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Perante toda esta trifulca que se está a armar polo uso do galego, "roubo" este artigo do blog idaedauga que ven ben para a ocasión


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martes 2 de septiembre de 2008
The word Beira and George Steiner
Beira is one of my favourite words. I have a friend who is an EU election observer, and in his assignment to Mozambique he found himself posted to the city of Beira, which is the second largest in the country. He said that everywhere he went, and during the daytime, he would see people sleeping in parks, on walls, in the streets. From what he could see, this was because they often ate only every two days.

In Vigo, and probably I'm sure in dozens of other places in the Galician/Portuguese speaking world, the road by the seafront is called Beiramar.

Changing the subject somewhat, I have recently read on another blog that quite a fuss has been kicked up in Galicia about some comments George Steiner made about Galician and Catalan. He appears to think that it is normal for Catalan to be spoken in universities and in scientific circles, and Galician not, because Catalan has a longer and richer literary tradition. What I think Steiner probably meant to say is that Catalan is more firmly embedded in the bourgeous cultural scene and in middle-class discourse than Galician, i.e. you are admired if you speak Catalan rather than Spanish, whereas the chances are that if you speak Galician you will be thought to be something of a peasant.

And you have to admit there is something to be said for the latter view. Galician has to overcome the resistance of those who believe it is more natural to speak Spanish than to speak like a peasant. But then with a historical perspective, these things are indeed often overcome. Hebrew eventually asserted itself despite its initial status as an unnatural sounding language, for example.

Plus...Galician has words like beira, cedo (early) and axiña (immediately). It sounds beautiful if spoken with a pleasant accent, plus you are likely to see the same words written in many far-flung places across the globe, and in one of the world's largest countries.

At the risk of offending sensibilities, in my very humble opinion, Catalan is not a pleasant sounding language. An acquaintance of mine once described the sound as being similar to the language spoken by the Martians in Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks".

If we could invent the supreme literary language, it would contain the word "beira". It would not contain the word "pollastre".
Publicado por Dacosta en 9/02/2008 09:56:00 PM