our main aims
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isn't llanito just incorrect spanish?Llanito and Spanish share certain aspects of their linguistic history and may appear similar on the surface as they are both Ibero-Romance languages like Portuguese, Galician, Asturian amongst others. However, over last 300+ years Llanito has been influenced by Gibraltar's heritage languages such as Genoese and Haketia, additionally, since the mid-1900s Llanito has been strongly influenced by British English. Therefore, Llanito, in certain domains, may be mutually intelligible with Spanish and in others completely incomprehensible to a Spanish speaker.
Amongst multilingual Gibraltarians Llanito may be used simultaneously with English and Spanish, two languages which have played a significant role in Llanito's development, in what is known as codeswitching (in this case Llanito-English-Spanish) which may lead some to erroneously believe that Llanito is merely an unordered, unorganised and random mix of Spanish and English when Llanito follows its own lexical and grammatical rules as any other language. “A different language is a different vision of life” |
what is llanito & why should we protect it?Llanito is a reflection of Gibraltar's rich multilingual and multicultural society, it is the direct result of Gibraltar's sociocultural history, our ancestors' intangible linguistic heritage which is slowly disappearing.
Llanito is one of the languages spoken in Gibraltar. According to an undergraduate study conducted in 2014/15 79.4% of Gibraltarians considered Llanito to be one of their native languages. Llanito is a language unique to Gibraltar, if we do not protect, promote and encourage its use, who else is going to do it for us? “The limits of my language means the limits of my world” |
multilingualism is the norm not the exception!The world is full of multilingual countries. Luxembourg has three official languages (Luxembourgish, German and French), Switzerland has four official languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch), Curaçao, a constituent country of the Netherlands has three official languages (Papiamento, Dutch and English). These are only a few examples.
Gibraltar's monolingual language policy is in the minority not the majority. Recognising languages is progress, promoting monolingualism is not. |
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