language

[Tom Priestly]

Thankyou, Sandra in New York! As a language pedant and a
minority-language advocate, I would like to add:

In addition to fully-recognized Catalan (català), spoken by over 7
million, Galician (galego) - over 2 million, and Basque (euskara) -
over 650,000, there are two more languages which have semi-official
constitutional status in Spain: Asturian (bable), 450,000 speakers,
and Aragonese (fablà), only 30,000. All of these are Romance
languages except the unrelated-to-anything-known Basque.

In any case, Castilian Spanish will be understood by just anyone you
meet, except perhaps (I am guessing here) by older people in small
Basque villages. Minority-language speakers who wish to make a
'statement' may deliberately not understand Castilian Spanish, but
only when addressed by Castilians - not by foreign visitors.

Tom in snowy Edmonton
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