2018/10/14

What underlies the divergent history of two languages: Catalan and Piedmontese.

By Toislex, adding information to the map of F. Rubat Borel - "Il piemontese in tasca" , 2006, Edizioni Assimil, Chivasso, modified, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Answer to a Quora question


I am a Spanish speaker, with Piedmontese and Catalan ancestry currently living in Barcelona, and our opinion reflects exactly the facts about Catalan and Piemontèis. But behind this phenomenon there is a problem that has to do with nationalism. In Catalonia, the language is driven - in addition to the interest of maintaining the language itself - for political reasons: separatism. Catalonia has a long history of conflicts with Castile, while Piedmont had exactly the opposite role: to unify Italy. The Piemontèis is becoming the language of the elderly; the new generations speak basically in Italian, while in Catalonia one can see the new generations of African or Latin American immigrants speaking Catalan everyday.

Both Catalan and Piedmontese reflect the great power that schools have; in Piedmont, children have been italianized and in Catalonia they have been catalanized.

In addition to the above, due to the European Union and the global weight of the English-speaking countries, all of them are also beginning a process of integrating English gradually more and more, which causes an "internationalization" that has the potential to sweep away regional and national identities (luckily !!! This continent is characterized by causing some major nationalist wars)

Then there are very different attitudes among the young Piedmontese and Catalans: the former are imbued with the spirit of unification, while the latter (always speaking only of the hard Catalan speaking sector) have a segregationist spirit against Spain and everything Spanish… and also - although it is difficult for the Catalans to recognize this - by definition this nationalist spirit is also anti-European.

The experience I had in Piedmont and Catalonia is colored by this fact. To speak Piedmontese in Piedmont is greeted with surprise and joy, but not as necessary; while speaking Catalan in Catalonia has become quite a political statement and is forced by public institutions.