<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - languages]]> 10 <![CDATA[The cake]]> If a society is aware of what demographic changes cause, this is island society. It has been said many times and it is very true: Mallorca, for example, has been a kind of social laboratory where many of the economic ideas that have ended up shaping many parts of the West could be experimented with. A small, closed society, immensely devoted to a survival or agrarian economy, suddenly entered into a cycle of expansion, construction, demographic change, massive arrival of immigration, tourists, etc., which undid old ties, hierarchies, and cultures. Literature has made enough echo of this problem, while politics was responsible for either denying that anything too serious was happening, or for trying to steer it for the greatest benefit, in theory, of everyone, but in practice, of the political and economic elites.A society that is not capable of guaranteeing its basic survival structures is doomed to suicide, or to a perpetual identity crisis, which is beginning to be noticed as a continuity crisis, and also obviously, as an economic crisis. It is now in the rest of the Spanish state that a brutal population growth is being experienced, especially in this last decade. The economic model needs a lot of labor, and an aging population, dependent on care and with a very low birth rate among us, have finished fixing the pie.The 2008 real estate crisis slowed expansion, but from 2015 it began to grow again, now with more Europeans, Ukrainian refugees (more than 300,000), digital workers, etc. At no point has there been an explicit manifestation of the political desire to increase the population, however; citizens have seen the wave arrive without having been consulted, or without it having been clearly politically planned.However, the reforms of the immigration laws in 2022, and the facilities required at the same time by the EU, which is aware that Europe is aging and that the economy needs new blood, have now led to a point where one gets the impression that collapse is imminent, and not just in communities with non-Spanish languages, but everywhere. Such a wave required planning, as well as the capacity to integrate people and make them speak the language of the host country. From Spain, they know that people end up speaking Spanish out of obligation, what choice do they have, while Catalan speakers bow their heads and give up their language, which in the long run only increases the number of Spanish speakers by millions. It is one way among others of putting an end to non-Spanish languages, diluting them, and denying that demographics is a tool to achieve this objective, more than recurrent in the history of Spanish nationalism, it is a way of playing into its hands or whitewashing it. Spanish nationalism itself throws its hands up in the air when it finds that Spanish is no longer heard in certain neighborhoods or areas of the big capitals, a scandal that when it came from Catalan speakers was always mocked and stigmatized. Now it will be seen more than ever in favor of which language – not of which languages – the Spanish state is. Money has always spoken the language of those who handle it.

]]> <![CDATA[Margalida Capellà, the bell ringer who revolutionized the teaching of Greek and Latin with new technologies, has died.]]>

The world of Classics mourns the death of Margalida Capellà Soler, a native of Campanet, a secondary school professor of Greek, and one of the most influential voices in the modernization of Greek and Latin education in Catalonia. Capellà stood out for breaking with the idea of ​​classical languages ​​as "dead languages," pioneering the incorporation of new technologies in the classroom and championing innovative methodologies that brought the classical world closer to students from a living, contemporary perspective connected to reality.

]]> <![CDATA[Balearic Islands fail English: islanders have one of the worst levels in all of Spain]]>

The Balearic Islands have obtained 534 points in the EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) 2025, the most comprehensive global ranking of adults' English proficiency, a slight improvement over the previous year (526 points). However, the region remains below the national average (540 points) and occupies one of the lowest positions in the regional ranking. According to the EF-Education First report, compiled using data from 2.2 million adults in 123 countries and regions, Galicia, La Rioja, and Madrid lead the way in English proficiency in Spain, with 563, 560, and 553 points, respectively. Conversely, Andalusia, Murcia, Extremadura, and Castilla-La Mancha registered the worst results, with scores below the national average. Other regions, such as the Valencian Community (537) and the Canary Islands (539), also fall below the average, while the Balearic Islands (534) remain in the middle range, despite the influence of the international tourism sector, especially in Palma. The city achieves 549 points, above the national average, and is among the cities with a medium-high level of English proficiency. Regarding language skills, the report confirms that reading is the main strength of Spanish adults (558 points), followed by listening comprehension (525 points). Written expression is at an intermediate level (506 points), while oral expression remains the weakest skill (462 points), indicating a priority area for improvement in the Balearic Islands and the rest of the country. Globally, the Netherlands maintains its world leadership, followed by Croatia and Austria, while major economies in Asia and Latin America continue to lag behind. Central and Northern Europe show slight progress, and the gender gap in Spain continues to narrow for the second consecutive year, with women and men increasingly close in language proficiency. According to EF, English proficiency goes beyond mere communication: it becomes a key tool for innovation, access to economic opportunities, and international collaboration, especially in a context where artificial intelligence and advanced technologies are largely developed in English.

]]> <![CDATA[Why can we say "cantam" in Catalan but not in English?]]>

In Catalan, and in Romance languages in general, the verb carries so much information that it's unnecessary to say the subject. When we say "we work," we already know it's us. Our system is so automated that we're not aware of it, but every Catalan verb carries, on its own, information about who the subject is. However, if we change languages, things can be different. English speakers, for example, always need the pronoun: 'we work'Without that element, the sentence would be incomplete. The verb is the same for almost all persons, and only the third person of the present tense adds an 's': 'he/she works' (literally, 'he/she works'). That's why the pronoun is obligatory.

]]> <![CDATA[The great maritime odyssey of human languages]]>

Charles Darwin, in his book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) stated that "the formation of different languages and different species, as well as the evidence that both have developed through a gradual process, are curiously the same." In the 19th century, a language was compared to a living organism: it is born, grows, and dies. And also, like certain organisms, it can multiply and expand. This can happen more or less quickly, or more slowly.

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