"We don't have a language. We have a problem"

The recent changes in the Spanish Senate continue to gather attention everywhere. A very vocal response to the issue comes from writer Manuel Rivas, who had an article in Galician published in the Spanish-language newspaper, El País.

The article, titled As Senadoras, o galego e o Espírito Santo ("The Senators, Galician and the Holy Spirit"), deals with the first multilingual Senate meeting, in which Galician Senator, María Jesús Sáinz, chose to speak in Castilian, as opposed to exercising her newly acquired rights and speak Galician instead. The other nacionalista parties did not applaud her choice. Basque Senator, Miren Leanizbarrutia, said her part in Basque during her turn, as was expected, while the translators in the booth took care of relaying her message in Castilian to the non-Basque Senators in real time. In her speech, Leanizbarrutia added in Galician, directed at Senator Sáinz: "É unha pena que vostede sexa galega e non faga uso da lingua na que Rosalía de Castro escribiu tan fermosos versos" ("It's a shame that you, being Galician, don't make use of the language in which Rosalía de Castro wrote such beautiful verses").

Manuel Rivas starts off the article by saying that "we don't have a language; we have a problem" ("Nós non temos un idioma. Temos un problema."). The language and the problem referring directly to Galician, as the author explains that, for some, speaking anything else other than Castilian is simply "an expense", not even worth the "price of an earpiece", i.e. what the Senators use to hear the translations. He reveals that "I thought I spoke Galician and what I speak is a problem."

Rivas's point revolves around what being part of a "historic moment" truly is. For the other political parties, having spoken in the languages of their autonomous regions was the historic moment. For the Galician Senator, if she had spoken Galician, that would've been her historic moment; choosing not speak it, even when she could, makes it now two historic moments.

The Galician writer sums up his point with the following:

Se o que temos non é un idioma senón un problema, ou un Idioma ao que chamamos Problema, pois máis que política lingüística o que nos fai falta é ir ao santo Freud.
Ou ao Espírito Santo.

("If what we have isn't a language, but a problem, or a Language which we call Problem, then, more than linguistic policy, what we need is to go to the holy Freud.
Or to the Holy Spirit.")

If you speak even only Spanish or Portuguese and are interested in the issue, read the entire article, beautifully written in Galician. If you speak both Spanish and Portuguese, you've probably read through it all already.

Cantigas de Santa Maria

From the English Wikipedia:

The Cantigas de Santa Maria ("Canticles of Holy Mary") are manuscripts written in Galician-Portuguese, with musical notation, during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio (1221–1284) and are one of the largest collections of monophonic (solo) songs from the Middle Ages. All of the songs at least mention the Virgin Mary, and every 10th is a religious hymn.

What brought my attention to these Cantigas is a German band by the name of Qntal whose work consists of songs with lyrics in Latin and a few other languages, like Galego-Português. They have taken several of these Cantigas, and recorded them in the band's enigmatic musical style.

It is interesting to hear a language like this one being incorporated into modern music. For someone who already speaks Portuguese or Galician, reading through these Cantigas is akin to an English speaker reading works written in the English of the 1600's. Undoubtedly, when compared to the evolution of English, the orthographic and morphological changes seen in these Romance languages are not as radical, and one is able to read a document from the 1200's much more easily than one would read something written in English from that same time; peninsular Romance remained stable from early on in its history. Keeping in mind those time periods, there is a sense of archaic in each case — words and grammatical constructions that feel old and aren't used anymore, but we catch the meaning of what is expressed, and with a few footnotes here and there, it is understood with accuracy.