I arrived three years ago. I was struggling to learn Spanish and resisted Catalan for a year even though I was having a relationship with a Catalan. I felt two languages were too much to take on. I also have many Catalan friends who changed language to suit me but of course regularly shifted back to Catalan as soon as politeness allowed. I actually felt a bit annoyed by this – but it was my ignorance of the situation and the history and the politics of it all!
Once I decided to learn Catalan (and I remember the moment when the dam broke open and the water began to flow through)  everything became so much easier. Surrounded by the language I took it in easily, friends were delighted to help me, everyone I meet is supportive and I feel that my water is now flowing down the easy and open channel!

You already speak Spanish, your children speak Catalan, your friends speak Catalan, you are living in Catalunya, you understand Catalan ……what could be more obvious? Start to speak!

I have met so many people who say they understand it all but never speak it – lots of Spanish people who have lived here for 20+ years say this. What’s it about?  Prejudice?  Fear? Stubborness?  Who knows but what I do know is that I couldn’t live here without learning the language.  Of course we all have the choice but choices also have consequences and now that I am able to communicate with people in their own language I can see what a difference this makes to being accepted.  Kate

i loved french when living in france, i loved catalan since I was born as my mother tongue, i loved spanish since i realized it was the mother tongue of many of my friends, I studied english to have an international language, it was very useful for traveling and surfing the internet… I started loving it through literature and films, and definitely, when my sister moved to the USA. trying to improve it through this website, what a pity this was my first podcast to listen. 
I encourage you to learn catalan too!

I’m not brazenly defending my position as a right.  I’m just explaining – yes, in a public forum – why I haven’t learned Catalan.  But I guess if you frame it as rights issue, I’d have to say it is technically “my right” not to learn it.  It is always my right not to do something.  To my mind, however, my particular case is not at all about rights, it’s just about one man’s circumstances.

I hope that you’ll rethink your position out of mere neighborliness and human solidarity if nothing else, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your children became instrumental in causing you to do so.

You made a decision to stick only to Spanish basically out of laziness and while it seems that the Catalans don’t have a problem with it, you obviously don’t understand Catalans at all.  Due to literally centuries of being shat upon by Spain, they’ve become experts in hiding their real opinions and you would never know it as they talk about you in Catalan with one another.

You don’t actually “like” Catalan.  If you did, you would learn it and, as a fellow Anglophone, I seriously doubt you abilities to read it as the grammar can be exceedingly different than Spanish in many ways.  Sure, you may get the points of it, but you miss the details.

And of course, this gets to the professional level.  I realized that I needed to learn the language in order to be successful in my profession which is working with winemakers here in Catalonia.  Sure, much like you, I could go around speaking Spanish with them, and I have in the past.  But, once speaking Catalan, there was an embrace of trust and an openness that I simply didn’t see when talking with them in what is a second language.  Surely a journalist would understand this?

My wife is Catalan and that makes it seem like an obvious point as to why I should learn it.  But honestly, we only speak English at home and I’ve spoken Spanish with her family for the last five years and, like many expats in Barcelona, it could have continued this way, but no, I made the decision to learn the language which is best summed up in this article.

http://www.hudin.com/blog/the-catalan-language-question/

Needless to say, learn Catalan, or continue to be nothing more than a guest in what you call your “second home”.

The division in Catalonia only refers to the language issue.  When we moved here the sense of things being polarized was much lower.  Before the housing crash and the economic crisis, we almost never had this debate with our Catalan friends.  Now of course the political discourse has turned ugly and people are getting entrenched.  And many more Catalans than before are embracing the idea of independence and defending Catalan against the perceived onslaught from Madrid.  The division we feel now is real.  Both on a national level and autonomous community level. 

The answer seems to me so simple, yet so difficult to achieve.  One language doesn’t inherently threaten another.  There’s room for both.  The problem arises, as always, when politicians use language as a tool to stay in power.

Thanks again!

And again, I must insist that your assertion that you “absolutely must be able to speak one of the two official languages” is basically false, since as you so aptly describe, one really only has to speak Spanish, and as I explained, knowing only Catalan is currently not really enough.

The truth of the matter is that bilingual societies are inherently unstable. Sociolinguists agree that over time (and not much of it), one of two languages that occupy the same sphere (like Catalan and Spanish do), will eventually die out. I think that would be a shame, and is well worth the effort to counteract.

It occurs to me that what really bothers me about your article is not that you haven’t learned to speak Catalan—my great-grandmothers never learned English in the US, despite living there far longer than you in Barcelona—but that you and others so brazenly and publicly defend that position as your right.

Of course I understand that many Catalans would prefer that I spoke Catalan, and that they could speak to me in Catalan (many do, actually, and we have two-language conversations).  You could argue that I’m just as rude by not speaking Catalan, but practically speaking I respectfully disagree.  I can’t respond in Catalan, but they can respond in Spanish.  For me to respond, I’d have to roll up my sleeves and study the language, and as I’ve said what little time I have I dedicate to  my family or other pursuits. 

I don’t see living in Barcelona and finding yourself having to speak Spanish as a problem or difficulty.  I would say that if you live here you absolutely must be able to speak one of the two official languages.  It would be rude and absurd to expect people, for example, to speak English.

As far as the firehose analogy is concerned, as I mention in my blog I recognize that some Catalans are offended by a foreigner like me living here, only speaking Spanish, although understanding Catalan.  Again, if my life were different I’d dive in.  Where does that leave me?  As much a part of the community as I’m able to be.  With lots of Catalan friends, and an even larger circle of Catalan acquaintances who admire us for having embraced the Catalan language – via our choice to educate our kids in it.

I have been to countless dinners, meetings, get togethers, in which there were a few people who spoke only Spanish, and yes, people do make the effort to include them by changing to Spanish for them, but as I’m sure you’ve experienced, Catalan speakers quickly return to Catalan with the others around them who speak Catalan—sometimes in mid sentence.

Just because people speak two languages doesn’t mean it’s the same to them to speak one or the other. Your kids probably speak English and Spanish as well as Catalan, but I’m guessing you speak to them in English, even though you could speak to them in Spanish. I suspect you are not indifferent to the language choice. 

And it’s interesting that you note that although practically all Catalan speakers talk to you in their second language, because, you postulate, “people realize it’s rude to answer someone who’s speaking to you in a language you know – by using a language they don’t” I wonder why you don’t recognize that after 8 years of living in a Catalan speaking community, it’s rude not to make an effort to speak to them in their language.

Finally, I would add that because of Catalans’ accommodation to Spanish speakers, and the attitude of people like yourself, it’s actually difficult to live in Barcelona without speaking Spanish. I happen to know three people who speak Catalan but not Spanish: my US-raised children. We spent a school year in Barcelona in 2010 and they had significant difficulties at the time despite speaking very good Catalan. It turns out that your theory doesn’t hold for Spanish speakers: they have no compunction speaking Spanish to people (children!) who don’t understand it, even with a common language as an alternative.

So, to build on your “water” analogy, I think you have to realize that the Spanish government, and Spanish speakers like yourselves spray a firehose at Catalan speakers everyday. Sure, at that point it’s easier to just go with the flow, but it’s myopic, and I would even say self-serving, to pretend that that is a natural flow.

Again, it’s ok if you don’t want to learn Catalan, just I didn’t like a subtle smell in your text of status quo:  is not a coincidence that you learn so well Spanish and not Catalan, isn’t it? 

Last comment: i don’t agree when you say “ cross-fire of a divided society.”. Have you ever lived in a divided society, really? I don”t think so. In a “cross-fire, divided society” you would  not be able to do what you have done at all. Instead of this analysis, you would be more accurate and, basically, fair and gratefull saing that the Catalan society is an example of coexistence of languages and cultures: the local one, Catalan, and the one brought by armies, Spanish..  Lucky you that people living in Catalonia (Catalans or Spaniards) we are able to speak both and respect the other.

Jaume Nualart (@jaumetet) from Australia