Foreign Language Study

A significant movement for Catalan independence has been building since 2010 and in 2015 is bringing Catalonia to a political showdown with the Spanish state. The Catalan language has long been cast as a key sign of identity and a rallying point for Catalan nationalism. This classic anthropological study, originally published in 1989 and now available for the first time in paperback, provides essential background for understanding Catalan national identity and its relationship to the distinctive Catalan language. Author Kathryn A. Woolard analyzes language and identity politics at a significant turning point in the modern history of Catalonia: 1979-80, when political autonomy was re-established after the end of the Franco dictatorship. This book examines the formal language politics of parties and policymaking as well as the interpersonal politics of individuals negotiating their social identities through choices between the Catalan and Spanish languages. This dual approach uncovers the relationship between the public and personal meanings of the languages that continue to resonate with Catalan national aspirations in the current political movement. Double Talk confronts enduring questions about bilingual life that arise not only in Spain, but also in settings worldwide.

At first glance, there may seem little reason to think of English and German as variant forms of a single language. There are enormous differences between the two in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and a monolingual speaker of one cannot understand the other at all. Yet modern English and German have many points in common, and if we go back to the earliest texts available in the two languages, the similarities are even more notable.

How do we account for these similarities? The generally accepted explanation is that English and German are divergent continuations of a common ancestor, a Germanic language now lost. This book surveys the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the earliest kown Germanic languages, members of what has traditionally been known as the English family tree: Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian, and Old High German.

For each language, the author provides a brief history of the people who spoke it, an overview of the important texts in the language, sample passages with full glossary and word-by-word translations, a section on orthography and grammar, and discussion of linguistic or philological topics relevant to all the early Germanic languaes but best exemplified by the particular language under consideration. These topics inclued the pronunciation of older languages; the runic inscriptions; Germanic alliterative pietry; historical syntax, borrowing, analogy, and drift; textual transmission; and dialect variation.