The Economist February 12th 2022 Culture 77T
he eurovisionSong Contest is often
regarded as a kind of mirror for Eu
rope. The grudges, alliances, colour and
kitsch—and most of all the peaceful
spectacle watched in dozens of coun
tries—represent both the best and some
times the silliest of the prosperous mod
ern continent. One of the rivalries it
captures is among Europe’s languages. A
recent heat in Spain, to help choose the
song to be sent to the finals in May, ex
hibited another kind of linguistic squab
ble: the dominance of national languages
over misunderstood regional ones.
Spanish viewers were treated to Tan
xugueiras, a Galician trio, and their song
“Terra”. The presenters scored their first
outrage with Galician viewers when, in
what seemed a scripted line, one said (by
way of introduction): “Belgium has sent a
song in an invented language, not once
but twice.” Her colleague jokily clarified:
“But our next candidates to represent us
have not invented anything.” Instead, she
explained, the song was written in one of
the regional languages that have joint
official status in their parts of the coun
try. It was mostly in Galician, spoken in
Spain’s northwest, but included a re
peated line (“there are no borders”) in
Basque, Catalan, Asturian, Spanish and
Spanish Sign Language.
The crowd loved the tune; Tanxuguei
ras won the viewers’ vote. The two in
ternational judges were also taken by the
trio. But not so the Spanish ones, whose
votes swung the victory to another song
(in Spanish). The double insult of the
presenters’ banter and the judges over
riding the popular choice set Galician
social media alight. Their language,
Galicians complained, is in no way “in
vented”. A descendant of Latin, it is every
bit as old as Spanish. Some speculated
that the Spanish judges simply couldn’tcountenance sending a song that is not in
Spanish to the final.
The quip about invented languages
probably derived more from ignorance
than from malice. Europe is full of region
al languages whose status seems hazy to
those who think a country’s only “real”
language is the official, national one. Local
varieties are called dialect, argot, patois,
jargon, slang or similar, even though
linguists are adamant that some are dis
tinct languages. The linguist’s most com
mon test for these variants is whether
close neighbours can understand them. If
doing so is difficult or impossible, they are
languages, not dialects.
But another criterion is entirely politi
cal: does the language have a flag, borders
and a state? If not, in many minds it exists
in a kind of netherworld of notreally
languages. Galician may have official
status in its home region, but elsewhere in
Spain it is often seen as a curiosity rather
than a language as “real” as Spanish.
Galician, as it happens, presents anoth
er problem. Lots of people consider it and
Portuguese to be one and the same, adebate covered in a new book (in Portu
guese) by Marco Neves of novaUniversi
ty Lisbon. Mr Neves thinks Galician can
be considered the parent of Portuguese.
But whether Galician is distinct is a
different question from whether it is
“real”. If, in fact, it is actually Portu
guese—and should be called Galician
Portuguese, a name some people prefer—
then it is one of the world’s biggest lan
guages, spoken by hundreds of millions.
If it is separate—and many Portuguese
can struggle to understand it, despite
deep similarities—then it is a unique
regional language. But in either case, it
no more deserves to be compared to
madeup mumbojumbo than does
Spanish itself.
Eurovision’s nominating contests are
continuing. France, to its credit, has in
the past sent entries in regional languag
es (Corsican and Breton). Ukraine won in
2016 with an entry sung partly in Crime
an Tatar. But that sort of recognition is a
rarity. Europe has many languages—
Catalan and Cornish, Sardinian and
Sorbian, Frisian and Friulian—which
between them have tens of millions of
speakers, and are in theory protected by
both national constitutions and a Euro
pean charter, but which must constantly
jostle for attention. The more their ad
vocates seek recognition, the more some
speakers of national languages treat
them as obsessives or cranks.
The song contest has, rather fam
ously, not only featured songs in fully
elaborated invented languages, but
winners with titles such as “Boom Bang
aBang”, “DingaDong” and “DiggiLoo
DiggiLey”. Spain itself took the crown in
1968 with “La, la, la”. The air of absurdity
would not be heightened by more coun
tries sending songs in Europe’s venerable
minority languages. A language without a flag and a state is still a languageJohnsonEscape from La La land
entistpolymath who strove to measure
longitude accurately. With exemplary pa
tience, he coordinated timed observa
tions of a solar eclipse by amateur
stargazers recruited from Cairo to Spain.
His brave efforts foundered on slow mail.
Longitude was not properly fixed for an
other century, with seaworthy clocks.
The problem was different for Duane
Caneva, a federal health official, when co
vid19 struck America at the start of 2020.
Communication was instant. The snag was
getting politicians and the public to listen.
Mr Caneva started Red Dawn, an unofficial
network of worried experts and medical
officers. From no more than a dozen, Red
Dawn soon linked hundreds across the
country. It was another seven weeks before
the declaration of a national emergency.
Mr Beckerman ends his engaging study
by noting how social media both mobilise
and demobilise. His sympathies are on the
left, but the observation is general. Social
media give radicals of every stripe a won
der tool, but an imperfect one: they are too
fast. They mobilise without time to work
out aims and ideals or create a durable
movement. Missing is what Mr Beckerman—borrowing from Silicon Valley—
calls the vital stage of “incubation”. Pre
digital communication, by contrast, re
quired patience. It was slow, laborious and
patchy. But what it lost in speed, and cost
in effort, it gained in incubation.
Wisely, the author does not put more
weight on his portraits than they will bear.
“The Quiet Before” is not a treatise or big
picture history. Openminded and curious,
it suggests rather than argues, and never
shouts. Those are virtues easy to over
look—like Mr Beckerman’s chosenradicals
as they “incubated” in obscurity.n