LL-L "Language promotion" 2010.01.08 (06) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 08 January 2010 - Volume 06
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language promotion" 2010.01.08 (03) [EN]

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com <mailto:sassisch at yahoo.com>>

 Subject: Language promotion
>
> Thank you very much for your interesting comments today, David and Marcus.
> Here are just a couple of comments of mine in return.
>
> Marcus:
>
> The most recent developments in Catalonia are quite stunning, at least to
> me. On 13 September 2009 the municipality Arenys de Munt held an inofficial
> local referendum in which the voters were asked: "Do you agree on Catalonia
> becoming an independent, democratic and social State of law, integrated in
> the European Union?"
>
> It resulted in 96.2% voting Yes, only 2.3% voting No, with a participation
> rate of 41%. After this many more municipalities held inofficial
> referendums. So far 168 municipalities have done so. There was not a single
> one where less than 80% voted Yes. The outcome so far is 94.89% Yes and
> 3.21% No. Other municipalities will vote in two more rounds in February and
> April.
>
> Of course the participation rate is rather low with 27.41% (the vote is
> totally unofficial) and the voting areas so far are mostly rural (e.g.
> Barcelona has not yet agreed to hold a vote). But it's still quite
> impressive: almost 95% support for full independance!
>
>  Far be it from me to rain on this parade, but ... I have read these
> reports and I must say that the percentages seem suspect to me. For one
> thing, large numbers of residents in these areas are from other parts of
> Spain or have roots there, and among these must be a good percentage that
> does not use and care about Catalan and/or endorse Catalonian independence.
> (Note differentiation between “Catalan” and “Catalonian”, the latter
> referring to the region with its ethnically diverse population.) After all,
> throughout the eastern area you get by with Castilian,
>
>  That's true for sure. Go to the airport of Palma and ask the people
stepping out of a airliner from Frankfurt about the language spoken on
Mallorca. You'll hear a very confident "Spanish" from most of them. In any
area where a native language only recently has gained equal rights with a
formerly dominant language there are people who don't accept the new status
of the language.

 although not knowing Catalan probably keeps you out of certain social
> circles. 95% voting for full independence? Hmm ... I don’t know about that.
> I expect that Barcelona with have very different results.
>
>  Well, I assume there was no electoral fraud going on. So the numbers will
be right. But of course pro-independantists are more likely to participate
in a referendum about this and anti-independantists are more likely to
boycot it. And of course municipalities with a predominantly
pro-independantist population are more likely to carry out the rederendum
early while predominantly ant-independantist municipalities will not
participate at all. The numbers represent only 192,460 votes so far. The
full voting population is about 6 million. So it's only a tiny fraction. It
depends on how "split" or homogenous the Catalonian population is, how
representative these 192,460 are for all of Catalonia.

Marcus Buck

•

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