Episode III Transcript
[INTRO]
Chloe: Hey! For those of you who listened to the last two “bonus episodes,” I’m really happy you listened. There was one catch, though: You had to also understand Galician to listen properly.
–Wait what’s that?–
Hmm let’s rewind a little bit, this time in English.
To begin, I asked my Venezuelan and Argentinian students, Carlos, Alejandro, and Kevin: What is your native language?
We heard from them on the first episode, by the way. Go back and listen to their other interviews if you haven’t already!).
Their answer to my question, of course, was… Spanish.
We talked about English, and then we got into talking about Galician.
As a foreigner in Galicia myself, I found their perspectives really interesting.
Carlos Febres: I understand Galician, obviously, because we have not a year here, but we have a lot of friends that only speak Galicians—or colleagues, co-workers, and some, that only speak Galician…
Chloe: This is Carlos again from Venezuela. And he’s here in Lugo working at the same time that he’s going to school at As Mercedes..
Carlos: The teachers also explain things in Galician, and we understand them. We don’t speak, well I don’t speak, I understand, but, I speak English, and I understand a little bit of Italian—but just a little!
Chloe: And this is Kevin, from Argentina. Like Carlos, he’s working here in Lugo when he’s not in class, and he’s a telemarketer with lots of language exposure on the phone —sometimes it’s really necessary for him to understand people speaking in Galician!
Kevin: [It’s] the same—I speak Spanish my whole life, I understand English and Galician too, because I work here, since I came, and I have [had] much contact with people and all the people that in some cases, they only speak in Galician, they use a little Spanish, and — nada.
Chloe: Alejandro, from Venezuela like Carlos, has a different point of view. He says that for him, Spanish and English are his only two languages:
Alejandro: Actually my only two languages. Like for example, here in Galicia, I don’t speak Galician. I understand it for work and that stuff, when I need to understand it, but I do not speak it. And yeah, I saw some lessons of French in high school, but …ya está.
Chloe: Didn’t stick with you?
Alejandro: Not at all.
Chloe: So do you consider— what language do you consider your native tongue?
Other native languages?
Alejandro: I think it will be Spanish, of course. But yeah,
Chloe: Are there any other native languages spoken in Venezuela?
Alejandro: Well, no, it’s mainly Spanish. Like if you go to [Boliversai], or to the jungle, there are other native languages, but we don’t have the obligation to learn that. It’s a really small group of people that actually talk those languages.
Chloe: While Alejandro’s schooling didn’t require instruction in Venezuela’s indigenous languages, and although Galician can’t truly be considered “indigenous” in the American English sense of the word, I do find it worth noting that Alejandro and Carlos and Kevin and I come here, to Lugo, and see that trilingual education is the “norm.”
Galician, Spanish, and English are co-taught in all of the public schools of Galicia. Since most people in my town in Northern Spain prefer speaking Galician, they continually must define themselves and their minority language in relation to the majority (and quite linguistically similar) languages of Spanish and Portuguese. As a result, I’ve noticed that Galicians are language-conscious in a way that Americans in general are not.
My Galician flatmates many Galicians nowadays, speaking Spanish is a sign of upper-class, city residence; meanwhile, speaking Galician is construed as showing a more rural, even working-class side of your person. This last point is relevant to our vocational school because Galician tends to be spoken in higher proportions depending on your employment sector. For example, my Marketing classes preferred Castilian Spanish instruction; in contrast, my all-male Auto Mechanics classes never ceased chatting in Galician.
In fact, when asked, the mechanics confessed that they didn’t consider themselves fluent in Castilian Spanish. This was shocking to me—the notion that in their world, being bilingual in Galician and Castilian wasn’t an automatic association. The Auto Mechanics also pointed out to me that Spaniards not from Galicia assume that Galicians speaking their native tongue automatically have a substandard level of education; they’re supposedly unpolished and from a poorer area. Hence, the push for Marketing students to learn their subject in the “upper-class,” Castilian Spanish.
However, beyond class status, for Galicians, I’ve seen how speaking their regional language is a matter of preserving a cultural memory.
Artai: I speak Spanish all the time, practically. But I speak in Galician with my dad and with some partners that I have, but not a lot too much.
Chloe: This is Artai, you’ll recognize his voice as the interviewer from the bonus two episodes about Galician linguistic heritage. Shout out to him–you should listen to those, if you can. In this case, he’s talking about how frequently he uses galician: the answer is, with his grandparents, mostly.
Chloe (interview with Carmen, Artai, Carlos Casás): Do you speak it in school at all? Here, in As Mercedes?
All: No, not really.
Carmen: Maybe with old people that just only speak Galician, [Carlos: Yes] you try to speak Galician.
Carlos: My grandparents only speak galician, and I speak galician from [with] them.
Chloe: Carlos, another local from Lugo, agrees with Artai— most of his Galician speaking is done with the older generations. It’s important to remember that Carlos, Artai, and Carmen are all in my Sales and Marketing class. Marketing isn’t focused on Galician education—instead, it takes a more global view, with English and Castilian as its foci.
Here, Carlos elaborates about his grandparents:
Carlos: They understand understand Spanish, but they don’t know how to say it. They only speak galician.
Chloe: Whoa. His grandparents understand Spanish, but can only speak Galician back. That’s really fascinating. Carlos’ observation is one that rings true with many U.S. households who have ever been or currently are immigrant families. The languages, in all of these cases, divide the generations.
Carlos: And I speak Galician with they, and also with friends, and my father. My father talks in Galician a lot of times. They also speak Spanish, but, in more of the times, speaks [speak] Galician.
Chloe: Do you ever get confused between the words?
All: No, no, never.
Carmen: Like— We have specific words for some things that doesn’t exists [don’t exist] in Spanish.
Chloe: Remember Carmen from Episode 1? She’s a great student of mine in Sales class with all these other guys.
Carmen: So you speak Spanish using that words.
Carlos: You mix all the languages.
Artai: We call that Castrapo. Yeah, when you mix Spanish with Galician, we speak Castrapo.
Carlos: A lot of people speak like that.
Chloe: A lot of people speak that language!
Carlos: Speaks Spanish, but using (pronunciaiton: “you-sing,” not “ooo-sing”) words in Galician.
Artai: Yeah, Not much [many] people speak normative Galician.
Chloe: Ok. That’s the one I learning at the escuela/escola, that’s the one they’re teaching me. They say, “When you go out in the wild, it’s not the same.”
All: No, not the same.
Chloe: …Which I find so interesting.
Carmen: And there are so many accents and dialectos (dialects), they mix like different kind of words, or the end of the words are different.
Chloe: Do you [all] have a favorite word in Galician? Or one in castellano?
Carmen: Bolboreta.
Chloe: What does that mean?
Carmen: Butterfly.
Carlos: Yes, it’s a beautiful word. I don’t know, I don’t have any special word, but bolboreta is good.
Carmen: Sanxenxo.
All: *laugh*
Chloe: That’s a town, right?
All: Yes!
Artai: That’s a town. But Spanish people don’t have the pronounce to say “sh.”
Chloe: Really?
Carmen: The x is difficult.
Artai: They don’t have that talent to do that. And the people call Sanxenxo, “Sanjenjo.”
Carlos: Yes. And for us…
Artai: And no. For us–the Galician people–it’s like, oh, please, shut up.
Carlos: It’s very strange when they say “Sanjenjo.”
Carmen: It’s like saying “La Coruna” instead of “A Coruna.”
Chloe: So you never say “La Coruna?”
All: No.
Artai: Or Ourense. No, it’s O- rense.
Chloe: Say it again, I can’t hear it.
Artai: Ourense is bad. We call it Orense.
Carlos: The real name is [ALL] Orense.
(writing)
Artai: Yeah, that’s in the good word
Chloe: I got worried. I’m probably always saying Ourense wrong.. maybe I should ask what other words there are that I should know how to pronounce! Now’s my moment.
Artai: Like Vivero… Viveiro…other town,
Carmen: More with towns, village, that have Galician names, people from other cities change it to Spanish…
Chloe: Terrible.
Carlos: It’s very terrible.
Chloe: ‘Cuz for English speakers coming here, we’re like, “Ah! The “x,” we can say that. [I’m talking about the “sh” sound, the Galician “x” that’s in so many of their words] We can’t say the “j” as well, it’s a little harder.
Carlos: In Spanish, that sound doesn’t exist.
Artai: No, but it’s so rare, because Spanish people can say “Shakira,” but they don’t do that the same when they say Sanxenxo… it’s like, oh please…
Chloe: You need to put a picture of Shakira every time…
Carmen: But for example my mom’s family is from Madrid, and they don’t speak Galician, and that sound–they can’t do it. A lot of names, or things with the “x,” they use it like an “s” and it sounds very bad.
Chloe: I was really relieved to hear that I can pronounce the “sh” the Galician x, at least.
But I wanna ask: What is language about? Is it about perfect pronunciation? Being able to flawlessly speak at native-level in any language you’re learning?
[I mean, that’d be really cool, don’t get me wrong].
But … should all of us language-learners be perfectionists? Is that the “main-idea” of language learning, just as Lugo’s wall from Episode I is its central idea?
Probably not, and really not realistic at all.
Kevin: Always, they ask you if you understand in Galician, and if you don’t understand, they change the language, they start talking to you in Spanish, too, or you—in my case—I want to learn it, to try to understand, because it’s important, if you are here, you try to understand. [Entonces…] I ask them the word that I don’t understand, so I can improve my Galician.
Carlos Febres: Is very normal because people in Galicia, this is an autonomic [autonomous] community, in Madrid, they don’t speak Galician. If someone that is here in Galicia wants to go to Madrid, they don’t speak Galician, they speak Spanish.
But also is very funny because Kevin and I, we speak Spanish, we are from the same continent, there are some words that Kevin says that are not in my Venezuelan dictionary, and is equal, I have words that for him, he don’t [doesn’t] understand, or the meaning is [an]other thing, or something.
Chloe: Carlos and Kevin point out that you can totally get by in Galicia not knowing perfectly all the words in the Galician dictionary. That’d be ridiculous.
Carlos also says, look at this: although he and Kevin both come from the same continent, their words also escape the standard Spanish.
So far we’ve talked, in English, about disappearing generational Galician, still very present upper-class language biases in the regions of Spain, about Venezuelan and Argentinian Spanish Education, and pronunciation preferences in all of these languages.
There’s so much to unpack.
But to conclude, I want to return to the opening of this episode— the idea that trilingual education here in Galicia is the norm. Normative pronunciation isn’t realistic, but normative plurilingual education can be—and is, in this region’s case.
What do you, the listener, think about this? Whether you’re tuning in in Lugo, in the U.S. or someplace else in the world, how does this conversation about plurilingual education relate to your own education? Is it a good thing in today’s global world?
You might agree with me. I say yes, it is a good thing. Or you might say as one Spaniard interviewing to study abroad said to me in his interview: “I don’t need to learn English because I have Google Translate.”
Ok, well, it’s a little hard to communicate with Grandma using Google Translate.
And that’s it for Episode 3! Like last time, thank you to my Sales students Carlos Febres, Kevin, Carlos Casás, Carmen, Artai, and Alejandro Fandiño for being great interviewers. The show’s soundtrack is by another one of my students, Alejandro Cortiñas, and you can find more of his music on his Youtube channel CortiTime. Graciñas to A Banda da Loba, with Seispés Producións Creativas, for their music “Pepa,” And I want to thank my bilingual coordinator, Carmen, for her support. Remember, the rest of our show is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Anchor.com.
Listen to next week’s Episode 4 where we’ll unpack further the Galician interviews from the bonus Galician episodes and continue to engage in my favorite activity—the one I call “linguistic questioning.”
But for now—
See ya later.
chlo-etry 