One of our personal goals as a family, naturally, was to expose our girls to more Spanish during our six-month stay. Some of that happened, but not to the extent that one would think. Don't get me wrong--if we could do it all over again, we'd absolutely choose Barcelona. But the truth is that exposure to Spanish and to social interactions here was limited.
Our building is a very quiet place, with one family that has a little infant, and another family we barely see who has at least one girl who looks to be about ten. We could have placed our kids in school, but you might recall from an earlier post, the schools are in Catalan. And the two languages are not that close.
Google translate has been a bit of a life saver in that regard, since all the e-mails I get from the Autonomous University are in Catalan, and with G-mail, I can simply click on an e-mail option and get a translation. But even that is a bit limited. Below is an example of a translation, which coincidentally is about the university's student strike situation:
"Maybe you know who has started a movement to 'hijack tests' as a form of protest against the cutbacks. The procedure is as follows: if students so wish and Professor He's agreement, the consideration is how he plays but instead of correcting it closes on the answers to. An attorney for the corresponding record. No notes are entered in SIGMA, not closed events and thus impede the assessment - assumes that the Minister will also Wert case of our grievances.
- Cancel the test and divided both between-per-cent for the remaining years of continuous assessment
- Cut the assessment and evaluation with students who have done so far
- Replace testing in the classroom with exercises at home (this includes tests that start but can not be completed, which could be delivered 2 days later by email or in person)."
Sooo, Google can translate, but only to a certain extent (in this case, a student wound up graciously interpreting the message for me).
The clash between Spanish and Catalan is loaded politically, which is another way of saying that in these here parts of Spain, "Castellano" (i.e. Spanish) is unequivocally not the preferred language. In fact, one of my co-workers, who grew up in Barcelona, has spoken to me exclusively in English, not once saying a word to me in Spanish. As someone whose native tongue is Spanish, I was a bit confounded by this at first, but now I just think of it as something much bigger.
When we first moved here, the family was told that in some cases we would be better off initiating conversations in English rather than in Spanish with strangers. There is no way for us to gauge whether speaking English would have given us better results when going to restaurants, stores, or finding an apartment, but we can see why someone would tell us to lean toward English.
I am convinced that our Spanish has improved, but so has our awareness of the history of Catalunya and the long-lasting effects of oppressive rule.
Our building is a very quiet place, with one family that has a little infant, and another family we barely see who has at least one girl who looks to be about ten. We could have placed our kids in school, but you might recall from an earlier post, the schools are in Catalan. And the two languages are not that close.
Google translate has been a bit of a life saver in that regard, since all the e-mails I get from the Autonomous University are in Catalan, and with G-mail, I can simply click on an e-mail option and get a translation. But even that is a bit limited. Below is an example of a translation, which coincidentally is about the university's student strike situation:
"Maybe you know who has started a movement to 'hijack tests' as a form of protest against the cutbacks. The procedure is as follows: if students so wish and Professor He's agreement, the consideration is how he plays but instead of correcting it closes on the answers to. An attorney for the corresponding record. No notes are entered in SIGMA, not closed events and thus impede the assessment - assumes that the Minister will also Wert case of our grievances.
- Cancel the test and divided both between-per-cent for the remaining years of continuous assessment
- Cut the assessment and evaluation with students who have done so far
- Replace testing in the classroom with exercises at home (this includes tests that start but can not be completed, which could be delivered 2 days later by email or in person)."
Sooo, Google can translate, but only to a certain extent (in this case, a student wound up graciously interpreting the message for me).
The clash between Spanish and Catalan is loaded politically, which is another way of saying that in these here parts of Spain, "Castellano" (i.e. Spanish) is unequivocally not the preferred language. In fact, one of my co-workers, who grew up in Barcelona, has spoken to me exclusively in English, not once saying a word to me in Spanish. As someone whose native tongue is Spanish, I was a bit confounded by this at first, but now I just think of it as something much bigger.
When we first moved here, the family was told that in some cases we would be better off initiating conversations in English rather than in Spanish with strangers. There is no way for us to gauge whether speaking English would have given us better results when going to restaurants, stores, or finding an apartment, but we can see why someone would tell us to lean toward English.
I am convinced that our Spanish has improved, but so has our awareness of the history of Catalunya and the long-lasting effects of oppressive rule.
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