Bad Poser day

First, the conventional, principal division of Catalan dialects on which language policy is based is not between Barcelona and the rest, but between eastern and western clusters divided by a line that passes from Andorra, skirts Santa Coloma de Queralt, and then veers SSW, hitting the Med just east of Vandellòs. The first (and favoured) group comprises broadly of what is spoken east of this line (which at the two extremes is about 125km from Barcelona), in (French) Roussillon, on the Balearics, and in a tiny portion of Sardinia. The second group consists of the varieties spoken west of that line in Catalonia and, depending which political party you support, Valencia. It was the first group that won out in key publications like the orthographic norms published in 1913 by the Institute of Catalan Studies, and normative grammar issued in 1918, and the wonderful Diccionari general de la llengua catalana, published in 1932. This was basically because Pompeu Fabra (1868-1948) edited the norms and wrote of the other two works. Barcelona dialect - if it can indeed be said to exist - is usually only mentioned as an example of the moral and physical decay of the language in the face of the supposed Spanish onslaught.

Second, lo was widely used in the names of publications like Almirall’s and in similarly symbolic texts in the late nineteenth century (eg Lo Catalanista, Lo Tibidabo). This was not designed to contravene any standard but to create an archaic (and thus politically correct) ring, lo being the conventional usage in front of consonant-led masculine nouns in olden times. I don’t know when the lo => el shift happened in eastern dialects, but lo just sounds old, not wrong. Being a childish idiot, I like it because it reminds me of the English Lo! The IEC dictionary quotes a few examples of early use including the wonderful 1533 comment that Lo Luter… ha perseuerat en praues opinions, or, as I would say, Lo! Luter! …

Go on, spam me you buggers, see if I care.

Related posts

• Catalan dialect of Spanish
• Bilingual bar sign
• Use of both ceceo and seseo by individual speakers without register distinction
• Translating Lady Chatterley
• Quantitative analysis by language of Barcelona publications in British Library Integrated Catalogue

Comments

1. Trevor sez:
   June 12th, 2004 at 06:02

   My point would be that there was no official standard back in 1886, and that lo, because of its historical spread throughout the territories would have been regarded as being consistent with whatever unofficial standards existed. Lo was not non-standard back then, although you might raise eyebrows if you used it now.

2. MM sez:
   June 12th, 2004 at 09:36

   Language Log needs a comments system!

   (I saw that dog Geoffrey Pullum was angry about on German TV yesterday lunchtime, although somehow I feel that wouldn’t interest him…)

3. John Chappell sez:
   June 12th, 2004 at 14:06

   Trev’s right on three counts.

   1. Almirall’s use of “lo” was not wrong at his time. That prescriptive-grammar rule is one that didn’t come into effect until later. Also, “lo” is still used in Western Catalan today. If you don’t believe me, come talk to my mother-in-law, who speaks the “xipella” dialect. Almirall’s use of “lo” is kind of old-fashioned and regional, but not wrong.

   2. There’s a dialect called “xava” which those Catalan linguists are probably thinking of when they say “Barcelona dialect”. Xava is spoken by young people and it’s kind of like Spanglish; it’s learned-in-school Catalan with a heavily Castilianized pronunciation and lots of Castilian slang. It’s spoken everywhere in Catalonia there’s been a real mixture of Catalans de pura cepa and those goddam charnegos. I’d call it “urban Catalan”.

   3. Learned-in-school standard Catalan doesn’t match up with any dialect spoken by real people today except the xava speakers, who have based their dialect on it. It’s an artificial construct invented by Fabra and others and it takes elements from both Eastern and Western dialects.

4. Graham B sez:
   June 12th, 2004 at 23:04

   Dr Poser, why you update your entry on Language Log without mentioning your problems here?

5. Trevor sez:
   June 13th, 2004 at 17:35

   Careful, Graham. I’m the only one allowed to write bad English round these parts.

6. Graham B sez:
   June 14th, 2004 at 12:51

   “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”–James D. Nicoll

7. Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey sez:
   June 14th, 2004 at 15:16 lo masclisme
   Now this is the kind of linguistic polemics I’d rather read. Seems that Bill Poser over at Language Log posted…

8. languagehat.com sez:
   June 14th, 2004 at 22:40 DICCIONARI.
   That’s the Catalan word for ‘dictionary,’ and I’ve just discovered the wonderful Diccionari català-valencià-balear, where you can enter a Catalan word and get definition, pronunciation, and etymology with historical excursus, for example:TIBIDABO topon…

9. Keith sez:
   June 15th, 2004 at 03:56

   I saw that dog Geoffrey Pullum was angry about on German TV yesterday lunchtime

   I had several seconds of trouble parsing that sentence. Somehow it seemed that it was referring to “that dog Geoffrey Pullum” and saying that he was going about on German TV (appearing on multiple channels?) being angry.

   And I don’t mind the lack of comments on LL. I’d probably never have e-mailed any of the authors if they’d had comments, and e-mail is much more personal (though it is missing the community conversation).

10. pj sez:
    June 18th, 2004 at 11:46

    John,

    I’m wondering about what are you refering when you speak about “xava”. Any examples? I’ve never heard of that and I’m thinking that maybe it’s some “niños de la zona alta” feature.
    The only mixture of catalan and castilian that heard more than once is when some catalanoparlant says a “tonteria” or a joke… Many of them use the spanish in that case

11. Bill Poser sez:
    July 18th, 2004 at 01:06

    The point of my post was that it is ironic that the title of a central work of the Catalan movement deviates from the standard, and in spite of much verbiage, the above actually confirms this. It may sound old rather than wrong, but the fact is that in the standard the article should be el not lo.

    As for what exactly the standard is based on, Catalan linguists certainly think that there is a Barcelona dialect. I’ve heard them contrast it with others. Attitudes toward it vary. Nothing in my post suggested that the major division among Catalan dialects was between Barcelona and the others. For instance, I would correctly say that Standard Japanese is based on the Tokyo dialect, even though I am well aware that the major division among Japanese dialects is not between Tokyo and others but between “Eastern”, of which Tokyo is one, and “Western”. I wasn’t trying to give a lesson on Catalan dialectology so I didn’t go into this in detail. Anyhow, wherever the standard comes from, the point is that Amirall’s title doesn”t conform to the standard. And that is true.

12. Bill Poser sez:
    July 18th, 2004 at 01:06

    By the way, there is a nice map of Catalan dialects here.

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