Aragon and the Catalan language

The Aragonese regions where Catalan is spoken have experienced a few nonsense regarding the legislation of this language.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
20 March 2023 Monday 00:48
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Aragon and the Catalan language

The Aragonese regions where Catalan is spoken have experienced a few nonsense regarding the legislation of this language. Do you remember lapao and lapapyp, the initials of the official names that Aragon gave to Catalan and Aragonese between 2013 and 2015? Now it seems that order has been established because the Aragonese Language Academy, which includes two institutes, one dedicated to the Aragonese language and the other to Catalan, has just published an agreement on the official use of the Catalan of Aragon. Although the regional law allows it to issue regulations, the Aragonese Academy assumes the criteria of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC) and, due to the fact that the Strip is included within the western dialectal variant, it also takes into account the criteria of the Valencian Language Academy.

The summary is that what politics tries to divide, linguistics unites again. It already happened with the creation of the Valencian Academy. As much as the Valencian political interest was that with the creation of this academy different regulations were established to make people believe that what is spoken in the Valencian Country is not Catalan, they did not achieve it. Although with nuances, the Valencian Academy maintains the normative criteria of the IEC.

In all this matter, there are three points to keep in mind. The first is that the IEC was recognized by a royal decree of 1976 as a normative academic center for the Catalan language in all the territories where it is spoken. The subsequent Constitution and the creation of the autonomies diluted this original norm that, however, the Aragonese Academy de la Lengua recovers and specifically mentions it in its agreement. Return to the starting box.

The second point is that the IEC is a supra-autonomous academy, it does not depend on the Catalan administration, and its members come from all over the linguistic domain, such as Aragon, Northern Catalonia or l'Alguer. And the third is that neither of the two academies created later bear the phrase “Valencian language” or “Aragonese language” in their name, but rather the Valencian Language Academy and the Aragonese Language Academy. A clarification: this second one does make sense in regards to the Aragonese language. As an epilogue, it must be added that neither of these two regional academies has considered establishing itself as a Spanish institute. This aspect belongs to the RAE in the case of Spain. So, why isn't the linguistic authority of the IEC directly admitted and money invested in this transversal institution instead of setting up each autonomous community its own beach bar?