Alphabet Soup: Surnames and spelling

Revolution. Reform. Not quite. A bit of a change more like. Change which, to the British, will seem distinctly peculiar.

The “revolution” applies to Spanish surnames; the reform to some language use. That there are bodies which adjudicate on such matters, form laws or conventions to cover them might strike you as somewhat bizarre. Not so to the Spanish, however. Such as in the case of names.

The Spanish find the British concept of the “middle” name, i.e. the second, third or fourth Christian name, distinctly odd, notwithstanding the existence of a Juan Antonio here or a José Maria there. But these aren’t examples of middle names, as they’re first names, both of them. Use your British-given middle name in official documents and you will, in all likelihood, be called by it, as in Señor or Señora (Middle Name). If you are a woman and your middle name is Joan, in Mallorca you will be addressed as and pronounced as Senyora (as in the Catalan) Joanne. A man’s name dressed up as a woman’s. It does get dreadfully confusing.

Personally, I find it quite amusing. My middle name, Colin, crops up on all sorts of things. Medical card, for example. I am, where a receptionist, nurse or doctor is concerned, “Señor Colin”. Not that I’m that bothered. Quite the opposite. It’s just one letter away from Colon, which thus makes me – nearly – a descendant of Columbus. Possibly. They’ve not asked me for my DNA yet though in the attempt to establish that the old Italian came from Felanitx.

The revolution in surnames, coming on the back of greater acceptance of “new” Christian names, which has seen Kevins (for example) becoming more common, as well as Mohameds, will be one by which the paternal surname will not automatically be the first surname. First surname, you ask? Yes, first surname. There are always two, unless there are more. But the more is usually only because of some long, drawn-out, pompously aristocratic styling, especially if the surname isn’t particularly distinguished.

The current norm, under birth registration laws, is for the father’s surname to come first, the mother’s second. Which means their first surnames, because they of course have two. Maybe. But you can swap them around, if you want, just to add to the confusion. And you can also choose to be known by your second surname, if you so wish. President Zapatero is an example. His first surname is in fact Rodríguez, but Zapatero is less common. He wishes to stand out from the Rodríguez crowd, even if he has acquired a further surname – Bean. Picasso was another who went maternal. He was paternally a Ruiz.

Under the new law, the alphabet rule will apply. Picasso would have been Picasso after all. But not if the parents decide otherwise. As ever, there will be an exception to the Raúl. Apparently this will all be more equal, says the ruling PSOE socialist party, not that everyone is in favour. Let the alphabet decide and those surnames towards the end of the alphabetic chain will slowly die out. No more Zapateros, for example.

Oh, and by the way, if you were thinking of becoming a Spanish citizen, you would have to find a second surname, assuming you didn’t already have one. That’s the rule, and it often leads to double-barrelled repetition. Imagine it. Potato Head is transferred to Real Madrid and decides to become Spanish. Two Wayne Rooneys. There are only two Wayne Rooneys. Wayne Rooney Rooney.

While the politicians have been looking to establish a new order in surnames, the Real Academia Española, which sets out rules for language, has been hard at work preparing its new official spelling publication. It will be out in time for Christmas. Get your orders in now! It’s not, says the co-ordinator Gutiérrez Ordónez (first name Salvador, or is it Salvador Gutiérrez?), revolutionary or a reform. But it will make things simpler. Allegedly.

Among the changes are those to the alphabet. If you weren’t aware, “ch” and “ll” are parts of the alphabet. Not any longer, according to the new “Ortografía”. Moreover, “i griega”, which is a considerable mouthful for “y”, will become obsolete and hereafter be merely “ye”. And there will be all sorts of other useful spellings for you to learn and digest. Planning a trip to Qatar, for example? Well, you can still plan the trip, but you will be going to Catar. Or maybe you want to go there four or five times. Hitherto, had you wished to do so, you would have written “or” as “o” with an accent – “ó”. Why? To avoid confusion of course with the or “o” without an accent, which is how it is normally spelt, when you are creating emphasis between one number or another. But no more. The accent is to be dispensed with. Far less confusing. Just like the order of surnames of which there are only two – ó three ó four.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

21st Century Schizoid Man: Multiculturalism

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pronounced. Multiculturalism in Germany isn’t working. It’s a big step for a leading German politician to take in a country where there is understandable reticence to engage in discourse that smacks, even vaguely, of racism and where there exists a worrying underground of neo-Nazism.

German multiculturalism can be traced back to the early ’60s and the system of the “Gastarbeiter”, primarily Turkish workers but also those from other countries, which included Spain. The Turks were the most obvious though.

It is the start of the 1970s. A curious ceremony is taking place, and I watch as Turkish Gastarbeiter board a train in Stuttgart, one or two beaten-up suitcases in hand. They are heading back to Turkey. The Gastarbeiter were meant to be temporary. Many did return, but by no means all.

Wind forward to today, and the situation in Germany is like other countries: diasporas, some members of which assimilate, some of which do not. Even the Turks of Germany who have become “German” are probably among those who regularly vote in sufficient numbers to give Turkey “douze points” from a German Eurovision audience. German multiculturalism, to use the word of Frau Merkel, has “failed”.

Multiculturalism, either through intent or accident, is an idealistic state. It can function, insofar as diversity and the implicit non-integration of the concept can be said to function, so long as something doesn’t come along to ensure that it doesn’t. Tensions arise not directly through the existence of multiple cultures but through the cumulation of factors which makes their existence less than tolerable.

21st century schizoid man, he of indigenous origin, has been turned paranoid through such factors – economic dysfunction, terrorism, Islamophobia, for example – and by having to contend with the way they compete with his identity. He would rather, in disturbingly large numbers, even in countries with traditional tolerance like Sweden and the Netherlands, rid himself of the cultures. Or if they stay, they should conform to his monoculture. Speak the language. Eat sauerkraut or, more of a challenge for some, pork wurst. Put a towel out on the sun-lounger at six in the morning.

Frau Merkel believes that immigrants should make greater efforts at integrating. By learning the language, for instance. Hers is hardly an original view. It is one that has been expressed in Britain and in Spain. The leader of the Partido Popular, Mariano Rajoy, is one who has made such a call.

Immigration in Mallorca is regularly an issue which appears at the top of the list of social concerns as discovered through polls. In March, a poll found that seven out of ten Balearic islanders believed that there were too many immigrants. Press reports merely serve to reinforce a perception of immigrant criminality. Moroccan drug dealers in Sa Pobla. Latin American gangs in Palma. Nigerian prostitutes in Magalluf. Senegalese lookies all over the place. A judge once sentenced a Senegalese gentleman to learn the language.

Immigration goes hand in hand with multiculturalism and therefore with a lack of integration. Yet we are selective with what we mean by multiculturalism, or rather to whom it applies. The British in Mallorca are no less representative of one of the island’s multiple cultures than Moroccans. But the British are seen, and see themselves, as excluded from this definition. They are part of the illusory and faintly absurd notion of a “European culture”. I am a European. Define and discuss. They are nothing of the sort. Anglo-Saxonism is alien to Mallorca, as are the English language, “Coronation Street” and the full English. As with those from other cultures, cultural separatism and non-integration are a breeze when you can switch on Sky or pick up a copy of the “Mail”.

Multiculturalism doesn’t work. Or rather, it works very well in a free-market way. You can cherry pick from the “new” culture if you so wish, while not having to “go native”. Which is how most like it. And why shouldn’t they? What’s the point of learning the language? Only so you can make sense of watching the telly. Therefore, there is no point when you can tune in to Ant and Dec.

Our meaning of multiculturalism is a pejorative for anything that veers too far from the cultural norm, and in Mallorca this norm has come to be broadly interpreted, as it is in the UK and in Germany. This norm isn’t simply a question of learning the language, most certainly not. It’s what falls outside of the norm that defines the anyone-but-me multicultural, with all the baggage of issues such as colour, religion and ethnicity that it brings. This broad interpretation excludes the British in Mallorca from the multicultural category, but lumps them into an alternative one – that of mini-cultural. Different but non-threatening. Mini-cultural maybe, but before we cast too many stones in the direction of the body with its head poking out of the sand of multiculturalism, we might bear in mind that we are all multiculturalists now.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Party Games: Bauzà’s lapse

The Partido Popular in the Balearics are making a video game/puppet version of themselves. It features the party’s leader, José Ramón Bauzà, pronounced Bowser. His number two is Calvia’s mayor Carlos Delgado, Charles Thin, represented by the old Goons’ character – Hercules Grytpype-Thynne, to whom he bears a not totally thin resemblance.

It’s a shame that Bowser is not a chameleon, but the Super Mario turtle – PP Bowser-style – combines in animated villainy with Grytpype-Thynne to make for a real hoot of an educational tool, one for the pupils of the Balearics. The big question is in which language they should be speaking. The preference should be Castilian. But this is too simple. There are also Catalan, Mallorquín, Menorquín, Ibicenco and Formenterense to take into account. The game does get somewhat complicated.

The solution is to make the animation a battle between Bowser and Grytpype, suitably cast as the Castilian-speaking villains, against hordes of Marios or Neddie Seagoons mouthing off in Catalan or versions thereof. But there’s a sub-plot, because we can’t be too sure about Bowser, as he’s prone to turn turtle. One day he says he’s going to kick Catalan into touch, and the next day he says that he hadn’t meant to say that, it was all the result of a “lapse” he had suffered during an early-morning radio interview.

Bowser has pumped out a whole load of oil onto the troubled waters of local language politics. He had done so by suggesting that, were he to become regional president next year, he would get rid of the law of 1986 which had granted Catalan dual-official status, a result of which would be to promote Castilian, together with the local languages, as the tongues of learning in schools – the so-called free selection, but without Catalan. He had done so, and then said he hadn’t meant it, having caused a hell of a stink in the process.

There is a fair old back story to all this.

Bauzà and Delgado were rivals for the leadership of the PP in March, the former winning quite comfortably. Before the leadership election took place, Delgado had some pretty harsh words for his rival, accusing him of having no credibility when it came to the language issue and of being opposed to free selection of language.

Delgado, on the other hand, is an advocate of free selection. He is unashamedly pro-Castilian and anti-Catalan, stating that Castilian is his “mother tongue”.

But since the leadership election, things have moved on. Firstly, Bauzà created something of a stir by making Delgado his number two, which didn’t go down a storm with the party’s moderate wing. Secondly, he managed to alienate this moderate wing by being perceived as being too close to the party’s national leader Mariano Rajoy; the insinuations are that he is something of a stooge. Thirdly, he increased this alienation by getting ever closer to Delgado, who is to the right of the party. So much so that, by the end of September, he was being branded a Delgado “clone” and, in an “Ultima Hora” blog, was said to have “adopted the anti-Catalan thesis” of Delgado.

It is against this background, therefore, that Bauzà did the radio interview, one in which he seemed to be following the Delgado line. The impression is of someone prone to vacillation and to misjudgment, which he quickly tried to rectify by claiming a lapse that allowed him to then try and distance himself from Delgado. But if he is capable of one lapse, then what other ones might he have? The words of Delgado regarding his credibility will be haunting him.

Bauzà might hope that when the elections for the regional presidency take place next spring, everyone will have forgotten about all this. It’s most unlikely. Though whether he has dented his chances are questionable. The PP will probably still win, but what confidence might there be in a president who seems far from sure-footed?

He should stick to video games. Bowser’s the one who always steals the game show. And he should be wary of Delgado. Grytpype-Thynne always managed to put one over on the fall-guy.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Filthy English – Standards of English in Mallorca

Harking back to that report into standards of English among students at Palma’s university, there was a comment piece in yesterday’s “Diario” which drew attention to the apparent contradictions in the report. These concerned the fact that, for example, two-thirds of students said they did not understand English, yet 50% spoke it.

Standards of English in Mallorca are not high. They should be higher: not to give British residents even more of an excuse not to learn Spanish or Catalan, but to be pragmatic in recognising the importance of the language where tourism is concerned. Pragmatism. A word that crops up time and time again whenever language is discussed, yet one widely ignored by the Mallorcans. Whereas the non-pragmatism of the Castilian versus Catalan debate is granted much attention and emotion, insufficient attention has been given to the learning of international languages, especially English. It is an historical failing, one of inadequate education, and one that is only now being given anything like the attention demanded.

However, for all that English is not as good as might be hoped, one should spare a thought for the locals, confronted by English in all its different manifestations – regional accents, idioms, slang, changing usage and the simply wrong. Pity the poor receptionist or waiter who has to decipher Geordie, Scouse, Brummie, Cockney, Ooh-Arr, the English of the Northern Irish, Southern Irish, Scots, Welsh, to say nothing of mangled English by other nationalities. If you can do Spanish, then try making sense of different accents or dialects. Ever had to listen to Argentinians? Impossible. Despite the apparent contradictions referred to above, it is generally the case that one can speak a language but have difficulty understanding it when spoken to. Take another language – German. If you do this, you may find it easy to understand someone who speaks “hochdeutsch”, only to then try and fathom out a Franconian dialect replete with an accent that sounds as though the speaker has an entire potato field stuffed into his gob – rather like many Mallorcans.

No-one much speaks English any longer. Not English as in the Queen’s English or a long-past BBC English. They speak street English, football English, soap English, estuary English. They apply the infinite variables of internationalised English, of English in all its flexibility. They speak mingin’ English, innit, English that’s so not English – alrahht. They speak a corrupt English, a filthy English of a low-lifed anti-vocabulary.

And it is not just spoken English. In the same report into standards, 68% of students said that they could read English. The question is, what sort? Take newspapers, the broadsheets for instance. Generally speaking – as it were – these will contain “high” English. It’s the same with Spanish newspapers, the quality end at any rate. In their pages, one is likely to encounter a formal style of Spanish, one quite removed from much everyday usage and typified by a preponderance of the different subjunctive forms that exist in Spanish. No-one actually speaks like that, or very few do.

Then there are other newspapers and other forms of English. A couple of days ago, along with Graeme and Aimee from “Talk Of The North” and auntie Susan, I was trying to make sense of “Lashlish”, the unique style adopted by a certain columnist in “The Bulletin”. The paper does, I seem to recall, get used in English teaching locally. We come back to those receptionists or waiters, those who may be presented with:
“True or false? – In the daily sent “Majorca Daily Bulletin” is to find Cynthia Lennon as this is on this celebrated Majorca one long standing celebrity writer most talented.”
I’ve made that last “sentence” up (sort of), in case you’re wondering.

“Inglich not espouken” was the title of the piece in “The Diario”. Let’s not be too harsh on the students or on any Mallorcan whose standard of English is low. If native speakers can’t “espouke” it, then what the hell chance have the locals got.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

These Words Are My Own

You know those Google ad things. Do you ever take any notice of them, let alone click on them? I don’t. Well not normally. Only if there is the prospect of a potentially rich source of bloggism. And so it proved the other day. Up popped this thing for a Spanish language course. It said something along the lines of you only need 138 words of Spanish and you’re quids in with the language. It didn’t say that exactly of course, but it was the 138 that caught my eye. Why 138? Why not 150 or 200? There must be a psychology of greater credibility that demands the promotion of a seemingly inexplicable number, such as 138. Rather as Douglas Adams settled on 42, so the answer to everything Spanish is 138.

 

The site itself, and I’m damned if I’m mentioning it and giving it more publicity, was as you might expect. Great lists of testimonials of the I tried everything else and then found your course and now I speak the language so well I am the president of Spain variety. Again, I do exaggerate slightly. There was some mention of handing over folding notes through a credit-card transaction. 110 dollars I think it was. (Surely 138 would be more credible?) In return for this, you could download or get the CD or do whatever you are supposed to do with these things.

 

Now, I’m not saying that there may not be any merit in whatever system the site claims to promote. For all I know, you may indeed be fluent in a matter of weeks. But I do somewhat doubt it. One comes back to those 138 words. Apparently they’re all you need to be conducting yourself in Spanish. No need for any boring old grammar. People do not learn languages through the grammar approach, it says. Language teachers don’t like the grammar approach, it adds. 

 

Up to a point, this may be correct, though where some language teachers are concerned it may be because they’re lousy teachers and don’t themselves understand the grammar. And that would not be unknown. The problem is that grammar is unfortunately quite important. Without an understanding of it, you cannot correctly construct sentences, which is really the whole point of speaking a language. 

 

But let’s say there is some value in this approach. Below, therefore, are 138 words/expressions. I will gladly offer them to you free of charge, though if you are truly impressed by your Spanish ability as a result, I might establish a PayPal account and you can transfer a tenner plus shipping costs and I’ll send you a blank CD. So, here we go:

 

Some pronouns – yo, tú, él, ella, usted, nosotros, vosotros, ellos. 

Some verbs – tener, hablar, poner, poder, estar, ser, decir, pedir, querer, seguir, hacer, ir, venir. 

Some descriptive verbs – tener sed/hambre/frío/calor/razón, hace frío/calor/viento.

Some numbers – uno, dos, tres, diez, veinte, cien, ciento treinta y ocho, mil. 

Some nouns – hombre, mujer, marido, abuelo, abuela, amigo, niño, hijo, comida, bebida, café, té, leche, cerveza, coche, jardín, playa, cara, cabeza, ojo, oreja, mano, cielo, lluvia, sol, casa, mesa, silla, salón, dormitorio, baño, cama, gato, perro, tiempo, hora, día, mañana, tarde, noche. 

Some adjectives – pequeño, grande, mucho, poco, largo, corto, alto, ancho. 

Some words of greeting and goodbye – hola, mucho gusto, encantado, cómo estás, qué tal, buenos días, buenas tardes, buenas noches, adiós, hasta luego. 

Some prepositions – a, de, por, para, hasta, desde, con, sin, en, sobre. 

Some common expressions – claro, perfecto, me gusta, digame, muchas gracias, lo siento. 

Some adverbs – aún, entonces, también, tampoco, todavía, quizás, cuando, mismo (and mismo is one of the more versatile of Spanish words). 

Some words of place – aquí, allí, ahí, frente, abajo, arriba, detrás. 

Some question words – qué, quien, dónde, por qué, cómo. 

Some negatives – no, nada, nadie, nunca, ningún. 

Some conjunctions – porque, pero … er, forget anymore, that’s 138.

 

Right then, off you go, learn all that lot and then place them in meaningful sentences paying careful attention to verb conjugation, noun gender, adjectival endings, appropriate use of prepositions …

 

Ultimately, the only way you learn is by speaking – and speaking a lot and by being corrected when you make mistakes. Especially those grammatical mistakes, because without the correct grammar and all the rest, you can never be said to be able to speak a language. But if you must, then go the 138 route and tell me if I’m wrong, so long as you do it in Spanish.