Way back in January 2009, I shifted from New Year’s Resolutions to directional intentions. In January 2015, I gave up ascribing any importance to the changing of the years for my language learning. I’ve found that I’m learning more, though about rather odd and disparate things, and am more happy for the change. The problem is that language is a thing for a few weeks of inspiration and something for a lifetime. A year is too long to keep momentum and too short to truly evolve. So consider this my latest update. That it comes in January is solely because I didn’t get to it the month or two before but didn’t delay it till a month or two after.

Minority languages and cultures

Not that long ago, I wrote about what’s happening to Europe and her nation states. In the latest update, the separatist Catalans won a majority in the parliament but the situation on the ground really hasn’t changed. Nobody is too happy with Spain, but nobody is quite ready to find out and pay the price of true independence. And who can blame them? In America’s Declaration of Independence, it was noted:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 

The Catalonians may feel that they have endured a long train of abuses and usurpations, but they’ve not yet come under the kind of Despotism that they’ll take up arms over.  Which may well be for the best. Nonetheless, it is important to try to hang onto those local languages and cultures which have been tolerated at best and deliberately stamped out at worst. I’m thinking especially of the treatment of the Bretons in France here. But the minority language I’ve studied most of late is…

Romagnolo

Emiliano-Romagnolo is a dialect continuum spoken along the eastern coast of Italy. The leading dialect is the Emilian dialect, Bulgnais, spoken around Bologna. Romagnolo variants are found from Ravenna to Rimini and in San Marino. I’ve been studied the Romagnolo of Saludecio, for the simple reason that there’s a Corso Multimediale – really just a grammar and vocabulary, but with sound – at http://marcelpachiot.altervista.org/Dialetto/Indice.htm. In the process, I’ve been creating my own course of sorts. A fellow named Baas has put up a wealth of courses at Memrise including a short one for Romagnolo whose spelling is closer to the Pachiot than to the older resources which deal in all manner of accents and markings to transcribe, as opposed to capturing just enough in writing for speakers to distinguish what is being said. I’ve also started adding my own little Memrise courses. So far, these are drawn from tables in Pachiot’s course. At the same time, I’ve been filling out Romagnolo vocabulary in the Quick and Dirty Guide to Learning Languages Fast, an imperfect but useful tool for documenting from phrasebooks and dictionaries the things you need to learn if there is not a good textbook available. Memrise courses on these lists will come I’m sure. My journey with Romagnolo is, of course, my own, but if you’re learning a language for which good and complete learning solutions are lacking, have a look at the resources I’ve mentioned.