When the 'Argentine' wanted to replace the Spanish: the lesson for the Menorcan debate

In the midst of the tiresome debate about the name and the unity of our language (will it never end?) It's common that, when someone says "Menorcan yes, Catalan no," someone else asks why the same isn't said of Castilian Spanish. In Extremadura, in the Pampas, or on the streets of Mexico City, it's often said that everyone understands they speak the same language, regardless of the variations in vocabulary, phonetics, intonation, and syntax. So why isn't the same criterion applied to Catalan? And it turns out that, indeed, among Castilian speakers there have also been attempts at linguistic secession, which are quite entertaining.

The works that the philologist Amado Alonso dedicated to this issue are particularly interesting. Born in Navarre in 1896, he worked for many years in Argentina, where he became a citizen, and at several universities in the United States, where he died in 1952. Among the many topics to which he dedicated his research was, precisely, the denial of the unity of the Castilian language and the debates about its name.

In the book Catalan, Spanish, national language (1938), Alonso explains that for centuries the names given to languages ​​had no political intention whatsoever, but rather referred solely to their place of origin. Since Castilian originated in Castile, this was the name given to it. But when the Castilian language began to acquire international significance, the name Spanish began to be preferred, just as in France the language of the eye began to be called 'French'.

Centuries later, when the American colonies began to gain independence from Spain, the new national leaders felt the need to sever any ties with the former Empire, and this separatism extended to language as well. To begin with, many again preferred the name Castilian to Spanish. And from the end of the 19th century until well into the 20th, in Argentina, Mexico, and other American states, laws were passed that referred to the 'national language' or 'our language' to avoid any reference to its origin.

And after the name change came the denial of the language's unity by nationalist politicians. Philologists denounced the political manipulation of what was supposed to be a scientific discussion. Alonso quotes the Argentine journalist Arturo Costa Álvarez, highly critical of this trend, for whom the use of ambiguous formulas to refer to the common language "serves only to conceal, as if it were a lie, the real name of the language we speak, and to foster in our fools the hope that, at the same time, nature..." Because, in effect, this was the intention of the secessionists: to change the name in order to end up asserting that Spanish could be the language of Spain, but that in America other languages ​​were spoken, different in each country.

The lesson of Amadeo Alonso

Amado Alonso explains that the same debate also took place in Brazil regarding Portuguese, and in the United States regarding English. Several anti-British American politicians and writers defended names such as 'National Language', 'Statish Language, 'American Language' and 'Federal Language'Among other things, all to avoid the designation of 'English language'. Even in 1923, a congressman from Montana introduced a bill to have the language officially designated as 'American Language', and that the word 'English It was to be erased from all official documents. Alonso, of course, is pleased that the press will make light of this idea and reduce it to ridicule, thus contributing to the project not leaving the congressional committee where it had been presented. Alonso's conclusion, obviously, is that the nature of language is not cheap simply because its name is changed.

It seems fate condemns us to this loop. Those who want Menorcan to be an island, without bridges or a past, should read more. The richness of Menorcan doesn't need its own passport because it's authentic. Wanting to detach Menorcan from Catalan is as ludicrous as an Argentinian who said, inflamed with passion, that the clearest demonstration that Argentinian and Spanish are two different languages ​​is precisely the difference in the passion with which they speak.

If Amado Alonso were to rise from the dead, perhaps he would smile to see that those who today want to kidnap Menorcan to reduce it to insular nonsense, without any ambition, without any projection beyond our seven hundred square kilometers, are playing the same Galdósian role as those who wanted to carve up Castilian or Castilian. For Alonso, American linguistic secessionism masked an inferiority complex beneath a veneer of national pride, and he called for less focus on the flesh and more on the brain. Here it is.