English Speakers: Mayors and town halls (11 November)

“Mayor Talks To British Community”. This shock-horror headline hasn’t appeared, but should have. A mayor going along and talking to a bunch of Brits in a Brit-owned bar. Whatever next?

The mayor in question was Tommy Cifre. Two Tommy Cifres, there are only two Tommy Cifres present among Pollensa town hall’s cadre of councillors, but only one can be mayor, and it isn’t the one from the Mallorcan socialists. The mayor came, he spoke in a sort of English and conquered those who were concerned about the quality of the tap water.

It’s not, however, that you expect him to be perfect in English. Why should he be? Some Mallorcan politicians can apparently do English reasonably well. President Bauzá, or so it has been reported, impressed tour operators and others at a World Travel Market lunch with the “fluency” of his English. One who didn’t, it would seem, was the Mallorcan Joan Mesquida, who is only of course the national government’s tourism secretary and formerly the tourism minister. You can’t have someone able to communicate effectively with representatives from one of Spain’s principal tourism markets; that would just be pointless.

But it doesn’t matter because there are always interpreters and translators. Mesquida may be able to call on such services, but the town halls can’t necessarily. Take Alcúdia, for instance. A while back I received an email asking if I could put into serviceable English the Spanish description of the Roman town. Sure I could, and did, and sent it back with a note asking where I should send my invoice. Not that I seriously anticipated a positive response; and so I was therefore not disappointed to receive no response.

Though Alcúdia town hall now has a superbly scripted English explanation of Pollentia and the monographic museum, is it right that it should get one gratis and as a favour? Seemingly it is, and I hope all the British and English-speaking tourists are grateful. But is it also right that there appears not to be anyone actually employed or contracted (and paid accordingly) who can do English properly? And I do mean properly and not just in a somewhat better than putting a translation through Google fashion.

I don’t expect mayors to speak English. It was good of Cifre to give it a reasonable crack, therefore. In many Mallorcan municipalities, ability in English or another main foreign language would be almost completely unnecessary, but in towns such as Alcúdia and Pollensa – especially Pollensa – then I do expect some decent English; not by the mayor but through the systems of communication that exist. Ten per cent of Pollensa’s resident population is British; the town has an overwhelmingly British tourism market.

The counter-argument is, of course, that all these Brits should damn well learn the lingo, always assuming we know which lingo is being referred to; and in the now Partido Popular-dominated Pollensa town hall it is still stubbornly Catalan. But dream on; most will never learn the native sufficiently well and certainly not sufficiently well to engage in the political process.

A mayor coming to speak to the British community (and it must be said that it was more than just the Brits) is an aspect of this process. A question about tap water may sound trivial in the scheme of things, but in fact it isn’t; town halls do, after all, have legal responsibilities for sanitation.

But more than this, and this is where the whole argument about voting rights for expatriates tends to founder, is the fact that if communication is not understandable, then how can expatriates ever be expected to be anything like fully engaged in the process over and above a small minority that takes an interest regardless of the language? Ahead of the local elections in May, in which expatriates were entitled to vote, where were the communications in relevant languages? Perhaps there were in certain municipalities, but I was unaware of any.

Depending on municipality, Mallorca should display a multi-lingualism that reflects the realities of its population. English and German, probably French and Arabic; these might be considered the essential additional languages. Such reality is coming to be accepted; in Pollensa I know that local parties, and not just Cifre’s PP, are keen to engage with the English-speaking population. So they should.

It’s easy to dismiss expats as being uninterested in local politics. Many are, but many are not, especially at the local level. For a mayor as engaging as Tommy Cifre to come along and engage the Brits – in English – took some balls. He may have ballsed up his English, but so what? He made the effort.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Educational Apartheid: Languages in schools

It’s the day of the “vuelta al cole” next September. By the school gates you wave goodbye as junior enters primary school for the first time. A tear in the eye but joy in the heart, as you will have decided that junior is to be taught in … taught in which language?

From the start of the next school year there will be free parental choice as to the main teaching language at the voluntary nursery level and at primary level, but not at secondary level. This will be in line with the election manifesto of the Partido Popular government. After a fashion. There was meant also to have been free choice in secondary schools. There still will be, but not yet. It’s all a question of money.

Electoral promises are fine, but they do require that the money exists to back them up. The Círculo Balear, the fiercely anti-Catalan and staunchly pro-Castilian organisation, reckons there is the budget, but then it probably would. The government says, however, that the education ministry needs to shed a 35 million euro debt before secondary schools are included. So this – 35 million, if you follow the government’s logic – is what it costs to be able to offer secondary school teaching in the language of parents’ choice.

The budget for education, and the ministry includes culture and university, will be down in 2012 by 55 million euros. With its budget already under strain, it could do without the complication of administering this choice. Because complication is what it is. The education minister, Rafael Bosch, has yet to decide exactly how the choice model will operate, though it would seem that he has in mind a mixture within the same school.

Let’s get this straight, because I am struggling here and you may be able to help. Bosch has, mercifully it would seem, dismissed the possibility of separation into different centres along language lines, but he appears to be saying that there will be separate classes within one school for those being taught in Catalan or Castilian. Have I got this right? Because if I have, it may be good for parental choice but isn’t when it comes to how schools function.

Schools are terrible places when it comes to “being different”. And what you would arrive at with this system is one of apartheid based on language choice. The potential for us and them should not be underestimated.

Moreover, it is an us and them that has the potential to carry on beyond school years. If you want to create a situation of tension between Catalan and Castilian speakers, where better than to foment it than in schools. The notion of splitting along language lines goes against principles of child socialisation that schools should be aiding, not inhibiting.

The Círculo Balear believes that the PP has bowed to pressure from the “anti-democrats of the Catalanist minority”, which it almost certainly hasn’t. Give the PP its own fully free choice and it would probably happily get rid of Catalan from schools, but it is enforcing the provisions of the 1986 act that recognised the right of language choice, but which has since come to mean Catalan taking precedence.

The Círculo, however, may not be right in assuming that an overwhelming majority of parents want Castilian teaching. Back in June it was reported that parents, for the most part, were happy enough for Catalan to prevail. In which case, they’ll be able to choose for it do so.

Apart from a budgetary constraint, the government’s position may have been watered down (albeit perhaps temporarily) by the presence of Sr. Bosch, described as a moderate when he was made education minister.

But this moderation, while it ensures a greater role for Castilian while maintaining Catalan, creates a different problem; two in fact – greater expense plus the linguistic apartheid. The cost of education will have to increase, though not by as much as Sr. Bosch might have wanted, as his plan to add an hour to the school day has had to be held back for now because of lack of money.

Accommodating the two languages, to be fair to the government, is a thankless task. The purely pragmatic approach would be to make Castilian the language and make Catalan a language taught in specific lessons. Where many Catalan-preferring parents would probably have to agree is not with the Círculo Balear’s posturing but with the notion of greater opportunity arising from Castilian.

But pragmatism is too simple when set against culture, history, arguments and tensions. Unfortunately, the government, while it is right in its free-choice policy, might find that it ends up exacerbating these tensions.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Invisible Station

I’m making an apology on behalf of “The Bulletin”. If you had gone along to the ferry terminal in Puerto Alcúdia on Sunday and had expected to find some free watersports activities which you could have enjoyed, you would have been disappointed.

I showed a short news item (from Thursday’s paper) to someone in Alcúdia who, how can I put this, is in the know. The jaw dropped, followed by an expression of understanding as to how the mistake had been made. I understood it as well, as it’s a mistake many people are making.

What happened on Sunday was that there were indeed free watersports activities, but they were nothing to do with the terminal or the commercial port. They were part of a promotion, in the form of a “fiesta”, for the estación náutica. And it is this which caused the mistake and causes other mistakes to be made.

The estación náutica doesn’t exist. It is not bricks, mortar, aluminium, glass or any material. It is a “station” without physical manifestation. It is an un-thing. But the concept, and that is all it is – a concept, begs an interpretation of the physical. Of course it does. A station is a thing not an abstraction; hence a not unreasonable confusion with the terminal.

Since the estación naútica concept was first raised in Alcúdia – at the start of 2009 – I have written about it on a few occasions, and I keep making the same point; it is not understandable. The concept is elusive, it doesn’t translate into anything sensible in English (even watersports centre doesn’t work because this can also imply something physical), and it doesn’t even mean much to the Spanish; they also expect to find an actual centre.

This is not Alcúdia’s fault as such. There are other such stations in Spain and in the Balearics. But the confusion that has existed in Alcúdia with regard to the concept makes you wonder if it hasn’t occurred elsewhere. It must have done, and the same mistakes and misinterpretations are surely being made there.

In Alcúdia, however, to make matters less clear, there is a website for this station. It doesn’t work. For a time at the weekend it didn’t even load. Yet, there it was, proudly mentioned on the publicity, assuming it was seen. There was another website, for the “Fiesta del Mar” which is what occurred on Sunday and which was one of a series arranged by the estación náutica people in their different resorts, but it was in Spanish only. At least it worked though.

As part of this fiesta, there was also an evening event. The “orange fiesta”. Nice poster, shame about the language. Catalan only. I had an exchange on Facebook about this. Catalan is an official language and the fiesta was directed at locals. Well yes, up to a point, but Puerto Alcúdia is a tourist resort and why was the tourist office emailing the poster to those, such as myself, who have a stake in the local tourism industry? Moreover, the estación náutica concept is meant to be a way of attracting more tourists, of the so-called quality type.

But Catalan-only material appears all the time. In all sorts of resorts. The estación náutica concept, the publicity in Catalan are different types of example that raise the same question: what thought process lies behind any of this? Is there one?

I had a chat with a tourist about this. Is it stubbornness that results in the Catalan-only publicity? I don’t know that it is. It’s more likely a case that no one stops to really think who they are meant to be marketing to and what they are marketing. But who makes these decisions?

Alcúdia is a tourist resort with a highly diverse market. It would be impractical to put out material in all the languages necessary. But at a minimum it should be in English and German; more so than even Spanish, where tourists are concerned, as the level of Spanish tourism in Alcúdia is well below that of either the UK or Germany.

The counter argument is that Catalan (and Spanish) are the local languages and so this is how it should be. Sorry, but it isn’t much of an argument. Not if the market doesn’t understand either language.

Poor marketing occurs because the starting-point is the wrong way round. It should be the consumer, the intended market or markets, and it is this fundamental thought process that seems to be lacking.

I don’t know that there should be an apology for the mistake in “The Bulletin”. The apology should be coming from somewhere else. The trouble is you don’t where that somewhere else is.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Lorenzo’s Foil: The Catalan argument

What’s the difference between Jorge and Chicho Lorenzo? Jorge is world MotoGP champion and Chicho isn’t. Jorge was born in Mallorca and Chicho wasn’t. He is originally from Galicia, which may explain why he has been brandishing the sword of honour in defence of the Castilian language and jabbing at the armour of Catalan. Lorenzo’s foil is just a tip of the épée in the Catalan argument, but it has caused an almighty row.

Lorenzo took to Facebook to attack Catalanists. Facebook took the page down when the insults began to fly. The whole incident has caused a storm mainly because of who Lorenzo is: father of Jorge, one of Mallorca’s favourite sons along with Rafael Nadal. Pity the poor Mallorcan sportsman who has to contend with a father or a relative’s opinions. Nadal had to put up with uncle Toni slagging Parisians off by referring to their stupidity.

Lorenzo’s foil, which I suppose you could say was foiled by Facebook removing it, comes at a time when arms are being taken up in the Catalan cause. And what has brought the swords out of the sheaths, in addition to Chicho’s Facebook campaign, has been the announcement by Bauzá’s Partido Popular government that it is preparing a law that will remove the requirement for public officials to be able to speak Catalan.

To the fore in opposing this law change is the teaching union STEI-i. The Catalan argument is at its most pertinent in the education sector; it is here that the real battle exists and was always likely to become hugely controversial, given the PP’s aggressive and negative stance towards Catalan.

The rhetoric surrounding the Catalan argument is extreme. Both sides, pro- and anti-Catalanists, accuse the other of being fascists; Lorenzo has, for example. Fascist may be a strong affront in a nation that once had a fascist dictator, but its use just makes it the more difficult to those who look on and observe the argument to be sympathetic to either side. There is something decidedly puerile about the fascist insult.

Bauzá, to continue the connection to the good old days of fascism, is being characterised as being like Franco. Both before and after the May elections, I referred to concerns that a PP administration under Bauzá would create social tensions because of its apparent anti-Catalanism, but to compare Bauzá with El Caudillo is going too far.

Nevertheless, these tensions were always going to come to the surface, and the heat of the rhetoric is being cranked up with Bauzá also being accused of attempting “cultural genocide” (Lorenzo has made the same accusation in the other direction).

The Catalan argument isn’t as simple as just being either for or against Catalan or Castilian as the dominant language. If it were this simple, then it would be easier to comprehend. But language isn’t the main issue.

The fact that Bauzá and the PP (and Chicho Lorenzo, come to that), while favouring Castilian over Catalan, also defend the use of the Catalan dialects of the Balearics adds complexity to what is more an issue of nationhood: Spain as a nation and Catalonia as a wannabe nation. What has been referred to as the “Catalan imposition”, the requirement for speaking Catalan in the public sector, and the one the PP would scrap, is wrapped up in the wider context of Catalonia’s ambitions to be a nation and for there to be a union of Catalan lands, of which the Balearics would be one.

Language equals culture and culture equals language; the two go hand in hand. The genocide charge being levelled at Bauzá is fallacious in the sense that he has no problem with the use of Catalan dialects, and these dialects could be said to be more representative of local cultures than pure Catalan.

But dialects are spoken by minorities, they are not the tongues of nations. To approve of them is to approve of diversity, not of nationalist pretensions. It is approval that can be considered as being tacitly designed to undermine such pretensions and in accord with attitudes of the Partido Popular nationally: those of being equivocal towards regionalism, be it that of the Balearics, Catalonia or anywhere, and of being fierce defenders of the Spanish nation, the whole of the Spanish nation, Catalonia and Catalan speakers included.

The swords are being drawn. There will be plenty more Chicho Lorenzos and plenty more Facebook campaigns and arguments, as there will be campaigns and arguments elsewhere. The worry is that the puerile use of the fascist insults gets more serious and that there is more than just a metaphorical brandishing of foils.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The State We’re In: Language

Should Mallorcan businesses get it right? Get English right? It was once put to me that it didn’t matter and that mangled English was just all part of the charm. Possibly so, but possibly it is also a case of being lazy or of mistake reinforcing mistake.

There are any number of English speakers knocking around who might help a restaurant, a shop, an event, an estate agency from making a language gaffe. Are any ever asked to give a menu, some instructions, a sign the once-over, just to be sure? Some are, but there are plenty of businesses who still manage to mangle English. All part of the charm perhaps, but there is charm and there is being professional.

Recently, we had the priceless “rules” set out by the Pollensa Music Festival, under which, among other things, it was not allowed “to enter any type of container nor devices of telephony”. We know what they were getting at, but a little bit of attention might have eliminated the potential for confusion or indeed hilarity.

There have been some wonderful mistakes that I have encountered over the years. A personal favourite remains the “flesh on the tenterhooks” of a grill restaurant. The owner said that the printers who had been responsible for the translation had insisted that they could do the English correctly. Which may be part of the problem; that of non-native speakers who fall into the language trap.

“Flesh on the tenterhooks” was, one presumed, meant to be something along the lines of tender meat, but it came out as sounding like an act of torture by the Inquisition. Tenterhooks, for the record, have nothing to do with cooking and everything to do with stretching cloth.

Making a complete balls-up has arguably been made more likely thanks to the Google translator and other machine translation systems. And when it comes to idioms and slang terms, of which there are an awful lot in English, such systems are almost completely useless.

Some mistakes, however, just keep on getting repeated. And a prime example is the “state agency”; not an agency of the state, but an estate agency. You can find many states that appear to be being traded by state agencies which should in fact be estate agencies.

A new sign appeared at one estate agency the other day, replete with the same old mistake. But why does it keep being made? Has no one ever pointed the mistake out? My guess is that “state” is so common that it is thought to be correct, not least by signmakers who will insist that it is correct as they have been in this state for years.

Proper names can also be problematic. In certain cases, they always have been. In Puerto Alcúdia, the recent fire at an apartment block caused a bit of a problem as to how it should be reported. The apartments have always lacked one letter. Who originally took the “p” out of the Mississipi (sic)? The same person possibly who didn’t see the “c” in the Picadilly (sic) bar. Has anyone ever noticed the missing “n” that means that the Britania (sic) bar doesn’t rule the waves? (The missing “p” might be put down to being Spanish, but then in Spanish there would be a missing “s” as well – twice over; Picadilly and Britania are Spanish, but their markets have been British.)

Not that these probably matter. Test your average Brit tourist and, nine times out of ten, he wouldn’t know how to spell them anyway. And it’s certainly not as though the language trap doesn’t work in reverse or that borrowing from Spanish doesn’t come into play.

Pop along to your nearest state agency, or preferably estate agency, and you might find a property that takes your fancy. However, the state agent tells you that it is in need of reform. Has it been a naughty boy? Is it to have its law changed? The widespread use of reform to mean altering a building in some way isn’t, strictly speaking, correct usage. Incorrect or not, it is a good example of a word whose meaning has been borrowed from Spanish that, because of its generality, works rather better than correct English alternatives.

And the property needing reform might well be in an urbanisation, another specific adaptation from the Spanish to mean an estate, or should it be a state? Once reformed, the property may well become “perfect”, states of perfection being more widely expressed by “perfecto” Spaniards and therefore also now by English-speaking adopters.

To answer my initial question though. Tell me. Should they get it right? Go on, tell me. I command you. The abrupt, somewhat impolite use of this imperative is something else that has passed from Spanish. “Digame”. Tell me.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Language Rules: Don’t enter containers!

“All concerts will start punctually at 22:00 hours.”

So far not so bad. Bit of a problem with “22:00 hours” and the rather direct tone, which makes it sound like a police report, but then this is all part of the “rules”, as will become evident.

“The entry will only be allowed in their precinct in the rest among the pieces of the program, if there is some.”

Erm, now things get a tad awkward. We have a definite article “the entry” where a definite article is not required. We also have a “program” that can normally only be a “program” if it is American or a piece of software. We also have a totally meaningless sentence. If there is some what, exactly?

“The persons foreign to the organization can not make pictures, nor filming or enregistramens.”

Ok, so the persons are presumably in fact people, as, and again a bit like police reports, persons are not generally the correct plural form. And who are these persons? They’re foreigners. Is this right? From abroad. Tourists perhaps. Whoever they are, they “can not” where normally they “cannot” take pictures and then … then we get a bit lost. The foreigners cannot make “enregistramens”. Let me help out. It is in fact Catalan for recordings.

“It is not allowed to smoke in the inside of the courtyard of the Cloister, nor the use of ranges or similar. It is not allowed either to enter any type of container nor devices of telephony.”

Right, so I think we get the bit about not smoking, but the use of these ranges or indeed similar. Where is this all going? And then it becomes a guessing game. What containers are there in the Cloister (I assume we are talking about the Cloister)? One is not, for example, allowed to enter a rubbish container or a skip. Is this what is meant? Entering a device of telephony would be some feat. Don’t know about you, but I have never tried to physically get inside a mobile phone.

“The entry/ticket of those persons who use a non appropriate wardrobe in relation/relationship to/in the act will not be allowed.”

Hmm. So someone or some persons come along with a wardrobe that is, oh I don’t know, is it from IKEA perhaps? If it were from the grand El Corte Inglés department store would this be appropriate? The police report seems to have returned as well. Persons or persons unknown in a non appropriate (should of course be inappropriate) wardrobe and being caught in the act. Fine, it’s becoming clearer. If you’re caught in the act with your inappropriate wardrobe, then you are not allowed. Allowed to do what? Or allowed in maybe? Yep, I think it’s allowed in.

Look, I could go on with all of this, but I imagine you have got the drift by now. This mangling of the English language comes from the ominously presented “General Rules” for the Pollensa Music Festival. Actually getting to these rules is a challenge in itself. Go to the website for the festival and the home page is that from 2010, so you might be inclined to give up. But if you click English, you come to 2011 and eventually to the rules.

There are several points about all this. One is that the publicity is still so poor that they haven’t got round to changing the home page. The second is the sheer pomposity of some of these “rules”, assuming you can understand them. They just go to reinforce what I have said about the limited appeal of the festival. They are designed to deter not to attract. And thirdly, there is of course the fact that the English is total gobbledegook.

This is an international event. Allegedly. English is the usual international language. Why on earth can’t they find someone – from Britain or another English-speaking country, of whom there are many knocking around Pollensa – to spend a few minutes translating the Klingon that has been provided into English? Probably because they might have to pay someone, and they haven’t got any money. It is, however, a dreadful indictment. You can understand a restaurant getting its English cocked up (actually you can’t understand, because they could also get a native-speaker to give it the once-over), but this is a bloody music festival. Prestigious, so they say. The most prestigious in Mallorca. They’re having a laugh.

You despair, you really do despair.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Manners Maketh Mate

The worst aspect of David Cameron’s calm down, dear was that it showed, once again, that politicians are best not trying to be funny. Unless they are plainly mad and have a gift for the comedic, a la Boris, they should zip attempts at gags. Cameron has come across as a buffoon; Eton boy tries to be populist by quoting an irascible old buffer and fails miserably.

It was the use of “dear” that exercised the indignation of those to the left and of a strident feminist persuasion. The dear salutation is as patronising as always prefixing “feminist” with strident or ardent. A feminist is never anything else.

I can sympathise, though. “Dear” or “love” is an expression of familiarity with an archaic quality that sounds out of place in a house of respect. It can sound out of place elsewhere and so can other familiarities of address.

Take “mate” for example. I mate, you mate (assuming you’re a bloke), we all mate together. Well actually, I do and I don’t mate. If someone is a mate, then I probably do. Otherwise, I tend only to mate if I am being condescending. Yet mate has become a sort of lingua franca of address. Everyone is a mate, especially in Mallorca and Mallorca’s Brit bars.

Lingua franca isn’t strictly accurate. Mate is more lingua antipodeana. Ricky Ponting and the inhabitants of Ramsay Street have much to answer for. They have mated spoken English and, in the process, have created an entire mode of intonation; what Rory McGrath memorably dubbed as the “moronic interrogative”, the upward inflection of Neighbours-speak.

Ok, mate goes back much further, but it has now assumed a position of common expression that was once reserved for something less familiar, such as “sir”. So used am I, in daily Mallorcan routine, to being mated that I was once hugely taken aback when two youthful gentlemen of bellydom and their respective Kylies sidled up to me and one enquired as to the whereabouts of the nearest bank. It wasn’t the question that threw me but the fact that he said, “Excuse me, sir”. I suppose he could have been taking the piss, and in case he had been I did somewhat relish being able to point to the building next to which we were standing. A CAM bank.

And mate is not solely an expression for those who have passed into adolescence or adulthood. In one particular bar, which for the sake of bringing down the wrath of the work inspectorate I shall not name, a child was once let loose on serving. “What would you like, mate?” he enquired, all ten years of him.

This familiarity might be said to be indicative of a loosening of the formality of expression. To some extent, it is not unwelcome, and other languages have similarly become less rigid. Once upon a time, the hugely formal Spanish were that stiff that a child might be expected to refer to papa as “usted” and not with the familiar “tú”.

When I first arrived in Mallorca, my gestor addressed me by my surname, which was very nice of him, but as I was calling him by his first name, it seemed an inequitable relationship, while I explained to him that it was now pretty uncommon to do the Mister etc. routine. Even the Germans have started to relax, the younger generation having come to recognise quite how absurd it is to have so-called “duzen” parties at which people who might have known each other for years get together to break the ice of “Sie” and replace it with “du”.

Though mate is, for me, a matter of selectivity, I can appreciate its prevalence. Of course I can. It may not be my preferred expression of address, but for others it is. The owner (Jamie) of a favoured breakfasting hole (Foxes) mates all the time and has to endure my referring to him as “landlord”. And I’m not being holier than thou. I have my own term, one which, in terms of locating it linguistically, probably comes from slightly west of Walthamstow. I use it for women and it is a hybrid of “doll” and “darling” that comes out as though I were ordering something off an Indian restaurant menu. “Dal”.

So, though I personally would eschew a Cameron-esque “dear” and might be a reluctant mater, I am not averse to the use of the familiar. Manners might require that we do not mate but sir, but now manners maketh mates and not (gentle)men.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken?: Mallorca’s education

“The idea is to make a break with permanent change.” So spoke the president of something called the Economy Circle, a high-powered organisation of businesspeople and professionals, which, together with various other bodies such as the colleges of lawyers and architects, the chamber of commerce and parents’ associations, has formed a united front to present proposals to tackle the failing public education system in Mallorca and the Balearics.

It wouldn’t be a break with change as these groups would like some more, but they would hope that it might be a definitive change that can restore some credibility to a system which makes the Balearics one of the worst-performing regions of Spain and which also makes the islands’ schools return results that are, by some distance, below those of other countries.

Among the proposals being advanced are regular assessment of teachers, greater professionalism of both headmasters and teachers, the scope for greater autonomy in decision-making by heads and improvements in standards of English. One of the key targets is to reduce the early drop-out rate that currently stands at 40% of pupils by the age of 17. The Economy Circle and its allies insist that defects within the educational system have to be addressed, those which have been too easily blamed on factors such as tourism and immigration. Both these factors do play a part, but it is probably right to assert that they have been used to disguise deficiencies.

Permanent change in education is something of a motto for politicians who constantly wish to interfere. The same can be said of England (and Wales) as it can of Mallorca. More so, you would think. There was a period, though, after the Second World War, when the English tripartite educational system was left much to its own devices; some would argue that its status quo should never have been played around with. It was not a perfect system, maybe there is no such thing, but the first major change, the widespread introduction of comprehensives by the start of the 1970s, ended a generation of calm and unleashed all that followed and which continues to follow – permanent change.

In England though, there was no debate as to which language should be used. The great Catalan-Castilian divide in local education is about to be given another major airing, the Partido Popular seemingly intent on giving Catalan the heave-ho if it wins power at the spring elections, and the main teaching union pleading with the PP not to make the divide an issue of political confrontation. It was also brought further into the open by “protests” last week at 18 educational establishments across Mallorca. Led by teachers at the secondary school in Inca, appalled by the PP’s stance, this amounted to declarations in favour of Catalan by pupils and teachers alike.

The change envisaged by the PP (or by its leader at any rate), that of primacy for Castilian with Catalan removed from the agenda, has to be seen in the context of a a report from the local schools’ inspectorate. This indicates greater what is referred to as “inmersión” of Catalan, i.e. it dominates as the language of teaching school by school. It also dominates as the teaching language across the island. But the situation is anything but straightforward.

The use of Catalan or Castilian (and indeed English) varies. At primary level, Castilian has in fact increased somewhat over the past 12 months. At secondary level, there is a geographical variance. Catalan is less the language of “inmersión” in Palma than it is in the rest of Mallorca. To add to this, there is the difference between public and private education. Catalan is almost universally the dominant language in the island’s public nursery schools, but in private schools it is much less so, even if here it has also enjoyed an increase.

What you have, therefore, is a confused picture. The abandonment of Catalan might remove this confusion, but to argue that it would be a helpful change to the island’s educational system would be open to serious question. To also argue that it is the Catalan-Castilian divide which is at the root of the problems of the educational system would also be open to question. It may well contribute to the problems, but the Economy Circle and the other bodies do not appear to dwell on it.

From this we may well conclude that, like the immigration argument, the language debate in education clouds the real issues, those of teaching standards and professionalism as well as, perhaps most importantly, pupil motivation, to which can be added parental attitudes. Unfortunately, the politics of the election will cloud the issues ever more by highlighting the language debate. The permanent debate.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

United We Speak: Catalan or Mallorquín?

When is a language a dialect, and when is a dialect a language? Opinion as to the distinction between the two is one on which you will find a lack of unanimity. Linguists themselves can’t agree.

If you are inclined to do so, you can go back far enough with most “languages” and argue that they are in fact dialects. It all depends where you want to start. But for current-day purposes, there are languages which are undeniably languages, one of them being Catalan. Or is it? A definition of a language is that it should be that of a “state”. You may have noticed that there is no Catalan “state”.

Alternatively, a language is a language if there exists a “standard” form, which is the case with Catalan. Except, of course, that there are variants. Nevertheless, the language has its own “code” in that dictionaries determine the standard form. The fact of there being variants does not negate a claim to being a language. Were it to, then English would fail the test. In the case of English, standard codes of language as set out by dictionaries, most obviously the Oxford English Dictionary, are important as there is no body which arbitrates on what is or isn’t standard English, as is the case with Spanish (Castilian) or French.

The problem with these variants, however, is the vagueness as to the language-dialect distinction. Let’s take Mallorquín. Is it a language? There is no Mallorcan state and there isn’t a specific language code, or at least as far as I am aware. Where it appears, in dictionary form, is in the work of Antoni Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll who included Balearic languages (or are they dialects) in an all-embracing Catalan dictionary.

Greater unanimity of opinion surrounds the political dimension as to whether a language is a language or a dialect. Think what you will of the politicisation of the language debate in Mallorca, but to deny the importance of politics would be to completely fail to understand the debate, and it is a debate that has been sparked into ever more controversial life by the leader of the Partido Popular (PP), José Ramón Bauzá, who has said he will reform the so-called law on linguistic normalisation if his party wins power in May next year. This would have the effect of relegating Catalan in favour of Castilian and the languages of the individual islands.

What Bauzá argues is that there is no such thing as a “unity of Catalan”. He seems to believe that Mallorquín and the other languages of the Balearics are that – languages, and not therefore dialects of Catalan. Why does he think this? The reasoning is political. If Mallorquín is distinct, then so is Mallorca from Catalonia. The political motive lies with his alliance with the Spanish state and not the aspirations of a Catalan state, language and all.

Bauzá has attempted to prove linguistically that Mallorquín is not a dialect by mentioning certain Catalan words that are not used in Mallorca or the Balearics. He has come unstuck, his theory being disproved by teachers at the institute in Inca from where a protest of schools in Mallorca is being planned against him. Moreover, even if they weren’t used, this wouldn’t prove anything. Dialects do tend to change words. Indeed Bauzá’s whole linguistic argument is preposterous. The Catalan lineage from the time of the conquest of the thirteenth century is indisputable, except by a few who claim that a brand of Catalan was imported directly from southern France. Mallorquín has fundamental differences to Catalan, such as with the definite articles “es” and “sa” (and even these aren’t used in all instances), but the differences are not so great as to suggest some sort of separate development or major divergence that might qualify it as a distinct language.

Town halls in Mallorca have responded to Bauzá by approving Catalan as Mallorca’s “own language”. Manacor has just followed the likes of Sa Pobla, Pollensa and Inca in doing so. Why should they do this? Apart from the political aspect, the town halls are their own local repositories of culture, and language is indivisible from culture. In Manacor, there is an additional political flavour. The mayor is Antoni Pastor, a member of the PP who does not see eye to eye with Bauzá.

But what makes this all the more curious is that claims for a Mallorquín language are therefore being denied by those who oppose Bauzá, be they from his own party or from the left of the political spectrum. So Mallorquín is a dialect, and to say it isn’t would be to deny the supremacy of Catalan. It is a somewhat bizarre argument when you consider nationalist pretensions to the existence of a Mallorquín language, though perhaps it isn’t so bizarre when you consider that in a different Catalan-speaking part of Spain, Valencia, the far-right has supported the notion of a separate language to the extent of calling for linguistic secession from Catalan.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter whether you call Mallorquín a dialect or a language. What does matter is where you stand on the issue politically. And that, it would appear, is all that matters.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Dubbed: Television and language

Come on now, admit it. How often do you ever watch a television programme in Spanish? If you don’t live in Mallorca or Spain, you’re forgiven, but if you do … . There is one very good reason for not watching Spanish telly, apart from the language issue, and this is that, for the most part, it is unrelenting garbage. Better that you stick to “X Factor” or “I’m A Celebrity”; altogether more culturally enriching.

I’m not going to be holier than thou. I don’t watch Spanish telly much. I used to, before I realised just how bad it was. What limited diet I have is largely confined to football. I should make more of an effort as there are some gems of the bizarre, such as the channel which seems to be devoted to a woman reading Tarot cards or human towers competitions replete with slow-mo action replays of a small child slipping and crashing onto the bodies below.

Foreign programmes are usually always dubbed, and there are an awful lot of them. Yes, you can view some in the original language as well, but for the Spaniard the voiceover (VO) is preferable. The Germans do it as well to films and telly programmes. It is so ridiculous that I once saw an interview with the boy who was the German “Harry Potter” and who had become a star in his own right. In Spanish I have watched “The Shawshank Redemption” with a Morgan Freeman who probably comes from Madrid and who almost certainly isn’t black.

Dubbing, as opposed to showing programmes in the original language (almost always, therefore, English) with subtitles, may lead to the madness of an actor’s personality being stripped away by a VO artist, but it can also have a serious aspect, in that it inhibits the learning of English.

However, the experience in Germany is quite telling. Though German TV dubs, the standard of English in Germany is high, far higher than it is in Mallorca or Spain. Television does have a role to play in teaching English, and no more so than in the Netherlands where, together with an educational system which promotes English from an early age, the watching of shows in English has been established practice for many years, given that the BBC has long been available. But television can’t overcome an instinctive problem, one to do with the sounds of language.

There is an article by Nick Lyne about Spanish television, dubbing and language acquisition on the qorreo.com website. It’s interesting, but what is even more interesting is a comment about the article. This makes the point that the Spanish language has a “particularly not-rich set of sounds in its register”. This means that it can be difficult to pronounce, speak and therefore learn other languages, such as English.

The contrast is made with, for example, Dutch which is a much richer language in terms of sounds. I would guess that the same applies to German. The greater the range of sounds in a native tongue, the easier it is to acquire other languages; or so the theory seems to go. Without getting too technical, Spanish has comparatively few spoken sounds compared with English. A linguist at the Spanish equivalent of the Open University has made the point that Spanish pronunciation of English is poor because the greater number of English sounds are reduced to the few of Spanish. (Incidentally, Catalan has a few more sounds than Spanish which should, in theory, make things easier.)

The imbalance in sound recognition has major implications for the teaching of English in schools. The same linguist has said that no one seems to be bothering to make the acquisition of new sounds a key element of English. The extension of English use in teaching in Spanish and Mallorcan schools is all well and good, but how good are the teachers themselves at speaking it correctly? Despite the number of years of English instruction, the professor of language psychology at the University of Navarra is concerned that pupils leave school still not knowing how to speak English.

Earlier this year, a survey of students at the university in Palma discovered that 68% admitted to not understanding English. It may not be essential for all of them in their future careers that they do, but given the importance of English in international business and in local tourism the deficiency is somewhat startling. By a remarkable coincidence, a survey of foreign language use by students and adults in different European countries by the Eurostat research organisation at the European Commission revealed that 68% of secondary school pupils in Spain learn one foreign language – English. Learn, but can they use?

The same Eurostat survey placed Spain in the bottom three of countries in which adults speak no foreign language. And no, the UK was not behind Spain; in fact the UK does pretty well in this respect.

But to return to television. Much recent debate surrounding language and whether English originals should be shown on TV was kicked off by Fox’s decision to broadcast “House” in English with subtitles. So, you’ll be able to watch it in English if you want to. The question is: will the Spanish?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.