Brno speaks Catalan (and we're still debating its usefulness?)

PalmHow many times have you heard, thought, or even said, "Yes, Catalan is all well and good, but what's it really good for?" How many times has the conversation ended with a count of speakers, a comparison with English, or a list of supposed career paths? The question seems innocent, but it isn't. It implies a very specific way of understanding the world: only what has an immediate, quantifiable, exportable, and tangible return is valuable. Everything that doesn't fit into that logic is viewed with suspicion. Meanwhile, more than 2,600 kilometers from Palma, at Masaryk University in Brno, there is a full degree program in Catalan Language and Literature that is celebrating its tenth anniversary this academic year, 2025-2026. Ten years. It marked the occasion with a commemorative academic ceremony held on Wednesday, March 4th, with established faculty and graduating classes who have already entered the professional world.

It's not a cute anecdote or an exotic quirk. It's a 180-credit European university degree, with a final project and courses comparable to those of any other Catalan language and literature degree: history and culture of the territories within the Catalan-speaking domain, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, linguistic variation, medieval, modern, and contemporary literature, translation, and sociolinguistics.

Without social pressure

The first year began with over forty students. It's not a huge crowd, perhaps, compared to other overcrowded degree programs, but we're talking about forty young Czechs and Slovaks who chose Catalan as their main specialization, without necessarily having heard it spoken on the street, without any administrative requirement to demonstrate knowledge, and above all, without any social pressure pushing them to do so. They chose it because they were interested, because they wanted to understand a different cultural reality, and because studying a language like ours can also be a way of questioning the invisible hierarchies of Europe.

The case of Brno is not an isolated one. According to data from the Institut Ramon Llull, Catalan can currently be studied at nearly 150 universities in more than 30 countries across Europe, America, Asia, and Oceania. From Oxford and Cambridge to Harvard and Chicago, from the Sorbonne to Tokyo and Osaka, students enroll in Catalan language and culture courses every year and can even achieve C2 level certification. In the Czech Republic, Catalan studies didn't begin with the Masaryk University degree. Courses within Romance studies programs in Prague, Brno, and Olomouc had been offered since the 1990s. Charles University in Prague had already incorporated Catalan in 1993, and Palacký University in Olomouc also offered it. However, in 2015, Masaryk University took a significant step forward: transforming this sustained interest into a dedicated degree program. This signifies structure, stability, and institutional recognition. It means acknowledging that Catalan is not just a more or less appealing elective, but a language that generates enough interest to support a comprehensive course of study. And it means training professionals capable of translating from Catalan to Czech, teaching it, researching it, or managing culture linked to Catalan-speaking territories.

We reflect, then, on what exactly we are asking for when we formulate the typical question, "What is a language for?" The idea that only hegemonic languages ​​are useful is an ideological construct. Reducing utility to the economic dimension impoverishes the concept, leaving it almost empty. A language serves to think, to nuance, to establish connections, to understand other realities, and to read a literary tradition in its original version. It serves to interpret the world from angles that may not be the dominant ones. Any language, regardless of the number of speakers, can be a cultural laboratory, a repository of memory, or a space for literary innovation, critical thinking, and symbolic resistance.

The Italian philosopher Nuccio Ordine argued that what does not have an immediate return may, precisely, be what makes us freer. In this sense, the humanities, literature, and minority languages ​​may not be quantifiable in an Excel spreadsheet, but they are essential (and very much so) for achieving a fulfilling life and a pluralistic society.

Broadening Horizons

Students in Brno don't learn Catalan to qualify for competitive exams or public sector jobs in their country, but because they want to broaden their horizons. And, ultimately, the usefulness that some don't perceive is indeed there. We must consider that a Catalan graduate from Brno can end up translating a Catalan novel into Czech, promoting a contemporary author, working on cultural projects linked to the Catalan Countries, or carrying out linguistic and cultural mediation work. It's a real, concrete, and, yes, also economic benefit. Perhaps not massive, but certainly tangible.

Reaching ten years is no small feat. It means having overcome initial doubts, consolidating the teaching staff, establishing Erasmus agreements with Catalan universities, and demonstrating that the project is sustainable. And, above all, it means having created a small Catalan-loving community in Moravia: students who celebrate Sant Jordi, who sing Catalan songs in a bar in Brno, who make the Tió defecate far from the Mediterranean, and who contribute to spreading Catalan literature in Central Europe.

If we only paid attention to strictly utilitarian criteria, this degree might never have existed. But it does, and it works and endures. All of this should make us realize that, as Ordine would say, what seems useless can, in reality, be essential. And if they've known this in Brno for ten years, perhaps it's time we understood it here too.