Paella

[aadroma]

Carl and I were watching Top Chef, and British King of Food Douchery Toby Young was a guest judge. Towards the end the least successful dishes were being reviewed, and Padma says, "... and what about the pah ey yah?"

Toby, full of himself, countered, "... why does everyone insist on calling it that?? It's a pa ehl luh -- just as you don't say

Comments

[muckefuck]

They speak it all the time. Such Catalan-speaking monoglots as still exist are found in remote rural areas, not the metropolis.

[dedos]

It's not that they can't speak Spanish. But at least with the ones I interacted with, they avoid it when at all possible.

[muckefuck]

This is such a change from what it used to be! When I first went to Barcelona in the early 90s it's was nearly impossible to get anyone to speak Catalan to me. Generally they would hear my accent and switch to English.

[aadroma]

My ex told me that if I were to go to Barcelona now, that it'd be best to speak in ENGLISH. Apparently Spanish questions get Catalan answers!!

[gorkabear]

From a real Barcelonian: We're supposed to be 50/50. In the end, the default language is Spanish for all the social pleasure and the "politeness" of not "forcing anyone" to speak catalan.

The huge amount of expats and inmigrants here deliberately refuse, even agressively to speak Catalan (graeco_celt is an exception) because, you know, this is "Spain", and it's a "burden", it's "useless" and blah, blah, blah.

And let me tell you, for each answer you make in Spanish and you get in Catalan I'll pay you 10 euros. If it's the other way around you pay only 1. I'll win hands down

[muckefuck]

I nearly took monshu's friend's head recently off when he complained about how "rude" Catalans in Barcelona are about the language issue. "Yeah, how rude to want to be spoken to in your own language in your own bloody country!" English-speakers simply aren't capable of understanding what this is like.

[aadroma]

Wait, how is speaking your own language -- a language native to the country! -- rude??? 9_9

[muckefuck]

There are more and less rude ways of expressing one's preferences. I guess he felt the Catalans were too aggressive in their insistence on Catalan. Personally, I find this hard to believe; at the very least--knowing what I do about his personality--the belligerence was on both sides.

[gorkabear]

Oh, I wrote social pleasure and it's pressure... What a shortcut!

And mind you, the Spanish speakers do exactly the same. Check the comments in this piece of news, where basically Spaniards think that we don't speak foreign languages because of the regional ones, or that Spanish is important enough in the world to be "forced" to learn a foreign one. Now you get why I want the independence?
http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/525901/0/idiomas/extranjeros/estudio

[aadroma]

I admit, I was expecting the UK and Italy to be in the top 3. :: laugh ::

[gorkabear]

Seriously, I don't agree with you as I am from Barcelona, born and raised. Spanish is the default language here for social pressure. If you were lucky to find Catalan speakers, you should cherish that fact. Yes, there are a few neighbourhoods in the city where Catalan is quite present (Gràcia, Sarrià) but then remember that half of us have roots in Spain (such as myself). If you go to a working-class neighbourhood, your chances of hearing Catalan decrease exponentially. Ditto for the upper classes, like in Pedralbes.

If Catalan was so present, why do inmigrants stick to Spanish? I haven't heard a Latinamerican, Pakistani, Moroccan (my town has 25% population from Morocco), Romanian... here speaking a word of Catalan (in fact, "this is Spain, right?") but I also went to school with absolutely everybody being the child of Andalusian inmigrants (I was the exception, as my mother is from León and my dad is first-generation Catalan, of Murcian parents).