Masterquímica: where chemistry and Catalan meet

Masterquímica (which would be Masterchemistry) is an event to popularize chemistry in Catalan. It’s been its seventh edition this year, starting last Wednesday and finishing today.

This is the one.

In this familiar congress, a score of master’s students of the Faculty of Chemistry of the Universitat de Barcelona have shown the results of our scientific research on a poster which had to be written in correct Catalan.

Yesterday afternoon the Masterquímica’s awards ceremony to give the prizes was held in the Enric Casassas conference hall of the Faculty. They used the occasion to give some short tales and poetry awards and some foreign students read some of them. Even Enric Casassas son himself read some. It was a curious and very entertaining way to join chemistry and Catalan.

I don’t want to show false modesty. I probably wouldn’t have written about this if I hadn’t won the first prize. I guessed it would be an advantage to have language studies, but I wasn’t expecting the first prize. Now you can see my poster published with a big star with a number 1 on it. Congratulations to me.

We had a toasted sandwich supper to celebrate it, but this goes without saying.

Language incompetences

This week Catalan kids’ basic competences are being tested in schools. But maybe they should stop wasting the kids’ learning time and control grown-ups’ competences instead.

Administratively and officially Catalans live in Spain. Ideologies aside, this is a fact. But it is also a fact that Catalan is an official language in here too. Then, why in Catalonia — land of the Catalan language — we can’t use it, not even in public services?

I’ve been years asking for a suc de préssec (peach juice in Catalan) in bars in Barcelona, but they’ve never given me any, they only have zumo de melocotón (in Spanish). Okay, let’s accept they are not going to speak Catalan; but can’t they at least understand it? We are not going to discuss about Freud’s theories, we just want to ask for one of their fifty products. If they are not from here, can’t they learn fifty words in Catalan? And if they are…

"In Catalan, please". Campaign of the 70s.

Some weeks ago I went to Barcelona’s airport. In Pans & Company, a Catalan sandwiches company, there was an English guy who ordered something in a perfect Catalan and had to repeat everything in Spanish because the South American shop assistant only spoke Spanish, not even English. For God’s sake, she’s working in the airport! You see people defending Catalan companies and they don’t realise those don’t care about us anymore than other money-making organisation.

And — don’t miss it — in the post office in Vilafranca del Penedès they can show you how much they respect and care about us. In March, two months ago, I went there to pick a packet up. It was insulting to find a terrible mistake taking my number from the machine. After the civil servant served me exclusively in Spanish ignoring the customer preferences, I told her about the mistake and the correct way to write it, just in case. Last Thursday I went there again and the mistake remained uncorrected. Even worse, that woman couldn’t understand Catalan anymore!

Because of all this, I have a request for whoever is responsible for this. Stop worrying about kids learning the past simple tense at ten and make sure I can at least speak my own language at home, for it’s obvious that I won’t hear it. It is so sad to have to ask for something like this.

Some good news about Catalan in the world

This week begun with two pieces of news which ennoble the Catalan language. I’m not keen on journalism, but sometimes it makes me happy.

Google says Catalan is one of the ten most active languages in the world (Directe.cat)

Google highlights the presence of Catalan on the Internet in relation to its number of speakers. There are two rankings depending on whether the language is only used in its territory or all over the world. Catalan moves between positions 10 and 15 of the international ranking — it fluctuates through time. What would my Swedish friend say now?

Small American publishing houses publish Catalan literature (La Vanguardia.es)

An American publishing house will publish The grey notebook by Josep Pla. Publishers and translators criticise the “provincialism” of the United States that ignore other cultures and the things that are not written in English. Even though, they say that small influential publishers are now translating Catalan authors and taking other cultures in account. Quim Monzó and Mercè Rodoreda are being translated with good results already.

There’s no need to say anything else.

It is our language, it is who we are

 

Our school in Catalan now and forever.

After many years in a state that don’t miss a chance to show that they don’t want to accept us, but absorb us, the Spanish Supreme Tribunal wants to impose the use of Spanish as the school language in Catalonia.

Today I had to talk about yesterday’s department party, but there are things that are much more important, that can’t wait and make the Catalan people angry and we must say “it’s enough”.

We were born in a country where we work hard to keep our culture alive and the same with our language, a minorized language. It’s shameful that Europe praises our effort and the linguistic immersion at school to promote a language while the state which fagocitates us doesn’t want this language to be official in Europe.

Let’s face it, there is something going on here for a long time now and they may take our money, but they’ll never take our culture.

You know I rarely talk about politics, but when they want to silence me, I speak louder. From today, the first day of the school holidays, until the lessons starts again, I’ll write only in Catalan in the Romanic version of the blog. We are and we will be Catalan people.