Palma28/03/2018 00:00
On Monday evening as former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was being escorted into police custody after having appeared before a German judge, a Majorcan friend of mine was delighted. I was quite surprised.
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Good, I hope that makes you happy.
Oh, I have no doubt where you stand.
You may be right. He would probably do a better job than the current lot.
"Richard Pearson / Hace 1 day... What’s wrong with having 12 security forces following him ?"You would be right at home in the company of the old Caudillo, Richard.
Jaime - Thank you for this information. I have been coming to Mallorca for a long time now, mainly Port de Pollença but I was in Palma last week. I've never really seen Mallorquin written down to compare it with Catalan. But now I know why I have seen Sa Calobra as La Calobra!
Sorry I meant as V posted, rather than TG.
Chris – It’s a very complicated and controversial subject but as TG says standard Catalan is what is taught in schools and used on all official documentation, including websites etc., even though it isn’t what people in Mallorca actually speak. Whether Mallorquin is a dialect of Catalan or whether they are both variants of a predecessor language is also up for debate - although I am no philologist so I leave that to the professionals. Mallorquin is in real danger of being written out of existence, not by Castellano but by Catalan. You can see simple examples of this yourself everywhere, where old street signs using the Mallorquin articles are being slowly replaced by those using the Catalan ones. E.g. Where the article ‘Sa’ is replaced by ‘La’. As I mentioned in my earlier post - I never, ever heard the language in Mallorca referred to as anything other than Mallorqui as a kid and have yet to personally hear any self-respecting Mallorquin refer to themselves as Catalan. It would be like a Breton describing themselves as Welsh, or an Australian describing themselves as English!
Thanks you V. Could you tell me how teaching Mallorquí would differ to Catalan? I cant see the the problem (as an outsider from the UK) with the use of the Mallorquí.
TG / Chris: Mallorcan (mallorquí) is one of the several dialects of the Catalan language. They teach standard Catalan in schools but Mallorcan is the commonly spoken dialect here.
TG - as Jaime Moya says, is it not Mallorquin language being forced into Mallorcan education, government and hospital sectors?