Coming to Mallorca to learn Catalan and not being able to practice it

PalmaIn an overcrowded territory that annually breaks records for tourist arrivals, it is not news that a group of 28 students comes to spend two weeks there. However, things change when the reason for their stay is known: they have come to learn Catalan. During these two weeks, Palma has hosted almost thirty university students of Catalan from various countries around the world. They have come from the United Kingdom, Serbia, Romania, Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and Poland to immerse themselves and learn firsthand about our language, culture, and territory.

Since 2017, the Institut Ramon Llull, in collaboration with the UIB, has organized an annual two-week stay in Mallorca for 30 students from the XarxaLlull. To apply and be selected, they must be students of Catalan at their home universities and have an approximate level of B2. So far, 310 have passed through Mallorca. The instructors of the stay, Carme Sureda and Marc Lladó, admit that the students know a lot: “They arrive very well prepared, they have a very good level of the language”. One of the characteristics of these students' profile is their sensitivity towards wanting to learn languages; for many, Catalan is their third or fourth language and, once they are in Mallorca, it becomes the group's language of communication.

An immersion in Catalan

For two weeks they take Catalan classes, in which they expand their grammar knowledge and work on written expression. Each day a different theme drives the sessions, such as the Civil War in Mallorca, modernist architecture, and mass tourism. The classes are complemented by a program of visits, outings, and lectures on very diverse subjects. This year, among other activities, they learned everything about 'llatra' and the Llevant Natural Park thanks to Art de la Pauma, they got to know contemporary Balearic literature through Aina Fullana, they were able to watch the first episode of Norats to later discuss it with Mateu Morro and Ferran Bex —author of Els Norats and director of the miniseries— and they enjoyed lectures and guided tours on popular literature, art history, and the history of Mallorca offered by UIB professors.Learning Catalan to understand the world

There are almost as many reasons for learning Catalan as there are students participating in the stay. Julia Caminha, a Brazilian, decided to start learning it when she lived in Barcelona, because she saw that it was necessary to live in the city. The Mexican Karina González had also visited Barcelona when she decided to learn Catalan. Right now she is studying it to be able to go live there and take a master's degree at the UPC: “If you want to work in a team, you have to know Catalan, you have to understand each other with your colleagues”. Margherita Onorato, Martina Cazzola and Dominik Korsinek, from Italy and Hungary, on the other hand, came into contact with it at university. They are students of Modern Languages and Hispanic Philology, and they started learning it, says Margherita, “because it is a different language; you don't know many people who study it”. For Martina, who studies English, Spanish and German, incorporating one more language into her repertoire was an opportunity “to open herself up to a new culture, people and another way of seeing life”.

There are also students, however, from the Spanish state, such as Jesús Sandoval, who studies in León and started taking Catalan classes when he was on a stay in Lisbon: “I was already watching series in Catalan, but I wanted to learn to speak it. During my degree, I discovered sociolinguistics and the discrimination of minoritized languages and I thought that knowing Catalan would help me understand even more the situation of Spain, where there are three”. Others like Huba Csermely and Thiago Ballestero have wanted to learn Catalan following socio-political events, such as October 1st, to understand them better.

The Catalan they have learned and the Catalan that is spoken

Coming to Mallorca helps them put Catalan into practice, live in this language for two weeks, experience the local culture, see the differences between the Catalan they learn and the Catalan dialects they encounter in the territory, and, furthermore, complement their training. This is the case for the Frenchman Chris Mauro and the Japanese woman Ai Katayama: Chris would like to write his doctoral thesis on Catalan dialectology and Ai is working on her final degree project about touristification in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands; they have taken advantage of these days in Mallorca to collect information and, in Ai's case, to interview representatives of associations and political movements.

When learning Catalan is not enough to speak it

However, not everything has been idyllic on the island of calm. The students have experienced firsthand the sociolinguistic reality of a Catalan speaker in the Islands; that is, they have seen that it is difficult to be able to live fully in Catalan. Claire-Marie Brannens did not imagine it would be like this: “I have experienced many situations I did not expect; I was not aware of the situation of Catalan in Mallorca”. Some explain that their first breakfast at the hotel began with an “En español, por favor” when they stated their room numbers. “I think there is not much difference between ‘Cent dotze’ and ‘Ciento doce’”, says Jesús. Magda Ciesla, who is Polish, on the other hand, makes a point: “I am surprised by the waiters; it is a group that rarely responds to you in Catalan, they always speak Spanish and English. On the other hand, in bookstores they speak to us in Catalan and you can tell they like that we are learning their language”. From these bad experiences, however, they also extract positive things, as Huba explains: “Coming here has made me see how you Catalan speakers live; now I am much more empathetic, because I myself have experienced these situations in which I have not been able to speak Catalan”.

From their stay in Palma, they take away much more than theoretical knowledge. They have learned a great deal about Catalan, the history of the island, the customs, and the traditions; they have seen that there are indeed people, spaces, and associations that fight in favor of the language and culture, because as Chris explains, “the culture of the Catalan Countries is very diverse, but at the same time there are so many people who keep it alive”. They have also seen that many people value their effort and their dedication to learning the language, valuing it, and loving it. There have been those who have also changed their perception of the island. The nationality with the most representation during the stay has been British, and Jack Hutchinson and Iain Kennedy admit that the experience has allowed them to see and live the Mallorcan culture and erase the tourist image that is sold all over the world. “We have really seen the contrast between two Mallorcas, the one they explain in the United Kingdom and the real one”. However, everyone agrees on highlighting that they are taking away many new friendships: “We are people from many countries now connected by a language, Catalan”.