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<h2 class="gmail-blog__title">Christopher Columbus’s Catalan-Inflected Language</h2>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_48401" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-alignright" style="width:460px"><a href="http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2017/10/Ribas1474889171_065220_1474889281_noticia_normal_recorte1.jpg"><img class="gmail-wp-image-48401" alt="Ribas1474889171_065220_1474889281_noticia_normal_recorte1" src="http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2017/10/Ribas1474889171_065220_1474889281_noticia_normal_recorte1.jpg" width="450" height="258"></a><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><small>Columbus monument in Barcelona, with helicopter bearing symbol of Catalonia (Photo by Carles Ribas, <em>El País</em>) </small></p></div>
<p><span class="gmail-dropcap">T</span>he violence surrounding the Catalan
independence referendum on October 1 has put Spanish democracy under a
microscope. Some scholars believe Monday’s holiday, which the United
States calls Columbus Day and some localities celebrate as Indigenous
Peoples’ Day instead, has an implicit link to the Catalan independence
struggle, one that casts some doubt on the national origins of
Christopher Columbus.</p>
<p>While conventionally regarded as Genovese, his language had resonances of Catalan.</p>
<p>Columbus signed documents (and was referred to in state records) as
“Colom” — a Catalan last name meaning “dove.” There is no record of him
writing in the Genoese dialect or Italian, even in letters sent to
Genoa. Save one letter in Catalan, his epistles are in Latin or Spanish,
some have marginal notes in Hebrew. The conquest chronicler Bartolomé
de las Casas noted that Colom “doesn’t grasp the entirety of the words
in Castilian” — and much of his Spanish was colored by false cognates,
idiomatic interference, and crosslingual appropriations from Catalan:</p>
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="220"><b>English:</b><br>
the sunset<br>
all at once<br>
everywhere<br>
Antilles<br>
number<br>
to say no<br>
seven-hundred<br>
virtue<br>
charity<br>
they died<br>
I didn’t care for<br>
it has rained some</td>
<td valign="top" width="180"><b>Catalan:</b><br>
el sol post<br>
tot d’un cop<br>
tot arreu<br>
Anti-illes<br>
nombre<br>
dir de no<br>
setcentes<br>
virtut<br>
caritat<br>
esmorteíren<br>
no curava<br>
ha plogut poc o gaire</td>
<td valign="top" width="180"><b>Colom (in Spanish):<br>
</b>al sol puesto<br>
todo de un golpe<br>
a todo arreo<br>
Antillas<br>
nombre<br>
decir de no<br>
setcentas<br>
virtut<br>
caritatt<br>
escmorecieron<br>
no curaba<br>
ha llovido poco o mucho</td>
<td valign="top" width="180"><b>Spanish</b><br>
la puesta del sol<br>
todo a la vez<br>
por todas partes<br>
Anti-islas<br>
número<br>
decir que no<br>
setecientos<br>
virtud<br>
caridad<br>
fallecieron/murieron<br>
no me interesaba<br>
ha llovido algo</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Lluís de Yzaguirre, a professor at the Institute of Applied
Linguistics at Pompeu Fabra University, in Barcelona, studied Colom’s
Spanish with a forensic linguistics algorithm that applies lexical
mistakes to decipher the native language of the writer. He found Colom’s
hypercorrections of “b” and “v,” as well as “o” and “u” in Spanish were
typical of a Catalan speaker.</p>
<p>Colom’s library had books in Catalan, and he named the island of Montserrat for a monastery near Barcelona.</p>
<p>He was also surrounded by Catalonians. Lluís de Santàngel, who
financed him, was from Valencia (part of the Països Catalans) and spoke
Catalan, and Pedro de Terreros, Colom’s personal steward — the only
crewmember with him on all four voyages — was from north of Barcelona;
the first baptism in the Americas was carried out by Ramon Pané, a man
“of the Catalan nation,” according to Las Casas, most likely chosen by
Colom, as was the first apostolic vicar of the West Indies (Bernat de
Boïl) and the expedition’s military chief (Bertran i de Margarit).</p>
<p>The Catholic Monarchs received Colom in Barcelona after the first
voyage, and some scholars maintain that the first journey left not from
Palos, in Andalucía, but from Pals in Catalonia.</p>
<p>Colom’s son Diego left a silver lamp in his will to Our Lady of
Montserrat “on account of the great devotion that I have always had.” As
Diego never lived in Catalonia, and his mother was Portuguese, a piety
for Montserrat was probably inherited from his father. According to the
archives of his son Fernando, the only letter Colom bequeathed to him
was written in Catalan; that document and a copy (translated to German
from Catalan in Strasbourg in 1497) were lost; many believe they were
destroyed in part to subdue Catalonian nationalism.</p>
<p>Part of the mystery may have come from Colom himself. The Hebrew
marginalia and references to the Jewish High Holy Days in his writings
indicate that, like Lluís de Santàngel, it is possible Colom or his
ancestors were converts to Christianity.</p>
<p>At the end of La Rambla, Barcelona’s most famous street, is a
200-foot high statue of Colom. At the base are Lluís de Santàngel, the
financier; Jaume Ferrer de Blanes, a cartographer; Bernat de Boïl, that
first apostolic minister in the Americas; and Pere Bertran i de
Margarit, the military commander. The motto of the monument is,
“Honorable Colom, Catalonia honors her favorite children.”</p>
<p>Colom is pointing out to sea, with his back to Castile.</p>
<p><small><em>Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is an associate professor in the
department of humanities at the University of Puerto Rico. His books
include</em> After American Studies <em>(Routledge, 2017),</em> Hemingway’s Expatriate Nationalism<em>, and</em> Paris in American Literatures<em>. His recent work has appeared in</em> Modern Fiction Studies<em>,</em> Voces del Caribe<em>,</em> <em>and</em> The Minnesota Review.</small></p><a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?compose=15f01ada047bf4ed">https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?compose=15f01ada047bf4ed</a><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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