CATALAN: DIALECT or LANGUAGE? The Ministry of Truth: D.J. Taylor - Orwell - The Life

Part Three of a series of six posts.

See previous posts here and here. See next post here.





On page 207 of his book Orwell - The Life D.J.Taylor writes:

…whose Catalan dialect he [Orwell] still had great difficulty in comprehending…

Catalan is emphatically not a dialect. Catalan is very much a proud, living, thriving language; I hear it spoken, shouted and sung every single day. I read it everywhere, every day.

There are an estimated 16 million Catalan speakers worldwide - the population of Catalunya is 7.5 million - and a sizeable, mainly immigrant, proportion of those do not speak Catalan.

The celebrated author Patrick O’Brian understood this well, referring to Catalan as the lingua franca of Napoleonic seafarers in the western Mediterranean. Contemporary English born Catalan writer Matthew Tree also understands the sometimes fraught relationship between Catalan speakers, Spanish speakers and interlopers who insist on calling Catalan a dialect.

It is the kind of insensitive error which costs lost sales in Catalunya, needlessly raises hackles, and lends succour to unreformed franquistas and centralists.

I've searched Homage to Catalonia thoroughly and not found a single mention of the word 'dialect'.

I've read, and re-read, Orwell's letters and essays and have never once come across Orwell describing Catalan as a 'dialect'.

And, though Orwell reports, "having the usual struggles with the Spanish language" (H.T.C. page 14), I haven't been able to find any mention of Orwell's 'difficulty' with Catalan.
Orwell simply says: "Things were not made easier for me by the fact that when my companions spoke to one another they generally spoke in Catalan. The only way I could get along was to carry everywhere a small dictionary which I whipped out of my pocket in moments of crisis." H.T.C. page 15.

Here are Irish writer Colm Tóibin’s thoughts about Catalan from the opening chapter of his book Homage to Barcelona:

"Catalan, I discovered, isn’t a dialect of Spanish, nor of Provencal, although it has close connections with both. Some words (casa for ‘house’, for example) are the same as in Spanish; other words (mengar for ‘eat’) are close to French or Italian. Most of the words for fruit, vegetables and spices are completely different from the Spanish words. The way of forming the past simple is like no other language; the way of forming the past continuous is more or less the same as in Spanish; the way of forming the past subjunctive is the same as in Italian.

Catalan is a pure Latin language. There are no Arabic sounds. Thus the pronunciation of the word ‘Barcelona’ does not have the ‘th’ sound as used in the series Fawlty Towers. Catalan sounds are harsh and guttural. The language is full of short, sharp nouns such as cap for ‘head’, fill for ‘son’ and clau for ‘key’; and similar-sounding verbs: crec for ‘I believe’, vaig for ‘I go’ and vull for ‘I want’. "

Speaking and writing Catalan was illegal during the dictadura (dictatorship).* As was, for a while, sign-language. Deaf and/or mute persons were obliged to communicate through writing in castellano. Which is why you'll come across photos of deaf mutes wearing little chalkboards around their necks. Illiterate deaf mutes existed in a silent purgatory.

Many of Franco's followers referred to Catalan as the 'language of curs', and Catalans were often dismissively referred to as polacos (Poles)**. Which is why the most popular Catalan satirical TV shows are called Polònia and, the football spinoff, Crackovia.

Franco's followers referred to castellano as the 'Christian tongue' - ignorant of the irony that Spanish has absorbed more Arabic (i.e. non Judeo-Christian) words than any other modern language. Spanish is a mongrel language - not Catalan - just as is English.

But Franco did not just proscribe the use of Catalan (and the public demonstration of Catalan folkloric traditions) he wilfully tried, though failed, to eradicate it. He tried to dilute it through miscegnation - by encouraging inward migration from Spain, mainly Andalucia and Murcia, and using Catalunya as a sort of open prison for banished Spanish petty criminals***, while at the same time populating the territory with hardline priests, missionaries and teachers.

And he failed. One of the most inspirational elements of Spain's reconstruction since the dictatorship has been the magnificent re-flowering of the Catalan language.

"Catalan is a pure Latin language," says Colm Tóibin, and I agree.

"But I defy anyone to be thrown as I was among the Spanish working class — I ought perhaps to say the Catalan working class, for apart from a few Aragonese and Andalusians I mixed only with Catalans — and not be struck by their essential decency; above all, their straightforwardness and generosity." Orwell said (H.T.C. page 15), and I agree.

VISCA CATALUNYA!

*Some texts in Catalan were published during the dictatorship - but what could and couldn't be published was strictly regulated.

** Many Barcelonins at the time referred to the Communists and their Soviet advisors as the Chinese - so it was possible to hear conversations describing the conflict as one between Chinese and Poles!

** A popular character in our local bar was banished to Barcelona from a village near Jaén in Andalucia when he was 12 years old in the 1960s because he had taken a shot at the local latifundista (estate owner) with his catapult. His widower father, with four younger boys to care for, was given the choice: either spend six months in prison or your oldest son is banished to Cataluña. His son was put on the train the next morning with a cardboard suitcase and 30 pesetas in his pocket - he's lived here ever since.

STUKAS OVER GUERNICA? The Ministry of Truth: D.J. Taylor - Orwell - The Life

Part Two of a series of five posts. SEE previous post. SEE next post.

On page 149 of Orwell - The Life D.J. Taylor refers to: ….Stukas sweeping down over fleeing civilians at Guernica;



I'm aware that Piers Brendon picked up on this in his Guardian review, referring to it as a “significant mistake”:

"This is a more significant mistake than it seems since the fact that these planes, the most accurate bombers in the Condor Legion, did not take part indicates that the attack was directed against civilian not military targets, which the fascists always denied."

I can sense why D.J. Taylor referred to Stukas. With an unmistakeable gull-wing profile, a terrifying siren and whistling bombs, the Stuka gained a notoreity and a synonimity with the Blitzkreig. The Stuka was the Nazis most accurate dive-bomber, and was deployed very successfully during the invasions of Poland, France, Norway and the Soviet Union.

For many, including veterans of Dunkirk, the Stuka would have been their first, and unforgettable, contact with the enemy. (It was also equipped with state of the art bomb aiming and release technology supplied by the U.S. – who, incidentally, refused to share the same technology with the Brits and French.)

The aircraft used on the raid included Dornier 17, Junkers 52 (transports converted for bombing) Heinkel 111 bombers and Heinkel 51fighters. In addition, at various times during that dreadful day, Italian escorts played a role.

If the Condor Legion’s real target, as their pilots later insisted, was a bridge just 300 yards from the town, it would have made military sense to have deployed machines capable of delivering an accurate strike, i.e. Stukas (Junkers Ju87). Early versions of the Stuka were available to be deployed that day, but the Germans chose not to use them. Furthermore, if the bridge had been the true target then why were incendiary bombs used? You can't destroy a stone bridge with 1Kg incendiary devices, even if were possible to deliver them all on the target.

Reliable detailed accounts of the raid are still hard to come by, and, as Orwell said about the Barcelona May Days in 1937, “It will never be possible to get a completely accurate and unbiased account….” Most survivors of the terrible raid were not trained aircraft observers.

According to many records at the time of the Guernica raid, the Condor Legion had three type A Stukas in Spain. According to the following extract from Experimentation: Reality and the Lie by Robert Helms four Stukas could have been available that day:

"The Renteria Bridge was presented by the German pilots in later decades as the principal military target in Guernica. Supposedly it survived because the wind had blown their bombs off target. It's a small stone structure, held up by two small pillars. The question as to why anti-personnel and incendiary bombs would be used to destroy such a target remains outstanding. In fact, the mission's commander knew that the town was just 300 yards from the bridge. The small incendiaries were certain to scatter like leaves and land all over the area when dropped from the height of 6,000 feet. All this clearly establishes that the bridge was never the real target, and that the town was marked for total annihilation. There were four Stuka dive-bombers available to Von Richthofen that day, capable of carrying single 1,000-pound bombs. These could have been deployed to very precisely and easily destroy the bridge. Furthermore the Junkers came in flying abreast, and not single-file, as they would if they'd been targeting a single, small target."

The point is that the Stukas were not deployed in the Guernica raid. So, why state they were?

The MINISTRY OF TRUTH: D.J. Taylor - Orwell -The Life

A few years ago a very good friend bought me D.J. Taylor’s biography, Orwell: The Life. It's an entertaining and informative read. However, the book contains several important factual errors.

Mr Taylor is a respected academic, critic, essayist and novelist. Mr Taylor regularly writes comment pieces, essays and reviews for the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman and Spectator and is fairly visible on the UK literature festival circuit as a speaker, discussion panel chairman and as a literary award judge. Mr Taylor served on the Man-Booker Prize panel of judges in 2003.

I think it is important to address these errors as the biography will likely become a standard reference for future Orwell scholars. And, with so much disinformation, deliberate distortion and innaccurate information regarding key events during the Spanish Civil War [SEE: Burnett Bolloten’s excellent The Grand Camouflage: The Communist Conspiracy in the Spanish Civil War] I think it essential that errors are addressed and corrected.

My commentary on the errors is split over five posts and a summary.

In this post I note the minor errors, in the second post I discuss Stukas over Guernika, in the third post I discuss Catalan, in the fourth post I discuss May Day in Barcelona, 1937 and in the final post I again discuss the May, 1937 street fighting in Barcelona with reference to the Assault Guards.

Okay, let's get on with it.

Abbreviations:

OTL - Orwell - The Life

HTC - Homage to Catalonia

Page references:

Orwell - The Life - All page numbers pertain to the 2003 hardback edition.

Homage to Catalonia - All page numbers pertain to the 1982 Penguin edition, and cross-referenced when appropriate with the text as it appears in Orwell in Spain edited by Peter Davison, published by Penguin in 2001. This cross-referencing is important when considering my comments about the Asaltos (Assault Guards), as you'll see.

Citations from:

Orwell- The Life appear in italics.

Homage to Catalonia appear in standard font.

Other works cited appear in a different font.

My emphases in the cited passages appear in bold.

Okay, let's really get on with it.

On page 28 of OTL when describing the atmosphere of the weeks immediately preceding and following the outbreak of the Great War Taylor refers to Alec Waugh's The Early Years of Alec Waugh:

Evelyn Waugh's elder brother Alec remembered watching Kent play cricket at Blackheath, with a stream of telegraph boys arriving on bicycles to present the players with their summonses to call-up.

Alec Waugh may very well have thought he recalled such a sight, but he would have been mistaken. The call-up, or conscription, was not introduced until January 1916, i.e. eighteen months after the war started and the so-called events described.

OTL, page 135 (and Index, page 462):

Orwell's poem On a Ruined Farm near His Master's Voice Gramophone Factory is incorrectly titled as On a Ruined Farm near His Majesty's Voice Gramophone Factory.

OTL, page 205:

D.J. Taylor describes Las Ramblas in Barcelona as being: Barcelona's principal thoroughfare. The Ramblas (Las Ramblas is actually five connected ramblas) do not, have never, and will never, constitute Barcelona's principal thoroughfare Most illustrious, most celebrated, the best known, yes; but principal thoroughfare? No and never.

Why is this important? Well, during the May Day events of 1937, as described by Orwell in HTC, Orwell was positioned on the Ramblas. To read D.J. Taylor's description of the Ramblas as being the principal thoroughfare could lead readers to think that Orwell was therefore part of force attempting to control movements on what was considered a strategic highway. Not so, the Ramblas formed the boundary line between the Administration and the Raval (or Barrio Chino as it was then popularly called), the working-class, and predominantly anarchist barrio. After the successful insinuation of Communists into the local administration the Ramblas became a front line between political power and proletarian order.

Even today the authorities use the Ramblas to mark the boundary of acceptable public behaviour - it's a sort of unmarked threshold to the seat of power. So, for instance, if a group of prostitutes stray onto Carrer Ferran (the street leading from the Ramblas into Plaça de Sant Jaume) they won't be there long before the Mossos d'Esquadra or Guardia Urbana move them back to the other side of the Ramblas.[As at September 2009 this is currently the subject of much political debate.]

It's as well to know that Barcelona was once a gated city and the part of the city containing the cathedral, various palaces and what is now the Generalitat (regional autonomous government H.Q.) and the Ajuntament (City Hall) formed the inner city, entry to which was strictly controlled.

OTL, page 215:

Then they caught the early train at Barbastro and transferred to an express at Lerica.
I think this is a straightforward typo. The town is Lérida in castellano or Lleida in catalan.

SEE HTC, page 105: ... caught the five o'clock train at Barbastro, and - having the luck to connect with a fast train at Lerida [accent missing] - were in Barcelona by three o'clock in the afternoon of the 26th.

OTL, page 218:

Here Taylor refers to the Soviet Union inspired militarisation of the Republic's armed forces: ... into which all the armed forces had since February been theoretically incorporated.

SEE HTC, page 109: Since February the entire armed forces had theoretically been incorporated in the Popular Army ...

Both D.J. Taylor and Orwell are mistaken. Theoretically the armed forces had been incorporated into the Popular Army since the passing of a decree on October 9th, 1936. [Both Taylor and Orwell are referring to February, 1937] Which makes the POUM's, and other militias', resistance to militarisation even the more remarkable. The road to militarisation began with an appeal by Largo Caballero (for a time referred to as the Spanish Lenin until he fell out of favour with the Communists) in September, 1936.

And, finally, a quirky one; not so much an innaccuracy, more an omission:

On page 272 of Orwell - The Life D.J. Taylor writes:

... Reg Reynolds' wife Ethel Mannin, treasurer of the SIA ...

Ethel Mannin was a very well known, well published, and according to many, well regarded author and activist in her own right. I've read several of her novels and travel books. She did a lot of work to aid the Anarchist cause in Spain. To be simply labelled the wife of a Trotskyist activist I find a bit strange ... I wonder why?