Ander Rojano: Keeping the Historical Languages of Spain Alive

Who decides which among many historical languages of a country gets to be the eponymous of the country? In the case of Spain, which is home to at least four widely spoken languages, as well as several others not as widely spoken, only Castellano (or Castilian in English) gets to use Spanish, literally, “the language of Spain,” as its international name. Why aren't Catalán, Gallego, or Euskera, called "Spanish" instead? Had we posed this question to Ander Rojano, our guest for this episode, we’re confident we would have received an answer as comprehensive and interesting as the answers he provided for the other questions we asked, most of which were about growing up speaking Castellano and Euskera, the regional language of Basque Country in northern Spain, and later teaching public school using both as instructional languages. But that’s not all! He now lives and teaches in Barcelona, the capital of Catalunia, where all teachers, including Ander, who's from Basque Country, are required to teach in Catalán. We spoke with Ander in English for this episode, but we could’ve spoken to him in French, a fifth language in which he considers himself fluent, as any philologist would. Listen as Ander discusses the history and politics of Euskera and Catalán, how he learned to speak both, how public education in Basque Country and Catalunia reflects the students’ diverse levels of fluency Euskera and Catalán, and the differences in how he feels when he speaks Euskera as opposed to Spanish. Near the end, Ander reads us a story in Euskera that we found profound and poignant, despite the fact that it consists of one, very short paragraph. We also offer an addendum to our discussion in our last episodes about the president’s executive order designating English the official language of the United States.