Where do the borders of language blur?
We often speak of Eastern Catalan and Western Catalan as if they were well-defined territories, but some dialects recall that language does not usually function through clear lines: between one block and another there are contact zones, transition spaces and, above all, many nuances
PalmaIf you were asked where Mallorca ends and Menorca begins, you probably wouldn't hesitate much. There is an evident physical separation, with a lot of water in between, a clear geographical border and a certain feeling that one thing is on one side and another on the other. The same would happen if the question were a little smaller and you were asked where Baix Camp ends and Baix Ebre begins. Perhaps the exact limit wouldn't be so present (those from Baix Camp and Baix Ebre certainly would, of course), but somehow we have assumed that territories can be divided: there is a point from which we leave a space behind and enter another.
However, if the question were different and you were asked where Eastern Catalan ends and Western Catalan begins, the answer would probably be much less immediate. And, despite everything, we often tend to imagine languages in a way similar to territories. We open a dialect map, we see different colors delimited by more or less precise lines and we assume that speakers function like borders: a variety reaches up to here and from here another begins.
It is an intuitive idea and, to a certain extent, it is also a useful simplification. However, language tends to be much less disciplined than maps. When dialectologists draw these lines, it is not because they physically exist on the territory. No one crosses a road and discovers that from that point on the vowels have decided to change or the verbs have reorganized: things tend to happen in a somewhat less abrupt way.
The isoglosses
Lines are, in reality, a way of representing tendencies, and, in dialectology, they allow us to observe that a certain trait is more common in one area than another, but these traits rarely move all together. In dialectology, these lines have a name: isoglosses. An isogloss is, to simplify greatly, an imaginary line that marks how far a specific linguistic trait extends. The problem is that they almost never coincide exactly, but rather the line separating two pronunciations may pass through one place, the one differentiating two verb forms, through another, and the one separating two different words, still a little further on.
When all these lines are drawn on the same map, the result is rarely a clear border: rather, areas appear where various traits coincide, overlap, or follow different paths. In this sense, the so-called transitional dialects serve to exemplify this situation well. At first, the name might suggest a kind of strip located between two clearly differentiated varieties, as if there were two homogeneous blocks and, in between, an area that shared characteristics of both. However, as we have said, things tend to be a little less orderly.
A case that illustrates this quite well is the speech of Masriudoms, a village in Baix Camp. Located in an area traditionally more peripheral within the region and historically more linked to the Tortosa and Ebro area than to the central nuclei of Camp de Tarragona, it presents forms that bring it closer to both western and eastern dialects. However, rather than an ordered sum of different elements, what appears is a somewhat uneven distribution, in which some forms clearly point in one direction while others follow a different direction.
We find, for example, the maintenance of atonic vowelism, one of the most characteristic traits of western dialects. Thus, words like 'tomata', 'cases', and 'fulles' maintain vowel differences that in other varieties (basically those of the eastern bloc) are neutralized. Forms like 'meua', 'teua', and 'seua' also appear, and the masculine article 'lo' (which should not be confused with the neuter), which bring this dialect closer to western varieties.
On the other hand, there are features that bring it closer to the eastern bloc. Thus, the 'e' in words like 'pera', 'beure', and 'orella' is open, as in Reus, and not closed, as in Tortosa. The demonstrative 'aquest' is also quite common, instead of 'este' (although we also find it), which is more characteristic of the eastern bloc.
Similarly, there are cases where forms are not definitively fixed in a single way. The same person may alternate 'caragol' and 'cargol' within the same conversation, just as 'complixo' and 'compleixo' can coexist. This also happens with forms like 'jaure', which would follow a more western model, alongside 'néixer' and 'treure', which with the vowel 'e' are closer to eastern speakers.
When all these features are considered together, it becomes difficult to say exactly where one ends and another begins. There are forms that point in one direction, forms that lean more towards another, and cases where two possibilities coexist without much trouble. And this makes the lines that appear on dialect maps a little more difficult to transfer onto the territory.
Transitional dialects
Perhaps that is why transitional dialects are not so much spaces situated between two clearly separated realities as places where different features coincide and overlap. More than a border between two blocs, they are zones where the contours become a little more imprecise and where it is complicated to point out the exact moment when one variety ceases to be one thing and becomes another.
