The history of Catalan, inside a pear

PalmaA pear is a pear, or at least that's how it seems. The fruit is the same whether you buy it at the market in Inca, order it at a greengrocer's in Valencia, or at a stall in La Boqueria. The word is also spelled the same everywhere. However, it's enough to hear how it's pronounced for something to change. If you buy it in Inca, they will probably ask if you want it very ripe and you'll hear a 'p[ə]ra' (neutral 'e'). If you are in Valencia, it will be a 'p[é]ra' (closed 'e'), and in Barcelona, no one will hesitate to offer you a 'p[è]ra' (open 'e'). Now comes the question you might be asking yourselves in light of this: how is it possible that such a common word sounds in three ways? And, above all, which one is the original?

The answer, as often happens in linguistics (and in many other fields), is that the question is poorly posed, because it presupposes that there is a 'correct' or 'original' way to pronounce the word and that the rest are deviations. Languages, however, do not evolve like that: they are not a building that cracks with the passage of time, but a tree that keeps growing branches. When we compare dialects, we are not comparing a good version with others that are deformed; we are comparing histories that once began together and that, little by little, took different paths.

Long or short vowels

The history of the ‘e’ in ‘pera’ begins long before Catalan existed. To understand it, we must go back to Latin. We don't need to recall high school declensions or conjugations, but we do need to recover a detail that is often not given much importance and is essential for understanding what happens with the vowels of Romance languages: Latin did not distinguish vowels based on whether they were open or closed, but rather on whether they were long or short. The difference, therefore, was one of duration.

Over time, this opposition was lost. Long vowels tended to be pronounced more closed, and short ones more open. Thus, Vulgar Latin (the spoken language from which the Romance languages would be born) already distinguished vowels by timbre. This change is the starting point for a large part of the differences we still hear today between Catalan dialects.

If we return to the word ‘pera’, we can say it comes from the Latin ‘PĬRA’, with a short ‘i’. Many other words we use every day also come from Latin words with a short ‘i’ or a long ‘e’: ‘ceba’, ‘cadena’, ‘cera’, ‘seda’, and ‘negre’. In Vulgar Latin, these two vowels were pronounced as a closed ‘e’, ‘i’', so for a time they all sounded the same throughout the territory. Today, however, we pronounce them differently: thus, a Valencian will surely complain about the cries that cutting a ‘c[é]ba’ causes him, a Mallorcan about those that the ‘c[ə]ba’ produces, and a Barcelonian about those that a ‘c[è]ba’ causes him. The same happens with ‘cadena’, ‘cera’, and ‘seda’. There is, therefore, a common pattern in how all these words are pronounced.

This pattern outlines the two major dialectal blocks of Catalan. Western Catalan (spoken in the Valencian Community, the Ebro Lands, and a large part of the Lleida regions) retained the closed timbre of this vowel. Therefore, in Mutxamel and Sant Joan d’Alacant, we will hear ‘p[é]ra’, ‘c[é]ba’, ‘cad[é]na’, ‘c[é]ra’, and ‘s[é]da’.

In contrast, Eastern speakers followed a slightly different path. That vowel gradually shifted until it became a tonic neutral ‘e’, a sound that today is only preserved in a part of the linguistic domain. It is the vowel with which an Inquer or an Andritxol says ‘p[ə]ra’, ‘c[ə]ba’, ‘cad[ə]na’, ‘c[ə]ra’, ‘s[ə]də’, and ‘n[ə]gre’.

The story, however, doesn't end here. In the rest of Eastern Catalan (the one spoken in Barcelona, Girona, and Tarragona, among other places) that neutral vowel continued to evolve until it became an open 'e'. This is how we arrive at 'p[è]ra', 'c[è]ba', 'cad[è]na', 'c[è]ra', 's[è]da', and 'n[è]gre'.

Thus, the same vowel has had three different destinies: Western Catalan preserved the closed 'e'; a part of Eastern Catalan transformed it into a neutral vowel and still maintains it; another part continued the change until it opened it.

The story, however, is a bit more complicated than what we have just outlined. Until now, we have spoken of "Mallorca", "Barcelona", or "València" as if each territory were completely homogeneous, but languages hardly ever draw such clear borders.

Neutral vowel

In the case we are dealing with, one of the most widespread clichés is to say that "in the Balearic Islands they use the neutral vowel". However, a glance at the map is enough to dismantle this idea. In Mallorca itself, there are well-known exceptions. Thus, in Binissalem, Alaró and Lloseta, that old tonic neutral vowel opened centuries ago. There they don't say 'p[ə]ra', but 'p[è]ra', just like in Barcelona. Menorca is also divided: in Ciutadella and Ferreries the neutral vowel is still alive, while in Maó and the rest of eastern Menorca the open vowel predominates. In Ibiza, there is a distribution similar to that of Menorca: in some speakers from the southeast, openness predominates, while in the rest of the island the vowel is neutral.

This map helps to understand that the tonic neutral vowel is not an exclusively Balearic feature, but the vestige of an evolution that, during the Middle Ages, had occupied a much larger territory. Over time, a good part of Eastern Catalan continued to evolve until it reached the current open vowel. In some places in the Islands, on the other hand, that process stopped earlier. All this explains why today a Mallorcan says 'p[ə]ra', a Valencian 'p[é]ra' and a Barcelonian 'p[è]ra'. None of the three pronounces the word 'better' than the others. Simply, each way of saying it preserves a different stage of the same evolution.u