Llanito: en mi language

 

I have taken a hiatus from this blog for nigh on three years, maybe slightly longer. Life sometimes gets in the way - work, the dullness of routine that serves to numb creativity, the grind of getting each day done that stifles so many of those who might want, wish, would and should write their stories and tell their tales. Myself included, clearly.

But I've not been away entirely.

Since my last blog post, I have published a non-fiction book, co-written with my eldest daughter, Ciara Wild. Myth Monster Murder explored the story of Jack the Ripper, how the gruesome Whitechapel murders were, and are, mythologised by the media, how at least five women became the victims of his blood-happy knife, and of the gore-addicted press, victims themselves, perhaps, of rampant commercialism. Why did the murders take place and could they happen again, we ask ourselves in the book. I won't tell you the answer. The book is readily available on Kindle or on paperback through Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones, Foyles....so treat yourselves!

Myth Monster Murderer by Jackie Anderson and Ciara Wild

That feat wore me out a little, so my writing became more of a dabbling, an early morning pre-breakfast gathering of thoughts and toying with the keys of my laptop, or the occasional scribbling in a notebook of disparate ideas, sentences and phrases that appear irrationally and unannounced into my mind and that occasionally drift together into a coherent whole.

But during that rather barren period, something has emerged in Gibraltar that is worthy of dusting down this blog and reawakening it. And that thing - or phenomenon is more approrpriate a word - is Patuka Press and its literary journal, the third issue being entitled: Llanito.

My copy of Llanito from Patuka Press

Here's where you can get your copy of LLanito

I spoke on GBC Breakfast about this back in July. It was a brief interview too early in the morning for me to be fully coherent so apologies to listeners, but in it I spoke not just about my writing and my book and the story I wrote that was published in 'Llanito', but also about the journal. 

I remember having conversations with fellow Gibraltarian Writers some years ago, shortly after a group of us worked on publishing an Anthology of Gibraltarian Poets (the first anthology of its kind), that centred around the vital importance of having a local outlet that would publish local writing - that is, writing that is not just produced locally, but by writers that have a strong connection with Gibraltar, who may be Gibraltarians living abroad, or people who had spent time in Gibraltar and had stories to tell. 

Writers might well love their craft, they might well be brilliantly skilled storytellers, wordsmiths, playwrights, poets, but if they cannot reach out to readers through some form of publishing, then their words are lost to the rest of us. And that is a literary tragedy, especially in Gibraltar, where there are so many tales to be told and its writers are bursting to tell them.

More than that; we want to tell them in our language, in Llanito, in the words that shape who and what we are as a people, and as an individual person.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of initiatives that have started to provide recognition for Gibraltar's writers, and outlets for their work. Among many other features, Gibraltar now has a Literature Week which this year is going to form part of the Gibraltar Literary Festival; there is a local book shop at last, which stocks works by local writers and about Gibraltar; there is increasing recognition, academically and among Gibraltarians, that our language is a clear and valid language that is part of our cultural identity. Social media and interest from GBC through various programmes such as Between the Lines, has helped tremendously. Young writers are daring to write and publish and not worry about whether what they have written is 'literature' or not; they do not care about meeting some vague and undefined standard of what is literature and don't question whether they can stand up to comparison with Dickens, Byron, Orwell or Rowling. Who wants to be like all the others anyway? We are who we are and say what we say and from what I'm reading of Gibraltarian writers, some can proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with other writers from other countries, or spine to spine on the shelves of any bookshop or library anywhere.

The joy of seeing this growth in local writing is immeasurable, more so when seeing that so much is now written in Llanito. Despite the decriers and nay-sayers, and I am not going to waste any energy wading into that argument, we are finally openly exploring what it means to be 'us', to speak in our own language, to write our own stories. What Patuka Press has achieved with Llanito is to put a stamp of approval, a public accreditation if you like, on writing in llanito. And that goes a long way to saving our dwindling language. As Charles Durante put it in his essay 'Llanito: Grammar, Etymology and Identity' in LLanito:

    "It would be a very sad day if Llanito were to disappear, as some have gleefully            predicted. It would be like losing a limb, a form of spiritual emasculation."

I can't help but agree. It would be a tragedy with far-reaching effects; the loss would be far more visceral than the loss of a gathering of words.

So the impact of Patuka Press and its collections of stories, poems and essays should not be understated. To local readers it provides an affirmation of who and what we are culturally; we laugh and nod our heads in recognition of ourselves and our community, we marvel at the novel and the new that is being created day to day by talented Gibraltarians, we gasp at the variety of imaginative skill on show between the pages. That this third issue explores and celebrates Llanito, hablando de mi people en mi language, is testament to the surfacing of our love for Gibraltarian culture, our willingness to explore talk about what makes us us, the sunshine and the rain, the beautiful and the ugly, the whole gamut of Gibraltarianness, warts and all. The journal is both an achievement in itself, and I hope, it is also the soil in which our literary growth as a people will take root and find succour.

The next steps for Gibraltarian literature? It is, despite the decriers and nay-sayers among us, a growing, living thing but it is still young, it still needs a helping hand from those that can and from the whole community. Here are some ideas:

• Another publishing house. Patuka Press and Calpe Press and self-publishing may be wonderful things but we need the competitiveness of alteranative publishers to hone our skills and thrust our writing output into the realms of quality and not just quantity.
• Setting a high bar. Again, quality. It isn't just about work being published because it's been written or even because it's good. It's got to be good enough.
• A writing residency, where the writer in residence (perhaps selected from numerous applications to the National Book Council) works for 1 - 2 years as a writer, running workshops, producing work, organising readings, running writing groups, attending seminars, book and literary events in other countries, mentoring writers and so on.

Our literature is being read and analysed across the world. It's got to reach globally high standards and all those editors and publishers working with Gibraltarian writing, whether a news channel or a freebie magazine, a publisher of books or a literary journal, or a competition judge have to start to apply a bar. It is not enough for a writer to submit work and be published, it has to be quality work.

And while all that is going on, get yourself a copy of Llanito. I picked one up from Amazon because I happened to be in UK when it came out, but Bookgem sells it. And then get the other two issues: Shit Jobs and Borders and Boundaries. You'll find one of my stories published in each of the three editions, and I'm not just proud that my submissions were selected for publication; I am privileged.

Shit Jobs by Patuka Press

Borders and Boundaries by Patuka Press

Breaking the Language Barriers

One of the most fascinating things I have found working and living in Gibraltar, has been the capacity for speaking a variety of languages that people can have. Coming from a place where speaking anything other than Anglicised French raises eyebrows and might mark you out as an immigrant, or the child of an immigrant, and where school children can opt out of learning foreign languages at anything beyond very basic, this is refreshing, to say the least.

So far this week, I have encountered a Frenchman whose English is nearly perfect, Spanish sounds almost native and who has learnt a good smattering of Moroccan through his work in property development out in Tangiers. Then there was a man from the Czech. Republic whose English is pretty clear, whose German is superb and who can muster up some Russian when the occasion requires it, in addition to the Portuguese man whose English is excellent, Spanish flawless and can hold a conversation in French. And finally there was the German who speaks better English than the English-speaking locals, is married to a Moroccan and speaks her language fluently, who can get by with reasonably pronounced French and whose command of Spanish is pretty impressive for someone who has only lived here for a year or so. Some of the English I have met can muster up relatively good Spanish, but prefer to use English first, just in case they are understood, which, in most cases, they are. And then there are the Moroccans in the community, most of whom speak their own language as well as English, Spanish, French, and some I have met recently, can add German to this portfolio of tongues.

Some of these people have travelled far and are determined to communicate well wherever they live, and I admire them for this. It seems to be the locals who have a remarkably laid back attitude towards languages. This may be because the Gibraltarians learn from birth to speak English and Spanish, and combine the two to create their own, unique patois. The nearby Spaniards from La Linea can either speak very basic English, or don't bother, because in most employment situations, they can get away with speaking only Spanish anyway, which, for English visitors, can be hugely frustrating because there is an expectation that local people speak English, yet so many shop and restaurant staff don't!

While I love listening to the babble around me, and trying to decipher the languages I hear, it does concern me that local children don't seem to benefit much from this welter of natural communication that is going on around them. Unlike my own childhood, those of my children and their friends is being conducted almost exclusively in English, thanks, largely to Disney Channel, Nickleodeon and WWE. Spanish is used rarely, and generally only in its crudest forms for expletives. They learn little of Spanish literature, art and culture, except for a short burst in senior school at advanced leve, if they have so chosen, and popular culture, which is available to all tourists. And the adults who speak Spanish regularly speak it poorly, with a limited vocabulary. It's a shame, because Gibraltar could be considered as bilingual, lauds itself for so being, but falls short of it, because so many local people do not have a sufficient command of Spanish to speak it in any other way than as foreigners.

So I have no objection to the Instituto Cervantes setting up here, if it genuinely will help to expand local knowledge and use of Spanish and the Spanish culture. Just so long as it is kept outside politics. And, it should be joined by some kind of institution which expands local knowledge of Moroccan language and culture, as much to ensure that Arabic is retained by the younger generations of Moroccan children born here, as to expand this language much further into the local vocabulary. After all, if we had learnt Arabic at school, I would feel far more comfortable haggling at the souks only twenty miles or so away, than I do trying to do it in the English, Spanish or French that I speak.