Tumbit's take on Spain : Mr Grumpy

In writing my recent blog "Spanish Regional Languages – For or Against ?" I realised that I was completely ignorant of most of the languages of Spain, and like most of the English I simply stuck my head in the sand whenever it came to even attempting to understand anything other than very basic Castellano. This is getting more and more difficult today as my daughter attends a typically Valencian nursery in the village and is slowly learning more and more Valenciano every day and is starting to look like that before long Valenciano will be her first language, followed by Castellano - and finally, English.

All of her school meetings and parents evenings are likely to be held in Valenciano aswell and so whilst I have been succesful in ignoring the language so far, I realise that I am just delaying the inevitable by continuing to find excuses in learning some.

With this in mind, I have dug a little deeper on the some of the major Spanish Regional Languages to investigate both their origins and a few useful phrases that you might like to be aware of – nothing will get you acceptance into your local community faster than a few key phrases in the local language !

A recent study by the Regional Government found that most Citizens do not normally speak Valenciano. Apparently, out of the 6'600 people Interviewed 39.5% used the language at home, 33% used the language with friends and 18% used the language in larger department stores.These averages fell to single digits when the demographic was based just on residents of the major cities – Alicante and Valencia.

There is also some debate as to whether it is actually a language in it's own right – many academics argue the case that it is in fact a dialect of Catalan. Equally puzzling is the fact that Valencian is agreed to have 5 distinct “ Sub-Dialects” that have their own subtle differences !

Here are a few useful key words and phrases that it may be useful for you to know :