Language
Majorca's own language is Mallorcan, the local variety of Catalan language. The two official languages of Majorca are Mallorcan and Spanish. The local dialect is MallorquÃ, even though the dialects are slightly different in most villages. Mandatorily, Majorcan students are bilingual in Catalan and Spanish, with some knowledge of English. A significant number of the tourist population speaks German as a native language, so much so that in Germany, Majorca is jokingly referred to as the 17th Federal State. In 2012 the governing party announced its intention to end preferential treatment for Catalan in the schools to bring parity to the actual two languages of the island.
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Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“We have tried so hard to adulterate our hearts, and have so greatly abused the microscope to study the hideous excrescences and shameful warts which cover them and which we take pleasure in magnifying, that it is impossible for us to speak the language of other men.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)