In some bars in Asturias, a great variety of accents and an endless number of words in bable are easily intermixed with different Castilian forms and popular expressions depending on the part of the Principality where the members come from. The differences, sometimes of pure nuance, start in the typical dishes: those from the eastern area speak of beans and those of the mining basin of fabes. The understanding that triumphs in the tavern commands collides with the convulsive political scene: Parliament is discussing a statutory reform that aims to convert Asturian or Bable into a co-official language, while the street questions whether this disparate cultural heritage can be homogenized.
Two friends who chat in the sun in Oviedo —María Fernández, 23, born in the provincial capital, and Olaya Fernández, 19, from a rural area— explain that in their conversations there are usually expressions in Asturian but that in the towns is used more. Both support the modification that the autonomous government (PSOE, Podemos and IU) has proposed because they believe that in this way what their grandparents “mix up with Castilian” will become uniform. A similar position is used by María Casero and Gonzalo Terrero, aged 49 and 56, who vindicate the bable as something not only “from villagers”. The two professors deny “impositions” and think that co-officiality should “unite.” “We don’t want everyone to talk the same, like on TV!” They joke.
Less calm is the political landscape. The co-officiality proposal led by the socialists of President Adrián Barbón – which still has months of procedures and debates ahead – has been fiercely criticized by the opposition, with Vox harassing the deputy of Foro Asturias, Adrián Pumares, with a public campaign. it depends on whether it prospers or declines. Barbón maintains that the objective is “to recognize a right and protect a cultural heritage.” “It is the best way to avoid the risk of the disappearance of languages”, adds the socialist president, who points out that the adaptation of bable to daily use, once it has become a co-official, would depend on the laws that were approved in this regard, although he emphasizes that no one would be forced to use it nor would there be, for example, bilingualism in school.
The Constitution establishes that it is the decision of the autonomous communities to establish the co-official languages in their statutes, although afterwards these must receive the endorsement of Congress. Currently, Catalan / Valencian, Galician, Basque and Aranese are co-official in a part of the Spanish territory.
The political battle hated Xosé González, president of the Academia de la Lingua Asturiana, who remembers that the PP of Álvarez-Cascos clamored for co-officiality 25 years ago and that the PSOE, until the last electoral program, rarely supported it. González is “optimistic” that the PP will turn again thanks to the “sensitivity” towards the issue of a part of its ranks. The also doctor in Pedagogy emphasizes that the Asturian standard model includes multiple varieties, all under a morphogrammatic that facilitates assimilation: “It is not so complex,” he summarizes.
The imposition of the language that the opposition predicts, González disdains, is not going to take place. And it reassures those who fear that their work will force them to handle the bable. The objective, agrees with Barbón, is a “friendly change” that gives visibility in the media or in the Administration. Only officials, incentivized by, who decide to “recycle” would be affected. Half of the million inhabitants of the Principality understand or speak Asturian on a daily basis, and 25% can also read or write it, says González, relying on a 2018 Equipo Euskobarometer survey.
The regional secretary of the PP, Álvaro Queipo, is suspicious of that “friendly co-officiality” that the PSOE proclaims and urges him, before requesting support for his plan “as an act of faith,” teach the model that he would try to apply.
The main problem for the roots of the bable, observes Inés Fernández-Ordóñez, professor of Spanish Language at the Autonomous University of Madrid, is due to the scarce “language awareness”. The standardization on Central Asturian can cause people of the eastern or western variety to “not identify”. On the other hand, the abandonment of the socioeconomic elites, something that did not happen with the Catalan, has undermined the prestige of the Asturian, details the also member of the Royal Academy. In the street, Alfredo Díaz and Diego Varela, from Oviedo, aged 41 and 37, consider that “there are other priorities” than that “invented Asturian” that “they are trying to impose.” According to them, it is not appropriate to give importance to something that “never had it”.
The panorama seen in Oviedo changes when climbing the steep slopes towards Tabayes, a village in the Bimenes council, whose town hall continues to have Asturian as its “official language” since 1997 despite the fact that the court annulled that decision. In the streets of the town, the neighbors converse, mixing Spanish with expressions and words in Bable. Tino Fernández, 85, is amazed when they ask him if he speaks Asturian: “I speak as usual”, he says, although he admits that when he leaves the land he speaks “finer” because they do not understand him. His speech is almost traced by Laudelino Varela, who pays for the bread he receives in the van in front of the house where he was born 70 years ago: “We talk like our whole lives, like when we were guajinos.”
The question encourages Celso García, 79, to analyze the use of this language with Rosi Díez, 64, who distributes the meat weekly. Both support the promotion of bable and cite Julita Montes as the eminence of the matter. The woman, who at 83 years old wears madreñes (clogs) to move around her garden, also says with a marked accent that she has always spoken the same: “Hablamus como hablamus”. With it one learns that the mist is called borrina, that he escolleru serves to carry water and that carcovar involves making trenches.
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