more grave accents than acute ones.

Originally Posted by Sancho Panther

Mi señora tells me that Asturiano and Aragonés are variants of Basque.

She's wrong: they're both Romance languages. I reckon that you can probably understand a fair amount of written aragonés or asturianu.

[Villa]

Originally Posted by Sancho Panther

Basque is said to be virtually unlearnable
Then there's Aragonés and Asturiano!

(Edit)
Mi señora tells me that Asturiano and Aragonés are variants of Basque.

Asturiano and Aragones are Latin based languages. They cannot be variants of Basque because Basque is not a Latin based language.

[Villa]

Originally Posted by kaixokaixo

i have learnt spanish for many years but only last year i only really found out that some parts of spain speak languages too. my old school never told me that or taught much of spanish culture . so i would get confused because i kept getting told catalan was spanish when it came up on some dvd movie titles , then i would say i thought it was castelleno.


when i tried researching more on the internet there are loads of cool languages in spain like aragonese, types of basque and gallician . people who speak these use both spanish and the other language. i would like to learn them all if i could ,but learning basic phrases is good for now .

what interests do you have in district languages spoken in these countries?

I took several classes in college that talked about the different languages of Spain. There are four main languages on the Iberian peninsula: Portuguese, Catalan, Castilian and Basque. The first three are Latin based languages and the fourth is not known to be related to any other languaage spoken anywhere in the world today. Current theory holds that it is a descendant of one of the pre-Latin languages spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Galician (gallego) a language closely related to Portuguese is spoken in the northwest corner of Spain. I've also read that Portuguese comes from gallego. People from Galicia went to what is now Portugal and settled there of course eons ago. Catalan is also spoken in Italy on the island of Sardegna. (Sardeña is how it is pronounced.) My sister's father-in-law is from Valencia and he speaks Catalan. Says he could understand Italian from the beginning from knowing Catalan and Spanish. Leones and Aragones is spoken by a small number of people. The Spanish of southern Spain ironically is the Spanish closest to Latin American Spanish. I have read that and also had a Spanish neighbor from there and that is how she spoke. She did not have that lisp Spanish sound that we all know about.

kaixokaixo, do some research on the "Spanish Civil War" 1936-1939. Part of the war was fought to make
Catalan a separate country and language. Obviously they lost and Catalan had to stay with Spain. The
rest of the minority languages suffered under the dictator Franco also.

[Sancho Panther]

Originally Posted by Villa

kaixokaixo, do some research on the "Spanish Civil War" 1936-1939. Part of the war was fought to make
Catalan a separate country and language. Obviously they lost and Catalan had to stay with Spain. The
rest of the minority languages suffered under the dictator Franco also.

They're campaigning for a referendum on independence again, I think - they've already got a great deal of autonomy via the Generalitat (Regional Parliament). They upset the regional immigrants monumentally a couple of years ago by banning totally La Corrida in all Cataluña!

Monumentally - get it?

[tetsuo]

Learning all the dialect would mean you'll learn Welsh and Irish after learning Oxford English until you achieved a reasonable level.

I wouldn't worry abbout those dialects. I don't learn German dialects either because I think - and that's not my own point of view - people will use Standard German so both understand each other. I guess, Spanish people - no matter where they are from - will understand Standard Spanish, too.

I'd go with Portuguese, Italien, French, Brazilian Portuguese because the roots are the same. If you'd like to you can take Romanian, too. It has also the roots. I personally wouldn't do that, instead I'd go with all the other languages. (Un)Fortunately I do know people worldwide - not personally (mostly) - so any language would make sense to me. And I am so curious.

As for my English, I like to know slang terms - so I have books and website about to acknowledge more of the language. As for Spanish, unfortately I have only one book covering only a small amount dirty words. So, the basis is being it mustn't be slang. Too bad.

[JPablo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language
The maps in the above link are very interesting...
And the poem at the end it's a great one...

[Mozzo]

I was Googling around recently for free educational things to read/listen to, and some Galician entries got mixed into the search results. I'm probably around an A2 level in Spanish but I can slow down and make sense of Galician. At least, with children's stories, anyway. Some spelling conventions are easy to adjust, like dixo = dijo and unha = una.

Reminds me of what it is like as a modern US English fluent to read Elizabethan English. I will have to skip over some words, and mentally modify spellings, but can make reasonable sense of it.