Joan Veny: "Teachers shouldn't waste time teaching diacritics: they should focus on the fundamentals."

BarcelonaA couple of days a week, Dr. Joan Veny i Clar (Campos, 1932) still goes to work at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. The great dialectologist of Catalan, Catalan Literature Honorary Award 2015He is a devotee of words. After more than sixty years of work, he has been able to see the great quest of his life come to fruition.Linguistic Atlas of the Catalan Domainwhich she co-edited with Lídia Pons, also a professor at the University of Barcelona. It is a fundamental work for understanding the richness of linguistic diversity throughout the Catalan-speaking world and ranks among the major reference works on the Catalan language.

You introduced many of us students to the linguistic variation of Catalan thanks to The Catalan dialects(1978), his first book on dialectology and still a reference today. Did he believe that dialects were little known throughout the domain?

— The dialects were little known and, moreover, were sometimes disregarded by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans in its early days. Great care was taken with dialectalisms, contrary to what Pompeu Fabra himself had done, who was not a centralist of the language, because in the General dictionaryThe 1932 edition already included an impressive number of dialectal terms, thanks to the information provided by the great Mallorcan linguist Marià Aguiló. The success of my book can be explained, I don't know if by its quality but certainly by its timeliness, because there was a chapter dedicated to dialectology in the curriculum, and we filled a gap by synthesizing the dialects. Thirteen editions have been published: it's unusual for a linguistics book to have so many editions.

Has the perception of dialects changed?

— Absolutely. There is an awareness and respect for forms that are legitimate and correct. And self-deprecation has been overcome. The secret is knowing how to distinguish between two types of language: colloquial, spoken language, which tends toward diversity, and the general, standard language, what we call literary language, which tends towards unity,So that we can understand each other, and it draws from colloquial language. Therefore, the language model should be based on the speaker's intended use. It's not that difficult. Yet some people haven't grasped this. For example, in Mallorca there's an institution called the Royal Academy of the Balearic Language that advocates making colloquial language the standard. This isn't scientific; it's an aberration.

Behind the Academy there is a political interest against the unity of the language.

— I believe there's a political basis for this, and a base of utter ignorance, and ignorance is audacious. They say, for example, that the word "salado" (salt) was exported from Mallorca to the mainland, when it's logically the other way around. It's a political issue that blatantly tramples on science. It's a shame. And the same thing is happening in Valencia with organizations like Lo Rat Penat; there's an anti-Catalan attitude lacking any scientific foundation. That's why we should celebrate that the Valencian Academy of Language, some of whose members are also members of the IEC (Institute of Catalan Studies), has a clear understanding of the unity of the language and that a large part of society defends Valencian Catalan.

The project for the Linguistic Atlas of the Catalan Domain, which showcases the full lexical richness of the language, ends at a time of alarm over the degradation of authentic Catalan. What are your thoughts?

— The problem lies in the social aspect of the language. Catalan society has been greatly augmented by speakers from elsewhere, especially from Latin America, who arrive already fluent in the language, and this hinders the learning and transmission of Catalan. Therefore, there is a problem. But when you see the number of books published in Catalan, I think it suggests a certain degree of progress for the language. There are positive factors that will help us overcome the attacks, the desire for instability and stagnation of the language, and the fabrication that Spanish is losing ground. It's clear that it's the other way around; it's Catalan that's somewhat on shaky ground.

Regarding linguistic richness: is the important thing that Catalan is spoken, or that it is spoken well?

— If we consider this context of linguistic coexistence, we must bear in mind that for someone who comes from elsewhere and learns a language, mastering it is extremely difficult, especially if they reach an advanced age. But even Catalan speakers sometimes use somewhat incorrect Catalan. I believe the important thing is for them to speak Catalan in their own way, and if they make a few mistakes, to turn a blind eye. Above all, we shouldn't ridicule them, because that will only make them withdraw and switch to Spanish. The situation of bilingualism, of diglossia, is complicated.

What do you think is vital to guarantee the continuity of Catalan?

— First, schools need good teachers. They shouldn't waste time teaching diacritical marks and pronoun combinations; they should focus on the essentials. Second, there should be places available for those who have come from elsewhere and want to enroll in Catalan classes. There should be more than enough Catalan teachers. And third, when hiring a worker, employers should ask about their Catalan level and give them time to catch up if they don't know it.

You've lived in Barcelona since you were young. How have you seen the city transform?

— I take the metro quite often and I hear very few passengers speaking Catalan. Many immigrants use their language, and within families, that's generally considered normal, but in a different linguistic context, bilingualism should be considered essential. I've always advocated for bilingualism, but with Catalan as the preferred language, that's indisputable.

Does he support bilingualism?

— It's a matter of reality. It's a social situation that can hardly be ignored. What matters is that there be respect for both languages, with the country's language taking precedence.

"Courage, Juan!" Dr. Badia i Margarit would tell him when he began his research on dialectology in the 1960s. Did he imagine that he would see such a long and costly project as the Linguistic Atlas of the Catalan Domain completed seventy years later?

— I saw it as very difficult. This project was of immeasurable magnitude and only came about thanks to some enthusiastic collaborators, and even thanks to the people themselves. Because to gather the information, we traveled to each town [a total of 190 towns in the Catalan-speaking area], visited the mayor to get the names of two or three potential informants who were of a certain age and hadn't moved far from the town... and who had good teeth because, if you don't have teeth because, if you don't have teeth because t and the dBack then, there were still unemployed people. Sometimes they didn't have time because they had to plant potatoes or harvest... sometimes we'd go to help them turn the till. The grass. It is these anonymous speakers who have preserved the language in a wonderful way, and this is worthy of all praise. It is a scientific work that has a solid and honest foundation, which can be placed alongside, slightly below, naturally, important works such as the Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionary or the Etymological dictionary by Joan Coromines, which are unparalleled.

What have you enjoyed the most?

— A double delight. In the first phase, I discovered new words and constructions that made me take my hat off to them. In Matarraña, there were diphthongs that sounded like they were from Castilian Spanish but weren't: they call honey /mial/, /miel/. In Roussillon, the song is /cansú/. In Felanitx, salt is /suelo/. During the development process, I realized that some results had a very strong Catalan character. For example, there is no other European language that gives the daughter-in-lawI called him youngAnd I try to explain where this semantic meaning comes from: because in old Catalan society there was the housewife, who was the one who ran the house, but when the heir got married another housewife appeared, the young housewife, the young woman.

From your vantage point and at your age, does it impress you to see the work of a lifetime dedicated to linguistic research?

— Yes, for me it's vital. My life is intertwined with the study of words. I still read the newspaper, underlining linguistic innovations and making index cards. For example, the boom. Or idioms that haven't been officially recorded, but already have a tradition. I've just submitted a new book of articles on the history of language to the publisher, called In the shadow of wordsAnd I'm working on another one about the linguistic history of birds, which has never been done before.