Cladistic language concepts

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Max W Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:
 
>On Mon, 12 Oct 1998, Roger Wright wrote:
>
>> where Catalan, or Galician, has two words that are for
>> practical purposes synonymous, one of which is like the Castilian word
>> for the same meaning and the other of which is not, the dictionaries and
>> the standardizers of Catalan and of Galician have tended to prefer the
>> one that isn't like Castilian. (In order to annoy the Castilians, but of
>> course in practice it just annoys many Catalans and Galicians, since the
>> Castilians couldn't care less). This is known as "diferencialismo".
>>                                         RW
>
>Can you actually substantiate this claim, with regard to Catalan? It is
>true that such an effect may appear to someone who doesn't know about
>the history of the languages (obviously not you); in several cases
>standardizers prefer a form with a longer established literary
>tradition. Note that people from French Catalonia have accused the
>standardizers of preferring those forms which were MORE similar to
>Spanish.
 
For Catalan, most of the standardizing work was done in the first
half of this century, primarily by the orthographical and grammatical
standards of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans and the dictionary of
Pompeu Fabra.  Fabra talks about these issues in a 1924 article
("L'obra de depuracis del catal`") and admits that "hi hagui una
hpoca en quh, de dues formes, de dos mots, de dos girs en
concurrhncia, es creia que sistem`ticament calia donar la preferhncia
al mis allunyat de l'espanyol.  En tota coincidhncia entre l'espanyol
i el catal`, es veia un castellanisme, i bastava que un mot
s'assemblis massa a l'espanyol corresponent perquh se li cerquis mis
o menys arbitr`riament un substitut"  (There was a time when it was
thought that if there were two competing forms, words or expressions,
one had to prefer the one furthest from Spanish.  In every agreement
between Spanish and Catalan a castilianism was seen, and a word only
had to look too similar to the corresponding Spanish one in order for
more or less arbitrary substituions for it to be sought.)
[The above passage contains three such cases in relation to my own
dialect: I would say and quite possibly write <paraules> for <mots>
"words", <busquis> for <cerquis> "would search", although I would not
write (but possibly say) <menos> for <menys> "less"].
 
While trying to steer clear of such exaggerations as described above
by Fabra, standard Catalan has drastically reduced the number of
castilianisms, often by harking back to the Medieval literature.
Many castilianisms of course still remain in the spoken language, and
a considerable number have also been maintained in the standard, as
it would be silly (and impossible) to deny that contact with
Castilian ever existed [after all, there are also catalanisms in
Castilian].  In many of these cases where standard Catalan has
perforce a castilianism (more or less catalanized), a gallicism is
likely to be used in Rossells.  I suppose that's what the complaints
may have been about.
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam