Visitors to Spain may be surprised to learn that many Spaniards do not speak Spanish, or at least not the Spanish they may have learned at school. During my Spanish classes at university I was first taught by a Puerto Rican; in the next semester my teacher was a Spanish national who spoke with a Castilian accent so strong I thought she had loose dentures. So many of her words had a lisping sound in them, plus she pronounced her 'V's like 'B's (her favourite word was vale, which sounded like 'ballet'; it was weeks before we figured out she was saying 'ok, now then' and was not in fact asking us to strike classical dance poses).
In addition to the lack of lithping, Catalonians have their own outlook on life even now, centuries after the various kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, etc were united into Spain. Catalonian pride is strong and there is a reignited desire to split off as an independent country or at least maintain their distinct way of life; they have their own regional government which has banned bullfighting, for instance.
You'll realise why opening your phrasebook and declaring 'yo-ha-blo-eth-pan-yol, y'all' to a resident of Barcelona is not a great way of endearing yourself once you've taken a tour of the Barri Gòtic, where the streets still bear the scars of the Spanish Civil War.
Catalonia was the last stronghold of the Republicans, falling to General Franco in 1939. Franco promptly banned the Catalan language and starved the city of investment in favour of Madrid. The Barri Gòtic remains a relatively poor area known for muggings, its narrow lanes covered in graffiti.
It's well worth exploring, as long as you keep your wits about you and keep a firm grip on your belongings. Among the labyrinth of dark streets and twisting alleys you'll find some of the city's oldest buildings, including the city's cathedral (more on that later) and these columns from a Roman temple.
If you think the warren of streets is difficult to navigate now, imagine the days when you would have shared the pavement with horses! Look up and you might see old tiles which indicate the one-way system used to keep traffic moving. Here is the sign indicating where horses should enter...
...and this particular sign shows where horses should exit when leaving Pumpkin Street.
The city's pride in being capital of Catalonia seems strongest here, where there are local flags and political mottos on practically every street corner.
For all the sloganeering, the Barri Gòtic is also home to some of the city's finest sights, most popular museums and some wonderful places to eat and drink. Click back next time as we continue to travel around Barcelona!
3 comments:
Well, declaring 'hablo ethpañol' to a local anywhere in Spain would probably elicit a hearty laugh.
The 's' in 'español' is pronounced as 's' and not 'th' --in fact, the 's' is always pronounced 's' and not 'th' by Spanish speakers anywhere (i.e.: in Europe as well as in the Americas).
It's the 'c' (in front of 'e' or 'i') and the 'z' (in front of 'a', o' or 'u') that Europeans pronounce as a 'th' instead of an 's' --in other words, what you erroneously call "lisping" is just a Spaniards' ability to distinguish between the two sounds, 's' and 'th,' just as you and all English-speakers without a lisp do.
In Latin America (and parts of the south of Spain), that distinction is lost, and they pronounce both 's' and 'c' (or 'z') as 's.' If you want to make fun of anybody for talking as if they had a speech impediment (misguided and offensive as that characterization might be), they would be the more logical targets.
Someone (I don't know who, because the comment was left anonymously) has missed the point I was making about visitors pulling out their guidebooks and mispronouncing words based on what they think Spanish should sound like, with a heavy accent on 'el ceceo' and all.
Any supposed mockery of speech impediments or otherwise is well off the mark; sorry if you don't understand my sense of humour.
And I'm sorry if you don't understand my point. I was criticizing you for perpetuating the error, very common across the English-speaking world, that Castilian Spanish is supposedly characterized by 'ceceo' (the transformation of all 's' sounds into 'th') when that is not, in fact, true.
At no point in your original post did you point out that this does not actually happen in Spain. You do point out that Catalans don't have a 'lithp,' but that is because Catalans have our own language, in which the 'th' sound simply does not exist (just as it doesn't exist in French, to which Catalan is closer phonetically).
Therefore, you leave the reader with the impression that in the rest of the country, speakers of standard Castilian Spanish do lisp, when that is actually not true --and a common misconception that has long mystified and bothered Spaniards who have traveled to, let alone lived in, English-speaking countries.
On a lighter note, as a Barcelonian I am very happy you are having a good time in my hometown, and certainly appreciate your retelling of your local adventures.
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