Catalan Language Taught

The Daily Collegian - 1/30/08

When Andreu Pedró-Garcia walks into his class every afternoon, he is one of only two university instructors in the state teaching the Catalan language.

This class, which was launched at the University of Massachusetts last fall, is an intensive language course. The class currently has 10 students enrolled, and the potential for 20 more. In such an intimate setting, Pedró-Garcia can tailor the lessons to fit the students' needs and help them learn how to communicate effectively.
"I used to live in Barcelona, and everything's in Catalan and I never learned the language," said Ayumi Mizuno, a freshman who took the course last semester. "Now I'm starting to understand what everyone's saying."

Alvaro Acosta, a self-described "language freak," took the course because he comes from Spain and never took the time in the past to learn Catalan.

"It's ironic - I never thought of learning Catalan in the States. I'm really enjoying it," he said.

Catalan is spoken by around eight million people in regions such as Catalonia and Valencia in Spain, the Balearic Islands, Andorra and the Italian island of Sardinia.
Although it is mainly spoken in a small corner of Europe, Catalan has had a troubled past. "The history of Catalan is a history that had to fight against all odds," Pedró-Garcia said.

Under Spanish Head of State Francisco Franco's nationalist regime, "the Catalan language was cruelly persecuted and officially prohibited," Pedró-Garcia said. "Most Catalan writers faced prison, exile, repression or even death."

Since Franco's death in 1975, the language has slowly become more mainstream. It now serves as an important business language in some Spanish cities, such as Barcelona, is broadcast on television and radio shows and is the official language of schools within borders of Catalan-speaking regions.
Currently, Pedró-Garcia is finishing his first semester teaching at UMass and is glad to be sharing his native language and culture with students here. "I'm passionate about the language… [and] I'm for the recuperation of [it]," he said.

A native Catalan speaker from Valencia, Pedró-Garcia studied at the prestigious Jaume I University in Castelló de la Plana for a degree in Translation and Interpreting before studying the teaching of modern languages at various other institutions.
After he earned his post-graduate degree, he taught Spanish at a grammar school in Belfast, N. Ireland and then Catalan and Spanish at the University of Cambridge in England.

Pedró-Garcia came to UMass through the Institut Ramon Llull, a global program founded to promote the learning of the Catalan language and culture in different countries. Currently, there are 19 other universities teaching Catalan in the United States through the Institut Ramon Llull.
While the UMass course has had a slow start, Pedró-Garcia hopes more will still sign up as they learn about the language and the history behind it.

With monetary support from the Catalonian government, a lack of funding for the program shouldn't be a problem. As long as students continue to sign up to learn the native language of tennis pro Rafael Nadal, architect Antoni Gaudí and surrealist Pablo Picasso, Pedró-Garcia will have succeeded in bringing the Catalan language to UMass.