WHAT MY MOTHER SPOKE

Like her family, my mother spoke valenciano as a native speaker, but she lacked a deep-rooted knowledge of the language. Her command was hearsay—oral, instinctive—and she never learned to read or write it. The dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera (1870–1930) had banned schooling in any language other than Spanish. At home and in the street: valenciano; at school: Spanish.

This explains why, for "lizard," I have always used sangrantana—only to discover, after so many years, that it is a metaplasm of the formal word sargantana. The same goes for gavinet, the colloquial form of ganivet ("knife") in standard Valencian.

Why mention this? To show that all languages are cut from the same cloth, cojean del mismo pie—they limp from the same foot. And that if we truly wish to master a language, we must read it. Seeing is believing.