'Jutipiris', 'guardapits' and 'marranxa': Educació launches a project to recover disused words in Catalan

PalmThe Catalan Ministry of Education has launched a project aimed at primary school students to recover Catalan words that are no longer in use or are in danger of disappearing. It's called 'The Treasure Box'. During the presentation, the Minister of Education, Antoni Vera, explained the project's main objective: "Linguistically and culturally, we want to enrich students in an increasingly global and diverse society." He added that "this project also serves as a research and promotional tool for our language, for traditional words that have unfortunately been displaced by more global ones." The box is simple and educational to use. Each school will receive a box and some index cards. Students will have to record the words they want to recover, identified from fables, old texts, or oral tradition. The cards will be placed in the box. Once collected, teachers can open the box and carry out various activities. "They will be able to look up meanings, create dictionaries with phrases, find synonyms, and even make drawings related to the words. They can also make a selection to send to the Ministry, which will then publish them on social media," Vera explained.

The project promotes "the creative and correct use of language and, above all, the preservation of lexical heritage." Vera recalled the work of Father Antoni Maria Alcover. "At the end of the 20th century, Father Antoni Maria Alcover carried out a pioneering linguistic research project. He collected words from villages and compiled a lexicon. He created the Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionaryAlthough not up-to-date, it is a unique reference tool for diversity, vocabulary, phonology, etymology, proverbs, and songbooks.

Commitment to the language

The Minister emphasized the legal framework that supports the initiative. "We are fulfilling a statutory mandate that we often forget. This Government has always defended Article 35: to preserve, promote, and study the island varieties of Catalan, and to ensure that these varieties are protected." Among the words they want to recover are 'bailaruga', 'així', 'jutipiris', 'guardapitos', 'hundir', 'cloaca', 'bolic', 'bufo', 'caganius', and 'sarau'.

"We don't want this treasure trove to stay in the classrooms," Vera stressed. Teachers can send the lists of collected words, indicating the students' names and the school's name, to the email address participacioescolar@ibeducacio.eu. The Ministry will publish the words and the students' names through an Instagram account created specifically for the project. She has also launched a website with all the information. "We need to remember the past, and our past is part of our linguistic heritage, which is extremely important," Vera concluded. The goal is for the initiative to serve as a basis for future projects aimed at secondary and high school students, which will be presented shortly.