Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Non-Spanish Languages of Spain

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Most people think of languages and countries usually coincide. Germans speak German, the French speak French, and the Spanish speak Spanish. While this is largely true, it isn’t totally true. There are a host of small, regional languages which are only spoken by a few people. These languages are often ignored because they aren’t associated with a country. Learn more about the languages in Spain which are not Spanish on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most people think that languages and countries usually coincide. The Germans speak German, the French speak French, and the Spanish speak Spanish. While this is largely true, it isn't totally true. There are a host of small regional languages which are only spoken by a few people. These languages are often ignored because they're not associated with a country. This is especially true in Spain. Learn more about the languages in Spain that are not Spanish on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by the tourist office of Spain.

Did you know that there are more native speakers of Spanish than there are of English? If you're looking to brush up on your Spanish, or if you'd like to try a total language immersion, there is no better place to do it than in Spain. In addition to learning the standard Castilian, you can experience various regional dialects such as Castuo or Marciano. You can start researching your dream trip to Spain today by visiting spain.in. where you can get everything you need to know to plan your Spanish adventure. Once again, that's Spain.Info. To say that the people of Spain speak Spanish is not incorrect.

It's by far the dominant language. It's the official language in the country. And pretty much everyone, even if they speak another language, will speak Spanish just because they have to to get along. In fact, in Spain itself, Spanish is often not called Spanish. It's called Castilian or Castelliano. I've been to ATM machines in Spain, where the top option listed is Castigliano instead of Spanish. I'm not going to dwell too much on Spanish in this episode, because most of you probably have at least a passing familiarity with what Spanish is.

Even if you don't speak Spanish, you probably know where it is spoken, and you probably know if someone is speaking it if you were to hear it. What I want to focus on are the other languages in Spain. Most people have no clue that there are, in fact, other languages spoken in Spain. Spain is divided into 16 autonomous communities, which is their equivalent of states or provinces. Of the 16, six of them have official languages other than Spanish. Beyond that, there are other non-official languages as well that can still be found in many parts of the country. We should start this discussion with the most widely spoken language other than Castilian, which is Catalan.

Catalan is an official language in the region of Catalonia and the Belaaric Islands. Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish. It is a separate romance language. Catalan would be almost totally unintelligible to someone who speaks Spanish. I learned this the hard way as I spent three months living in Gerona, and my Spanish didn't improve one bit because everyone all around me was speaking Catalan. In addition to Catalonia and the Bleric Islands, you can also find Catalan spoken in parts of southeastern France,

just over the border with Catalonia, and in the eastern part of Aragon region which borders Catalonia, and in the country of Andorra, where it's the official language. There is even a town on the island of Sardinia in Italy that speaks a dialect of Catalan. Linguistically speaking, it would be considered a Gallo-romantic language, whereas Spanish is an Ibero-Romantic language. While there's a great deal of overlap between Catalan and Spanish, there's also a lot that Catalan shares with French and Italian. Cotelan speakers might roll their eyes at me saying that it's a combination of French and Spanish, and they would be right, but it also isn't totally wrong.

For example, if you look at the exit signs in a building in Spanish, they will say Salida. In French, they will say sortie. In Catalan, they say sortida, which is almost like the two words were smashed together. In Valencia, the official language is Valencian. Valencian is a dialect of Catalan. They are considered to be mutually intelligible with each other, so a Catalan speaker could communicate with a Valencian speaker about as easily as an American could with someone from England.

It can also be found in other cities in the region, such as the popular tourist destinations of Alicante and Benadorm. Way over on the other end of Spain, north of Portugal, and bordering the Atlantic Ocean, is the autonomous community of Galicia. There, one of the official languages is Gallagos, or Galician. Galician falls into the Iberal Romance language family, as with Spanish, but it's more closely aligned to Portuguese.

In fact, both languages are descended from the same Galician Portuguese language known as old Portuguese. There's actual debate among linguists as to if Galician and Portuguese are two different languages or two dialects of a common language. About 40% of the people in Galicia claim it as their native language, whereas 30% claim Spanish, and 25% claim the language as equally. All the languages I've mentioned so far have one thing in common. They're all Romance languages that are descended from Latin. There's one language in Spain that isn't a Romance language.

In fact, as far as linguists can tell, it doesn't descend from anything. And that language is Basque. Bosque doesn't fit into any language group in Europe, or for that matter, any language group in the world. It's classified as an isolate language for this reason. As far as linguists can tell, Basque is the sole remaining language that has survived from before the spread of Indo-European languages. There may have been many Basque-like languages in Europe during the Stone Age. and the current Basque language is just the last one that remains. It has a belt of speakers along the north and central part of the Basque country,

as well as speakers in the Basque country in France and a few of them in the Spanish region of Navarre. One of the historical reasons why the language survived is because it was a backwater of the Roman Empire. The story of the Basque people in their history is a fascinating one, and will probably be the subject of a future episode. Contaland Basque and Galatian are the biggest non-Spanish languages in Spain. However, they're not the only ones. There are several other languages that have much smaller numbers of speakers, but still persistent to the modern world.

One language which actually has an official status is Aranese. Aranese is only spoken in the Val-Duran, in the northwesternmost corner of Catalonia, and it's one of the official languages of Catalonia. The language is in the Occitan family, which is spoken in the Pyrenees and in southern France. Aronese only has about 2,500 native speakers, almost all of which who live in the Valderon.

I actually was able to visit the Valderon several years ago, and it's a really interesting place. One of the reasons the language survived is that the valley opens into the north, which is into France. Even though it's a part of Spain, historically most of the trade and commerce went through the opening into the valley

with other Occitan speakers. Aragonese is recognized, but not an official language in the region of Aragon. It's mostly spoken in the mountainous Pyrenees part of the autonomous community. They're estimated to be about 10 to 25,000 speakers of the language. Austerian is spoken in the Austerius region in western Spain. The number of speakers is actually quite significant compared to the other minor languages.

There are about 100,000 native speakers and another quarter million people who can speak it as a second language. It isn't an official language, however, in Asturias, and it isn't required in schools, but it is offered as an elective subject. Similar to Austerian is Leonese. It, not surprisingly, is spoken in the province of Leon and in parts of northern Portugal. It has about 50,000 speakers and is considered a dialect of Asturian. It should be noted that there are a few very small towns in Spain where Portuguese is actually the primary language. The total number of native Portuguese speakers in Spain is pretty small. It's probably under 10,000 in shrinking, as the young people in the border towns are now learning Spanish as their first language.

I'll conclude by noting the one language which isn't a good one language. exactly a language, but is probably the most fascinating one on this list. Silbo Gomerro. Silbo Gomerro is the whistling language that's found in the island of Gomerro in the Canary Islands. It was developed so people could communicate with each other across the large valleys on the island. The original whistling language was used by the Wanchas people who were the natives on the island before the Spanish showed up. The Spanish settlers adopted whistling into Spanish. It's technically not a language. They simply transpose the Spanish into Spanish. whistling. They're speaking Spanish. They're just speaking it via whistled sounds, not words. In theory,

you could transpose it into English or other languages as well. If you visit Spain, you'll be able to get by using Spanish pretty much everywhere. Almost all of the speakers of the languages I've listed also speak Spanish even if it's as a second language. If you do visit one of these regions, however, take a moment to learn a few words in their local language, just making an effort to learn a few words of a language that no one else bothers to learn can go a long way by showing goodwill to the local speakers. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com.

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