Customer Reviews

The New Catalan Short Story

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This is the second edition of a collection originally published in 1980. Thirteen stories in Catalan are included, two with facing page English translations. All were originally published between 1970 and 1980, and are drawn from Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. In addition to their general introduction in English, the editors have added introductions in Catalan to each story, along with brief notes in English. There is also a general Catalan-English vocabulary which includes all but the most basic words. A bibliography of ancillary materials (all in Catalan) is appended; most of these works, unfortunately, will be unavailable to American students unless they have access to major university libraries or visit Iberia.
The stories are all, of course, in a language that must be considered "literary", but they are not so far removed from daily speech that reading them would not be of considerable utility to students who are interested in spoken Catalan. This excellent book is a great resource for any English-speaking learner, and in fact makes the language quite accessible even to those with little formal study background, if (like many if not most students of Catalan) they have previously developed a good working knowledge of standard Spanish.
When this book was published, a reasonably democratic government was in place, and the sanctions against Catalan and other minority languages were no longer, so the future for this language seemed bright. In the meantime, however, the percentage of the population using Catalan as their preferred language has continued to drop, especially in Barcelona. This is apparently due to immigration of Spanish speakers and of other languages as well. It can hardly be expected that this little book will do much to reverse trends based upon economics and other factors, but for now it will be an aid for all of those who treasure every small language that survives in the face of the monster languages such as English, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin Chinese.