El perpetuo trabalenguas - The Perpetual Tonguetwister

            I’m not going to lie to you. At times, living in a country where another language is dominant makes you feel like your brain is pretty useless.

Now, I have studied Spanish for several years now. I have a degree in it from the University of Oregon – a pretty nice khaki piece of paper that says I have an advanced knowledge of the language, and I think it might even say I graduated “with honors”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. But sometimes, going into a bar and ordering a café con leche makes me feel like I have the IQ of a two year old who has been repeatedly hit in the head with a tire iron. This is especially true if I try to add any kind of flair to the sentence and really “make it my own”. I’m not sure how much I try to make English “my own” language; I normally say “Dude,” and then an semi-intelligible string of nouns, superfluous adjectives and even less necessary adverbs comes out, and what results is something most American English speakers can understand, but perhaps many others, especially older members of my own family, might have trouble understanding.

Dude, like, what type of tip is this dude on, right now, man?

Suffice it to say, then, when I try to make Castillian Spanish “my own”, an even less comprehensible concoction comes out of my lopsided mouth, and many native speakers here in Vieja Castilla are left bleating out a resounding “¿Qué?” in the face of this pale-skinned foreigner, the not-so-affectionate term for which is actually “guiri” (geer-ee). It’s sort of like the Iberian Spanish version of “gringo”, of which I’m sure everyone is familiar.

But there’s the interesting thing going on: here, what we call “Spanish” is not even really the native language in a majority of the Iberian peninsula. Of course, you’ve got Portugal where they speak Portuguese. Bien, that’s all fine, but even in Spain itself, “Spanish” is actually a misnomer that offends many people. Here, what we normally call “Spanish” is normally referred to as castellano, which means “Castillian”. This is the language that a vast majority of people in the country speak, and it’s the same language that all those big-ass countries in Latin America speak – Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and of course Puerto Rico (which ain’t a country, dude).

However, here in Spain, there are actually three – count ‘em – three other languages that are considered co-official with Castilian Spanish. In reality, there are many other minority languages in Spain, but only three have sufficient quantities of speakers to merit the consideration of "co-officiality" in their respective provinces. 

Here's a little breakdown:

The three main languages are (with their colors corresponding to the map):

 Galician – gallego in Castilian Spanish and galego in the language itself, this is a language very closely related to Portuguese, and it’s spoken in the northwestern corner of the country, appropriately right above Portugal.

 Basque – vasco or euskara in Castilian Spanish and euskera to the Basques, this is the language spoken by a minority in the Basque Country, and it’s one of the most insane-looking languages on Earth. It has absolutely no linguistic relatives in the entire world, and it’s what some people call an “indigenous language” of Europe. 

 Catalan – catalán to the castellanos and catalá to themselves, they speak this language in Catalonia, on the northeast coast of Spain where Barcelona is. Of all the minority languages, this one has the most native speakers (around 7 million).

 

Many of Spain’s minority languages are learned in schools, and especially with Basque and Galician, they are considered official languages more as a formality and method of asserting the peoples’ autonomy than as a matter of linguistic necessity. Many, many people in Galicia and the Basque Country do not even speak their respective “native” languages – only Castilian Spanish. However, in Catalonia, while many people are either bilingual Spanish/Catalan speakers or monolingual castellanos, many people, as I will soon recount to you, are so proud of their catalá that they would rather speak English to tourists than castellano, and this is due in no small part to the long periods of linguistic imperialism that the Spanish empire (both Francoist and otherwise) has embarked upon throughout its history.

And speaking of the fight for independence in different regions of Spain, I will segue into telling you a little bit about my time in Catalunya and Euskadi, or for the castellanos among us, el País Vasco.