The Never-Ending Argument Of Language

There was this interview. It was with the philologist who is responsible for linguistic use at the IB3 broadcaster. At the conclusion of the interview she says of the Balearic language that it doesn't exist. To speak of a Balearic language is provocative, just as it is when one refers to the Catalan of Mallorca. It is the philological way, but she doesn't like it because, for centuries, we have called it Mallorquín.

In Mallorca, it can appear, there are more philologists than you can shake a dictionary at. These "students" of languages, be they actual students, professors or hobbyists, proliferate to an extent that is hard to comprehend for those of us brought up without an obsession with arguing over languages and their historical significance. Philologist was a word, a profession if you like, that I was well aware of before coming to Mallorca, but never had it occurred to me that there would be a place where the philologist seems as common as the town hall official, and as equally bloody-minded in all likelihood.

And the town halls have their own quasi-philologists, the councillors who are charged with the responsibility for what, through literal translation, is linguistic normalisation but which is better translated as standardisation. Either noun will do, as the whole term is a euphemism for Catalan. Or is it?

The philologist of the interview, Mariantònia Lladó, has a contentious responsibility at IB3. Anything to do with language has the potential to be contentious - which is one reason why there are so many philologists knocking around - and at IB3 it has been just this. It has all had to do with an issue that will, for the great majority of you, seem impenetrable and arcane, but that is because you will not be obsessed with the detail of language, one that is so micro-scrutinised that there are arguments which haggle over the use of the word "the". At IB3, "the" became a politico-philological battle. The Partido Popular, which ruled the broadcaster through its government vice-president Antonio Gomez and then José Manuel Ruiz, who failed so spectacularly in becoming mayor of Calvia, insisted that the Mallorquín "the" should be used and not the Catalan "the". Mariantònia, elsewhere in the interview, reveals her "the" preference, lamenting the fact that, except out in the villages of Mallorca, the "new generations" use the literary "the", i.e. the Catalan one.

For the Bauzá PP, so desirous of distancing itself from anything marked with the stamp of Catalonia, the intervention over "the" at IB3 went to the heart of its linguistic politics, and the very notion of there being a linguistic politics can strike many as being somewhat absurd. But that's because they are not bound up in the ceaseless polemic that can appear to define all politics of Mallorca.

The PP line, and that of Mariantònia (and I hope I'm not misrepresenting her), is to promote the languages of the islands at the expense of Catalan. Yet this can appear to be - in political terms - contradictory. The PP disassociates itself from notions of nationalism - those which are not Spanish nationalist - but it advocates a distinct language, Mallorquín. And what, as far as nationalism is concerned, is more nationalist than a language? But then, it isn't contradictory if it is accepted that there are minority languages/dialects within the framework of the grand nationalism of Spain and it also isn't contradictory if this acceptance is one to cock a snook at the pretensions of Catalan nationalism which involve a geographically broader area than just Catalonia - the mythical Catalan Lands.

Inherent to this line is an argument that the languages of the islands, and each island lays claim to having one, are the products of some form of separate development. Well, quite clearly there has been. When there are 250 plus kilometres of sea that divorce Mallorca from the Catalan heartland as well as a history of Arabic language and Vulgar Latin (and it is this which is the root of the "the" argument), there was bound to have been linguistic modification. But the mother tongue is Catalan (and/or variants that themselves influenced and created Catalan). To refer to the "Catalan of Mallorca" is, however, says Mariantònia, provocative. And in this, for many Mallorcans in my experience, she is right. Mallorcans speak Mallorquín and not Catalan, albeit there are obvious, very strong similarities.

So, one comes back to this business of linguistic normalisation, sometimes determined at town halls by councillors who proudly speak their Mallorquín (and nothing else) but within an ideological framework of Catalan nationalism and with responsibility for the normalisation of Catalan. And ditto the schools, where the argument is over the promotion of Catalan, not of Mallorquín.

Still, this all helps to allow philology to flourish and for there to be never-ending arguments, and the fact is that they will never end.