Majorcan

Dialects of the Catalan language

Majorcan (mallorquí) is the dialect of the Catalan language spoken in Mallorca . It is very similar to the dialects of Menorquin (menorquí) and Ibizan (eivissenc) spoken on the other islands of the Balearic Islands , which is why these varieties are collectively called Balearic .

history

Majorcan as a variant of Catalan is the further development of Vulgar Latin in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. After the reconquest of Mallorca by Jaume I (Jaime / Jakob I), Catalan took the place of the previous official language, Arabic . It is not entirely clear to what extent the Romance language , which came to the island during Roman times, was still spoken there and influenced today's Mallorcan language. The writer and philosopher Ramon Llull , who lived on the island for the longest time from 1235 to 1315, was considered the " Dante of Catalan literature".

At the end of the 15th century, the crowns of Aragón and Castile were united through the marriage of the reyes católicos , the Catholic kings Ferdinand of Aragón and Isabella of Castile . As a result, Catalan as a literary language was increasingly replaced by Castilian (i.e. today's standard Spanish). However , Catalan remained in use as a legal, official and colloquial language .

After the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 to 1714), Catalonia lost its political independence, and the Bourbon kings drove the development of the Spanish central state in its present form.

Castilian Spanish was established as the official Spanish language and in 1716 it was made mandatory as the language of instruction by law. In 1779, plays in Catalan were banned. The 18th century is therefore considered to be the lowest point of the Catalan language, the time of the decadència . It was not until the 19th century that Catalan experienced a new boom. During the epoch called renaixença (rebirth), the language found support again towards the end of the 19th century and became the subject of linguistic research.

After the Spanish Civil War (1939), the public use of Catalan was more or less banned. Franco , who wanted a unified, centralized Spain, suppressed all languages except Spanish. The consequences of this policy can still be felt today. Most Mallorcans are proficient in Spanish, but use Mallorcan among themselves, which, in its spoken form, deviates from the standard depending on the region. Some older people can speak and understand Majorcan, but not write, because during Franco's reign it was only possible to pass the language on orally in families.

With the 1978 constitution, Spanish became the country's official and state language, while Catalan was referred to as the Statute of Autonomy . This provides for Catalan to function as an official regional language. Now all squares, streets, places etc. got their original names back. So Bañalbufar became Banyalbufar again , cuevas (caves) again coves , Puerto (harbor) again Port and even the name Juan became Joan again .

The language-political situation in Spain is now widely accepted by the population. Mallorcan is the spoken Catalan variety of Mallorca, just as Valencian is the spoken Catalan variety of the country of Valencia. There are also spoken varieties in the Tarragona, Lleida, Girona and Barcelona areas. What unites the entire language area, however, is the common written language.

The definite article

Majorcan has a long written tradition and therefore differs from standard Catalan in the written form with one important feature: a differently formed article distinguishes Majorcan. This deviating article is also written.

Today there is a Mallorcan written Catalan, which is essentially based on the Catalan standard language according to the norms of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans , but deviates from it in some aspects. These deviations are mainly in the area of lexicons and verbal morphology.

The Balearic article is only used to represent orality and is otherwise uncommon. Instead of the standard Catalan article el, la, l '/ els, les , Mallorcan uses the Balearic article es, sa, s' / es, ets, ses in the vast majority of cases . In reference to the feminine singular form sa , this article is colloquially called article salat ; someone who uses this article says: xerra salat or in colloquial language: sala . Accordingly, an expression for speaking without Balearic articles has become established; so it is said of Catalans and Valencians that they speak lalat (German: lalen). Etymologically, the Balearic article, unlike the literary article, does not go back to the Latin demonstrative illegal, illa, illud, etc., but rather derives from ipse, ipsa, ipsum, the original meaning of which was the same, the same, the same in Vulgar Latin so far that it was increasingly being used synonymously with illegal, illa, illud.

As an example: The place S'Arenal is not called El Arenal in Mallorquí as it is in Castilian.

Gender and number	Mallorquí	Standard Catalan	Spanish	German
Male singular	it port	el port	el puerto	the harbor
Male plural	there ports	els ports	los puertos	the ports
Female singular	sa dona	la dona	la mujer	the woman
Feminine plural	ses dones	les dones	las mujeres	the women
Male E. before vowel	s'ou	l'ou	el huevo	the egg
Male M. before vowel	ets ous	els ous	los huevos	the eggs
Female E. before vowel	s'adreça	l'adreça	la dirección	the address
Female M. before vowel	ses adreces	les adreces	read direcciones	the addresses

pronunciation

The pronunciation is similar to the pronunciation of Catalan in eastern Catalonia. X sounds as beautiful , Felanitx is called Felanitsch spoken ig end of the word pronounced like ch from the mountain Puig then sounds like coup , and the endings aitx or atypical or atj how adsch spoken Andratx so Andradsch , and Platja ( Beach) like Pladsche . The same applies to aix / eix , which are spoken asch / esch .

In many places where Western Catalan has an open E (è), the Mallorquí has a Schwa sound, similar to the ending E in the German word hour . Especially in the southern regions, an ending a becomes a Schwa sound, so that caixa (bank, financial institution) sounds very familiar to German ears: kasche . Also, the unstressed O is pronounced as O and not as U. In addition, a consistent distinction is made between V and B, which do not coincide as in Spanish (castellano) and in Western Catalan. In addition, some final consonants that are otherwise omitted are spoken, such as the T in molt . Ll is mostly pronounced J and not as Lj as on the mainland, ie "Majorka" (or "Majorke") and not "Maljorka".

grammar

In grammar, there are mainly deviations in the pronouns and the forms of the verbs compared to Catalan . Sometimes there is an end-O in the first person singular that is otherwise omitted. In the formation of compound tenses, ésser is used more often instead of haver .

vocabulary

The vocabulary differs from standard Catalan in a number of details. A noticeable feature that is not limited to Mallorca, but can often be seen on signs, are place and building names that begin with Ca na or Ca'n , which comes from ca ("at", as in French chez ) and the Catalan article before name , the female na and masculine is en and is abbreviated to 'n here . So Ca'n Jordi means “Bei Jordi”. In the female form, which is sometimes also found in mainland Catalan , it would be, for example, Ca na Marga ("At Marga") or Ca n'Àngela ("At Angela").

Another interpretation of the use of the word ca in Mallorca is to take the particle as an acronym for casa , meaning “house”. Then Ca'n Jordi means "House of Jordi". This corresponds to the colloquial phrase ca nostra for "at home".

literature

Hans-Ingo Radatz: gibberish, Mallorcan word for word . Reise Know-How Verlag, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-89416-324-2 .
Artur Quintana: Manual of Catalan. Barcelona, 1986: Editorial Barcino

Web links

Interesting facts about the Mallorcan language

Individual evidence

↑ Lluís C. Batlle, Günther Haensch, Tilbert Stegmann, Gabriele Woith: Diccionari Català-Alemany . Diccionaris Enciclopèdia Catalana, Barcelona 1991, p. 183

Remarks

↑ The pronunciation as Lj for the written Ll is the official variant in Spanish. Most recently, however, J has also been spoken on the mainland.

contents