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Non-Castilian speakers in Spain? | ||
Tags: Spain | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4563 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 9 of 16 17 January 2014 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@labujía -- Not everyone could read and understand Spanish well enough. A hypothetical completely fluent Catalan speaker who spoke no French or Spanish could probably still understand a good amount of Spanish, but you have to remember that most Catalan learners still do not speak perfect Catalan. Since Catalan is already a bit of a struggle, Spanish is even more difficult to the point of often (but not always) not being able to understand.
I remember one specific instance when I was with a friend who only spoke English and Catalan. He was talking to someone in a store who kept responding to him in Spanish, even though that person understood his Catalan just fine. We ended up having to speak in a triangle (my friend to the employee in Catalan, the employee responding in Spanish, and me translating for my friend). By the way, I'd like to mention that that was the only time my friend or I had a problem with people not complying with the linguistic law in Andorra (despite what that documentary seems to suggest). As far as Catalan vs. Galician, I'm not sure since I don't know Galician, but I think that Galician would facilitate learning Spanish more. I can understand Galician okay (the amount that I've heard). I have an American friend who speaks Galician, and she insists that it's more similar to Spanish than Catalan (she studied a little tiny bit of Catalan and has been to Andorra and Barcelona). One final comment -- I watched about half of the video linked in the original post, and I'm reasonably certain that the woman was actually a native Catalan speaker. (If not, then she learned an amazing amount of Catalan in 3 years without speaking Spanish or French first, and I'd rather see a documentary on how she did that!) It also seems like sometimes when people talked to her in Spanish, she understood but then corrected herself and pretended not to, so I would take that video with a grain of salt. I don't think it's really representative of a non-Spanish speaker who speaks Catalan and tries to survive in Catalonia. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| MestreTites Hexaglot Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3975 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Catalan*, English, Spanish, Japanese, German, French | Message 10 of 16 17 January 2014 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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"Are there many people, if at all, who speak a regional language but
are unable to speak Spanish? Does anyone know of such a case? " It's strange... I was monolingual up 'til I was 14 when I changed schools. Spanish was introduced in class (as well as English) and I had to learn the verb conjugations. I remember there was lots of dictation too and I had to rewrite what I got wrong all over and over again until I got it right. People in my surroundings spoke solely Catalan, I never really questioned if they could speak Spanish or any other foreign language. I guess you could ask the same to Dutch people when it comes to English usage in the Netherlands. Some will tell you they are totally fluent, others will tell you "no way" yet they'll understand you, and there might be the rarity of finding a monolingual Dutch speaker. Edited by MestreTites on 17 January 2014 at 9:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| MestreTites Hexaglot Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3975 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Catalan*, English, Spanish, Japanese, German, French | Message 11 of 16 17 January 2014 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
As a native Catalan speaker, I can tell you she is NOT a Catalan native speaker straight away. Her boyfriend did a pretty good job in teaching her good Catalan though and I have to say she is bloody good at it. She'd definitely fool "Catalan" Spanish-speakers though. . 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| labujía Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4198 days ago 11 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 12 of 16 18 January 2014 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think that the lady definitely didn't know Spanish, but played this up for the purpose
of the documentary - I'm sure that she must have understood a fair amount of the Spanish directed at her. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4563 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 13 of 16 19 January 2014 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oh my bad! I clearly don't have a good ear for this, but she really impressed me. She is clearly very talented, very hard-working, or both. Out of curiosity, is there anything in particular about her Catalan that is clearly not native? Or is it just an overall impression? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| MestreTites Hexaglot Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3975 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Catalan*, English, Spanish, Japanese, German, French | Message 14 of 16 23 January 2014 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
She has a slight "ring" in her throat when she speaks (something that anglophones do have) and her intonation is wrong at times. She speaks spot-on Catalan though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4294 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 15 of 16 23 January 2014 at 3:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I am confused, but the woman at the start of the video speaks in German, and her passport
says, "Reisepass" on the cover, saying that she spent two to three years learning Catalan--so is she not German? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4563 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 16 of 16 23 January 2014 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Nope, she is German. I was wrong. Sorry for the confusion! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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