Guillem el Gat

Because I tend not to reblog old posts of mine and they have a tendency to get lost into the nether on here, I thought I’d make a list of all the more langblr-y posts I’ve done. Just an FYI, some of these are ancient and truly wild, but I’m still putting them because some people might find them helpful. Also I may pin this and keep updating it as I make more stuff, just because it’s easier than wading through my blog.

Cançonetes d'Estiu | Summer Songs

[ENG] I made a little zine for @zinebash's playlist zine challenge! I'd never made one before but I'd been wanting to make a playlist of songs that I associate with this last summer - old favorites, new discoveries, and songs that hit an emotional chord <3

Individual pages and text versions below the cut, and you can listen to the playlist here!

[CAT] He fet una petita zine per al repte de @zinebash de fer una zine d'una playlist! No n'havia fet mai una zine però portava un temps volent fer una llista de cançons de l'estiu passat - vells estàndards, nous descobriments, i cançons que em van arribar al cor <3

Pàgines individuals i versió en text sota el tall, i pots escoltar la playlist aquí!

Curious about the recent Valencian music scene of the last 20 years? Don't want to commit to anything, just want some fun music to put on in the background? Then I have the playlist for you!

People keep asking me for examples of the music that I study, so I've made this playlist with some greatest hits. It's missing a lot of smaller artists, so I'm going to try to add more as I go, but if you'd like some fun ska/punk/rock/rap/pop/electronica/etc in Catalan to play in the background, you've come to the right place :)

This is a song by Maria Arnal & Marcel Bagés, who were a phenomenal indie-experimental(?) duo which only released two albums but all of the songs on them are incredible. This is one that I've been obsessed with lately. The title is "Meteorit ferit" which translates to "wounded meteorite", and the lyrics and arrangement are very fun.

Com un meteorit lluminós Like a luminous meteorite creuo el cel, desbocada, I cross the sky, unbridled capa a capa va cremant Layer by layer burning tota la meva cuirassa All my armor

Com ganivets esmolats Like sharpened knives com la més àgil espasa Like the most agile sword capa a capa va cremant Layer by layer burning tota la meva cuirassa All my armor

Com ganivets esmolats Like sharpened knives com la més àgil espasa Like the most agile sword capa a capa va cremant Layer by layer burning tota la meva cuirassa All my armor

Al cel sóc estela de llum In the sky I’m a trailing wake of light espant metàl·lic que fulgura A metallic scare which flashes cada vegada més avall, ai, Every time further below, oh i no sé com demanar ajuda And I don’t know how to ask for help

Ara tan tova i abans tan dura Now so soft and before so hard perdo la meva armadura I lose my armor i l’abraço tan fort com puc And I hug it as hard as I can com si fos la teva cintura As though it were your waist

Peça a peça, pètals vençuts Piece by piece, defeated petals un per cada veritat absoluta One for each absolute truth un per cada certesa total One for each total certainty cap que freni la clara caiguda None that can stop the obvious fall

Cada capa de l’atmosfera Every layer of the atmosphere em va deixant més i més nua Is leaving me more and more naked i potser vaig més lleugera And maybe I’m moving a bit lighter però la pena es tan severa But the pain is so severe

Cada capa de l’atmosfera Every layer of the atmosphere em va deixant més i més nua Is leaving me more and more naked i potser vaig més lleugera And maybe I’m moving a bit lighter però la pena es tan severa But the pain is so severe que l’arrossego com una cua That I drag it along like a tail

Busco una ombra d’esperança I’m looking for a shadow of hope vull un canvi de partitura I want a change of tune vull cantar una aliança I want to sing an alliance vull canviar la llei futura I want to change the future law

Aquest any, 2025, assoleixo una fita molt gran - porto 10 anys aprenent el català!

Tot i que no és la llengua que més temps he estudiat, és la llengua que més m'ha canviat la vida. No podria imaginar que una curiositat pel país darrere un equip de futbol (sí, va ser pel Barça que vaig començar a aprendre el català 🫣) em portaria a tantes amistats, tanta comunitat increïble, tanta cultura (ja que sigui llibres, sèries, pel·lícules, i sobretot música), i fins i tot un doctorat. No puc imaginar qui seria sense aquests 10 anys - no seria la mateixa persona, ni de bon tros.

Estic obligadíssim a agrair tots els catalans que he conegut al llarg d'aquests anys, ja fossin professoris, amiguis a la vida real o a Tumblr, gent que feien intercanvis lingüístics, etc - tothom m'ha acollit i m'ha fet sentir com a casa de seguida, i crec que la força del català rau en la quantitat de gent tan bonica que el parla. Gràcies per la paciència, per la disposició a parlar amb mi i contestar les meves preguntes, i per ser tan amable i tan acollidora <3

Per celebrar, com que la majoria de la música que escolto (i que he escoltat, realment, des que vaig començar a aprendre el català) és en català, he fet una playlist de totes les cançons que m'han acompanyat al llarg d'aquest viatge. Algunes són més conegudes que altres, algunes m'han sigut més importants i algunes més, i la barreja acaba semblant una mica random, però també volia celebrar amb la banda sonora d'aquest temps, perquè és el que més destaca per a mi. Spotify no em diu quant dura, només que són més de 24 hores de música, així que en teniu de sobres si voleu més música en català!

Gràcies a tothom que ha estat aquí des del principi, i a tothom que s'hi ha unit després! Espero que us apunteu a la festa, i per molts anys més :D

Heus aquí la llista:

Una cançó de fa ara més de 10 anys, però que m'ha sortit a l'atzar i que m'ha parlat al cor. / A song from now more than 10 years ago, but which showed up randomly for me and spoke to me, so I've translated it here.

Sento cantar les granotes des del meu llit I hear the frogs singing from my bed Anuncien la pluja que ha de venir They're announcing the rain which must be coming I els seus cants omplen la nit de veritats And their songs fill the night with truths De certeses mil·lenàries i ancestrals Of thousand-year-old, ancestral certainties No són promeses buides, invisibles They're not empty, invisible promises

[ TORNADA: No, no et diré que anirà bé No, I won't tell you that it'll be okay Perquè és el que diu la gent Because that's what people say Quan no et vol ajudar When they don't want to help you Jo et diré mirant-te als ulls I'll tell you, looking you in the eyes Que si no surt com has pensat That if it doesn't go the way you thought Em tindràs al teu costat You'll have me by your side ]

No t'espolsis la gent amb paraules amables Don't brush people off with kind words No defugis problemes culpant als altres Don't run away from problems by blaming others Ni la natura és sàvia ni la gent bona perquè sí Natural instinct isn't wisdom, nor are people good just because Però si ens tenim a prop potser trobarem un camí But if we have each other close by maybe we can find a way Sense optimismes fàcils però amb valentia Without easy positivity, but with bravery

As I said in my last post, I'm slowly getting better at figuring out how to set goals which both push me out of my comfort zone and which actually orient me towards what I'm trying to do. This year my main goal is to just remember how to be a learner again; I feel like recently I've gotten a little too in-my-head about how I need to be perfect before I speak, and actually this tends to be a problem I have in general - I won't talk to people unless I feel like I can talk perfectly, but that's not how you learn. I'm also trying to get better at setting reasonable timelines for what it takes to get to a particular level of language, which I have a better feel for at this point, and taking into account how much time I'm spending on the language every day (it shouldn't feel overwhelming if it's supposed to be a brief warmup). With these in mind, here are my goals for the year:

CATALAN

This year, I really want to speak Catalan with more people. That's the bottom line. I'm at a level where I need to be doing language immersion, and that means not being shy about not knowing how to say things or starting off the conversation wrong or any number of things (this historically has been less of a problem for Catalan with me, but for some reason I was absolutely taken out last summer and essentially went partially mute from social anxiety, so we're going to find out what was up with that and try to coax me away from it). I also want to learn to speak the Valencian dialect of Catalan better, and hopefully I'll get the chance to do that!

I'm planning to continue my reading challenge as well, but I'm going to make a separate post about that.

BASQUE

I want to improve my Basque vocabulary, and also my listening comprehension skills. I want to finish Eskamak kentzen and also watch/listen to more things in Basque. I think I just need a whole bunch of audio input - I know a lot of the words, but it's still very hard for me to parse them in speech. In order to improve my vocabulary, I want to do a quick vocab review every day when I get to the library, before I start my work. That way, I'll have a constant, easy, long-term exposure to a wider variety of words, and hopefully after a few months I'll start remembering some!

WELSH

I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with Welsh this year - I feel a bit directionless with it, so I might put it on pause until it feels like the right time to take it up again. But I'd also like to get more listening and vocabulary practice - I can understand large portions song lyrics without looking them up, which is a huge step forward for me. If watching Rownd a Rownd seems like the vibe, I might try to take that up again. We'll see, this one is more open.

MALAYALAM

Mostly, my goal with Malayalam is just to keep taking class, but also I'd really like to get over my fear of speaking. I struggle to pronounce a lot of the letters, and I don't know a lot of words, but if I work on these, I think I'd feel more confident. (I do also just need to feel okay with looking like a fool, though.) By the end of the year, I hope I'm able to have conversations in class or with my family without wavering too much, even if I forget something or mess up the pronunciation.

OTHER LANGUAGES

One main thing I want to work on is learning how to learn a small amount of a language but still being able to use it with people. There are a few different languages which I've wanted to learn for a while but haven't had the time - I'm hoping that maybe I can work up the courage to learn a few phrases, talk to someone, and perhaps learn a thing or two. This is very open-ended, but it's more a challenge for me to expand my comfort zone.

There are five people in the class. Of those five, four have Malayalee family and have had some exposure to Malayalam throughout our lives; the last person is a native speaker of another non-Dravidian South Asian language. Of the four of us who are Malayalee, I'm basically the only one who didn't have a significant amount of Malayalam at home growing up. What this means is that we've spent very little time on the phonetics of the language, because everyone roughly knows how to pronounce it - something which wouldn't be true if there were non-South Asian in the class! (It was a bit comforting to hear all the other Malayalees struggling with aspirated consonants, which have constantly been the bane of my existence, and then to hear the instructor say that few people pronounce them right in spoken Malayalam anyways.) The instructor could ask us to say things on the first day, and the more fluent speakers could say them. There is already Malayalam being mixed in with the instruction. I'm sure by the end of the semester we'll be having extended conversations - especially since the two of us who don't speak have very concrete communicative desires for our outside lives.

It's also a very scary experience for me, personally. Or maybe scary isn't quite the right word, but I've always felt out of my depth in claiming Malayalee heritage - I've always felt that there were so many things which I didn't know which any normal Malayalee would. There is no evidence that this is true, at least insofar as that my cousins with two Malayalee parents have wildly varying experiences and I'm not actually that far outside the norm. In most American spaces, I will never be clocked as white, and most people usually immediately identify me as South Asian. Nonetheless, I know that when I visited Kerala this past December, I was decidedly foreign - to the two guys speaking in rapid-fire Malayalam on the flight from Qatar, to the person at the immigration counter in Trivandrum, even to my own relatives. Part of it is a mental block on my part, of feeling myself foreign and therefore never letting myself belong. Part of it is that I am, ultimately, American. But either way, in this class, I can feel that I'm the American in the room, even when I'm not, even when my pronunciation is just as good as the other Malayalees and there's nothing that's telling me I can't belong. I keep freezing up when asked to say real things, or when people speak to me, because there's some unreachable standard in my brain of Not A Real Malayalee, and everything feels fraught and fragile. So maybe this semester will be about overcoming that.

Gaurko abestia: "Beruna urre" - Bele

Abesti hau zailagoa izan da niretzat, ez dut asko ulertu, baina horrengatik hitz berri batzuk ikasi dut. Talde berria da, eta oso polita da bere musika, gomendatzen dut. 

Hiztegi berria:

zori - chance, luck

hautatu - to choose, to select

asti - free time

azti - clever, magic

haritz - oak

gupida - compassion, piety

lohi - mud

Gaurko abestia: "Zapalduen olerkia" - Ken Zazpi

Erronka hau pixka bat aldatu nahi dut: egunero, abesti bat aukeratuko dut eta hitzak idazten saiatuko naiz. Gero, hemen ez dudan ezagutu hitzak ipiniko ditut. Eta euskaraz idatziko dut, oso gaizki baina egin ahal dut, ba egingo dut!

Gaur egun Ken Zazpi-ren "Zapalduen olerkia" aukeratu dut, oso abesti polita da eta asko gustatzen zait. Bertsio hau Euskadiko Orkestra Sinfonikoa-rekin eta nire gustokoena da, baina jatorrizkoa ere atsegin dut.

Hiztegia berria:

ezintasun - inability, incapacity

zapaldu - to oppress

estali - to cover

samin - sorrow, grief (also adj. bitter)

bizigabe - lifeless

istripu - accident

I'm trying to get back into the swing of studying Basque a bit more, so I'm going to try to listen to a song every day and look up all the words I don't know. I'm starting off with this song from Idoia's newest album, De amar y desandar, which is called "Autofikzioa" and which I'm a big fan of.

ilunpetan - in the dark (from ilunpe - 'darkness')

ito - to drown

kontraesan - contradiction

errai - gut

gatibu - captive, prisoner

hala ere - despite everything, nonetheless

This is a delightfully ironic song about those people who come into your life as friends and then end up throwing you under the bus after you do everything you can for them. I've put the live version because it's a lot of fun (although the studio version is also great).

Mira, ja feia temps Look, it had been a while que la teva nàpia augusta Since your venerable nose no em parava pel carrer Hadn't stopped me on the street i jo, amic, tocava fusta. And I, my friend, I knocked on wood Vas venir discret primer, You came discreetly at first confonent-te a l'hora punta, Mixing yourself up at rush hour amb tota la marabunta With all the swarms of people que adormida surt del tren. Sleepily getting off the train

I quins temps, amic, quins temps. And what times, my friend, what times we had A la caseta de fusta. In the little wooden shed Sempre sonava un CD There was always a CD playing quan voltaves per la cuina. When you were in the kitchen

Jo devia fer cara de demanar ajuda. My expression must have been asking for help Gràcies per venir Thanks for coming a temptar-me un altre cop, For tempting me once again a posar-ho tot a lloc, Judes. For putting everything its place, Judas

Fixa’t amb quina il·lusió Look at how excitedly et vaig donar la benvinguda. I welcomed you Vas ser el sol del meu balcó You were the sunshine on my balcony i pel meu jardí la pluja. And the rain for my garden Ja em coneixes, saps com sóc You know me, you know how I am i no vull posar-te excuses, And I don’t want to make excuses però el temps passa per tothom. But time passes for everyone Massa lent, cagunlaputa. Too slowly, goddammit

I aquelles nits sense son And through those sleepless nights em va anar invaïnt un dubte I was invaded by a doubt que avançava entre els racons Which advanced from between corners i els pilots de roba bruta. And the piles of dirty laundry

Has vingut a quedar-te, o tens alguna excusa? Have you come to stay, or do you have some excuse? Vinga Quim, controla el pols. Come on, Quim, control your pulse Vols la guerra? O què cony vols? Do you want war? Or what the hell do you want? Que bé et tires els farols, Judes. How good you are at putting up appearances, Judas

I m'han dit que vas dient And they’ve told me that you’ve been saying pels cafès i les tertúlies At the cafes and the local groups que em comporto com un nen, That I behave like a child que no aguanto quan em jutgen. That I can’t handle people judging me

Ens anàvem a menjar el món. We were going to take on the world D'això, amic, no en tinc cap dubte. About that, my friend, I have no doubts De tant em pregunto on són Sometimes I ask myself where they are les nostres grans aventures. All our grand adventures