In defence of Llanito: Gibraltar in a state of linguistic transition

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates Gibraltar in a state of linguistic transition. This transition is feared by many to culminate in the loss of Llanito among younger generations. Llanito is a local variety made up of code-switched Gibraltar-Spanish, Gibraltar-English, Genoese, culturally specific words, and loanwords from other Mediterranean varieties. To evaluate the scope of this loss, this paper presents interviews with Gibraltarian politicians, as elected representatives who can influence the language situation, and grandparents who have contributed to the generational replenishment of Llanito. Llanito reflects Gibraltar’s culture of hybridity, and this paper interrogates why Llanito is in decline among younger generations. Gibraltar has the ability to transform this situation: educational policy, community effort, and oral and written preservation of Llanito can help to maintain Llanito and save its linguistic loss.

KEYWORDS:

• Gibraltarian identity
• Llanito
• language loss
• linguistic diversity

Introduction

Gibraltar is in a state of linguistic transition, a transition that it is feared will culminate in language loss. Llanito is a form of code-switching between Gibraltar-Spanish, Gibraltar-English, culturally specific words and loanwords from other Mediterranean dialects.¹ Llanito is feared to be on route to language loss by some Gibraltarians: locals have reported scant use among younger generations, along with a decline in the use of Gibraltar-Spanish as the basis for code-switching with English.² Some Gibraltarians, such as linguist Dale Buttigieg consider Llanito to be their mother tongue and consequently elucidate the cultural implications of Llanito for Gibraltarians: ‘I consider Llanito to be my mother tongue […] and an important part of my Gibraltarian identity’.³ This code-switched variety, which is, at present, spoken in Gibraltar reflects the small territory’s past colonial affiliations with Britain and its concomitant colonial struggles against Spain; it is simultaneously a product of Gibraltar’s colonial history, and an assertion of its current hybridity.⁴ Llanito forms part of Gibraltar’s three dominant language systems: Gibraltar-Spanish, Gibraltar-English and Llanito.⁵ In the early 20th century, Gibraltar-Spanish remained the dominant language in Gibraltar (as the language of the home, social life and business).⁶ In fact, Alexander Beattie, Gibraltar’s then Colonial Secretary, was disappointed that ‘in one of Britain’s oldest colonies, [where] one would expect to hear English […] I have not heard a word of it. I might as well have been in La Línea […] let me appeal to you to give first place to the language of the Empire to which you are proud to belong’.⁷ The 20th century saw English slowly rise to first place in Gibraltar: the evacuation to London during WWII fostered an affiliation with the English language and Francisco Franco’s closure of the Spain-Gibraltar border created a fierce anti-Spanish sentiment that permeated Gibraltarian nationalism.⁸

Gibraltar-Spanish continued to be replenished inter-generationally by intermarriage between Gibraltarian men and Spanish women.⁹ However, colonial language ideologies, nationalist sentiments and the global spread of English, among other factors, have contributed to a growing loss of the use of Llanito among younger generations in Gibraltar.¹⁰ This linguistic transition has been observed by local authors such as MG Sanchez, who detailed the concerning nature of this in an article for The Times.¹¹ To evaluate the scope of this loss, I carried out a number of interviews about Llanito. Gibraltar-Spanish was sustained by mothers and grandmothers: it was their voices that contributed to the generation of code-switched Llanito. In this vein, I interviewed a group of Gibraltarian mothers and grandmothers about their childhood and use of language. I also interviewed Gibraltar’s politicians, as elected representatives who can influence the language situation in Gibraltar through policy about the implications of the loss of Spanish and Llanito among younger generations for cultural heritage. The oral nature of Llanito is an important component of its function, and, in this way, interviews serve a dual function: interviews also perform a linguistic preservation, a function that Oren Gruenbaum called for in Mind your language: The Commonwealth must preserve its linguistic diversity.¹²

Risk of monolingual English

If Gibraltar-Spanish is lost, Gibraltar’s intense code-switching could result in monolingual English.¹³ This is becoming a reality for some families in Gibraltar: in my interview with Deputy Chief Minister, Joseph Garcia, he retold a poignant story about a monolingual Gibraltar-Spanish grandmother in Gibraltar who is unable to communicate with her monolingual Gibraltar-English grandchild:

somebody who speaks Spanish has grandchildren […] and this grandmother babysits the child but doesn’t understand what she is saying […] so she has to ring up the child’s mother at work to ask her to translate what she is saying to her grandchild […] it shows vividly how generations are changing […].¹⁴

This linguistic transition has become a cultural and linguistic barrier between older and younger generations. Both monolingual grandparents and children are left unable to access each other’s spatial reality, showing that Gibraltarian linguistic identity is experiencing a shift.¹⁵ In my interview with Andrew Canessa, a local researcher, he expressed that ‘few people under the age of 30 in Gibraltar today have conversational Spanish […] it is curious because you have older people speaking to each other in Spanish and then switching to English when talking to young children’.¹⁶ Canessa assigns the consideration of speaking to children in Spanish as a sign of lower status in Gibraltar as the reason for this.¹⁷ The mother in Gibraltar, however, has historically been crucial to the transmission of Gibraltar-Spanish and Llanito. This is shown by some oral traditions that have been passed down from Gibraltarian and Spanish grandmothers to their grandchildren, ones that reflect the sociolinguistic psyche. The first song is traditionally sung to children when they are ill or crying because they have suffered some sort of injury:

Sana, sana colita de rana, si no se cura hoy, se cura mañana (‘get better, get better little frog tail, if you aren’t healed today you will be healed tomorrow’)¹⁸

The second song is traditionally accompanied by a game involving counting down a child’s toes, pretending they are eggs, until a winning egg is left:

Zapatito sabana pone un huevo en el corral, pone uno, pone dos, pone tres […] (‘little shoe sheet, put an egg in the hen house, give me one, give me two, give me three’)¹⁹

The last song is traditionally a lullaby sung to encourage children to fall asleep:

Nana nana coquito nana, coquito ne ne, nana coco que viene el mono y se lleva los niños que duermen poco (sleep little coconut sleep, sleep little coconut or the monkey who takes children who sleep too little will come and get you)²⁰

These songs are directly transferred from mothers and grandmothers to children; they are culturally specific examples of affect that create an intimate bond. They also indicate if Gibraltar-Spanish is lost, this lyrical tradition too will follow, resulting in a loss of cultural heritage.²¹ They are also products of a ‘Gibraltarian Hispanophone domestic environment’, which is being elided.²² As Professor Laura Wright claims, a loss of cultural heritage in Gibraltar ‘is significant as the concept of a historical Gibraltarian identity is challenged whenever politicians question Gibraltar’s sovereignty’.²³ Contestations and conflicts regarding Gibraltar’s sovereignty have affected Gibraltar’s language situation. Llanito has become a way for Gibraltarians to assert their Gibraltarianness: their own unique, hybrid identity, separate from Spanish claims or blanket Britishness.²⁴ This, therefore, begs the question: what will the Gibraltarian identity represent if Gibraltar-Spanish and Llanito is lost? Gibraltar’s politicians expressed their concern at its growing loss:

I’ll tell you when my children speak a word of Spanish it’s as if the heavens have opened for me […] I don’t know what this community is 50 years from now if we are not Llanito […] (Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo)²⁵

My children are not as bilingual as I was at their age […] I may ask them something in Spanish or Llanito […] and the answer will come in English […] whereas if I speak to people of an older generation […] who were in school with me or my mum […] I would do that in Llanito […] (Deputy Chief Minister, Joseph Garcia)²⁶

Even Gibraltar’s politicians, who are fierce champions of Gibraltar’s Britishness, and elected to protect Gibraltar’s British sovereignty, recognise the inextricability of the Llanito-Spanish language to the twentieth-century Llanito. They recognise the importance our grandmothers had on the formation of a hybrid Gibraltarian identity. Moreover, MG Sanchez sees Gibraltar as a borderscape; a culturally hybrid space that is confined by imagined and physical borderlines.²⁷ In my interview with him, Sanchez described his border-mindedness as ‘an inherited attitude’, both from his experiences with a closed border in his childhood and from his grandparents’ anti-Spanishness, indicating that Gibraltarian Britishness has been, effectively, transmitted throughout generations.²⁸ This also suggests that a disdain for Llanito and Gibraltar-Spanish has been transmitted.

Negative attitudes

The loss of such cultural heritage is sustained by negative attitudes towards the importance of Llanito as a cultural relic. Ironically, Tito Vallejo’s Yanito Dictionary chastises Llanito words as ‘bad Spanish for’ or ‘bad English for’ their standard English or Castilian-Spanish alternatives, and Jennifer Ballantine-Perera, director of the Garrison Library deems someone who speaks Llanito as ‘a Calibanesque figure that contests all the time […]’.²⁹ Marlene Hassan, leader of Together Gibraltar, also dismisses Llanito as Spanglish:

I think a lot of things can be considered part of Gibraltar’s colonial past. Pero, you know, with respect I don’t think there is a major academic angle in this. I think that Llanito is a means of expression which is a bastardised form of Andalusian, Campo, Gibraltarian Spanish with English and a sprinkle of other dialects […] honestly, I think it’s just simply Spanglish […]³⁰

This view of Llanito entirely misses the cultural significance it bears. It is the communication of proximal affect, a demonstration of close family ties, and a language of immediacy; it is, as former Chief Minister, Joe Bossano claims ‘not bad English or bad Spanish but an emergent hybrid code-switched language’.³¹

However, to end on a paradoxical note, such as has been visible throughout this essay, a survey I conducted about linguistic interactions between grandparents and grandchildren ages 16–25, on the one hand, shows 66% claimed their grandparents spoke to them in Llanito-Spanish but 62.5% admitted they only reply to their grandparents in English. Moreover, 71% also observed their grandparents make a conscious effort to speak English to their younger cousins.³² On the other hand, in Gibraltar currently, a Gibraltar Book Council is being set up as an attempt to place Gibraltarian literature on an equal footing to other world literature, and Llanito has been introduced as a language category in Gibraltar’s Short Story Competition 2023.³³ Gibraltar is clearly in a state of transition where Llanito-Spanish is understood but seldom spoken among younger generations, and what results from it depends on how its inhabitants will approach this linguistic loss.

UNESCO’s Document submitted to the International Expert Meeting on UNESCO Programme Safeguarding of Endangered Languages Paris, 10–12 March 2003 outlines six categories for determining language endangerment.³⁴ These include: intergenerational language transmission; absolute number of speakers; proportion of speakers within the total population; trends in existing language domains; response to new domains and media, and materials for language education and literacy. In terms of inter-generational transmission, data from my interviews suggest that Llanito is in stage

Definitively endangered (3): The language is no longer being learned as the mother tongue by children in the home. The youngest speakers are thus of the parental generation. At this stage, parents may still speak their language to their children, but their children do not typically respond in the language.³⁵

Gibraltar has the ability to transform this situation; the reclaiming of Hawaiian Pidgin, for example, has shown that language loss can be stopped. Educational policy, community efforts, and the oral and written preservation of Llanito can save the code-switched language from total linguistic loss.³⁶ Gibraltarians must intervene.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Anja Kellerman, ‘When Gibraltarians Speak, We’re Quite Unique: Constructing Gibraltarian Identity with the Help of English, Spanish and Other Respective Local Varieties’, The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity: First International Conference on Sociolinguistics in Portugal (2003), pp. 73–78 (p.73). David Levey, ‘Introduction’ in Language Change and Variation in Gibraltar, 1st edn (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 2008), pp. 1–35 (p.23). Melissa G. Moyer, ‘Bilingual conversation strategies in Gibraltar’, in Code-Switching in Conversation : Language, Interaction and Identity ed. by Peter Auer, and Peter Auer, 1st edn (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 215–237 (p.216).

2. Sharrock, David, Gibraltar’s Llanito language at risk of dying out as locals stick to English <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gibraltars-llanito-language-at-risk-of-dying-out-as-locals-stick-to-english-9hc9xj672>

3. Gibraltarian linguist, Dale Buttigieg.

4. Daniel Weston, ‘Gibraltar’s Position in the Dynamic Model of Postcolonial English’, English World-Wide: a journal of varieties of English John Benjamins e-Platform, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2011), pp. 338–367 (p.338).

5. Andrew Canessa, ‘Introduction’, in Bordering on Britishness National Identity in Gibraltar from the Spanish Civil War to Brexit ed. by Andrew Canessa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp.1–32 (p.1). Ebook.

6. Andrew Canessa, ‘Introduction’, in Bordering on Britishness National Identity in Gibraltar from the Spanish Civil War to Brexit ed. by Andrew Canessa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp.1–32 (p.7). Ebook.

7. Gibraltar Government Archives, YF 323/1933 as quoted in Eddie Picardo, ’Borders, Language Shift, and Colonialism in Gibraltar, 1940–1985’, in Bordering on Britishness: National Identity in Gibraltar from the Spanish Civil War to Brexit, ed. by Andrew Canessa, pp.143–165 (p.145). Ebook.

8. Andrew Canessa, ‘Introduction’, in Bordering on Britishness National Identity in Gibraltar from the Spanish Civil War to Brexit ed. by Andrew Canessa, pp.1–32 (p.27). Ebook. Luis G. Martínez Del Campo, Andrew Canessa, and Giacomo Orsini, ‘“Franco Lives!” Spanish Fascism and the Creation of a British Gibraltarian Identity’, in Bordering on Britishness National Identity in Gibraltar from the Spanish Civil War to Brexit ed. by Andrew Canessa, pp.167–193 (p.171). Ebook.

9. Andrew Canessa, ‘Introduction’, in Bordering on Britishness National Identity in Gibraltar from the Spanish Civil War to Brexit ed. by Andrew Canessa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp.1–32 (p.23). Ebook.

10. Ibid.

11. Sharrock, David, Gibraltar’s Llanito language at risk of dying out as locals stick to English <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gibraltars-llanito-language-at-risk-of-dying-out-as-locals-stick-to-english-9hc9xj672>

12. Gruenbaum, Oren, Mind your language: The Commonwealth must preserve its linguistic diversity <https://www.commonwealthroundtable.co.uk/general/eye-on-the-commonwealth/mind-your-language-the-commonwealth-must-preserve-its-linguistic-diversity/>

13. Dr Laura Wright, ‘‘Aloof’s Ramp’, ‘Jardin de Glynn’: Gibraltar’s street names and an eighteenth-century Western Mediterranean spatial practice’, Lecture, Cambridge Language Sciences Annual Symposium, 24 November 2022.

14. Deputy Chief Minister of Gibraltar 2011-present, Joseph Garcia.

15. Dr Laura Wright, ‘‘Aloof’s Ramp’, ‘Jardin de Glynn’: Gibraltar’s street names and an eighteenth-century Western Mediterranean spatial practice’, Lecture, Cambridge Language Sciences Annual Symposium, 24 November 2022.

16. Social anthropologist and author of Bordering on Britishness, Andrew Canessa.

17. Social anthropologist and author of Bordering on Britishness, Andrew Canessa.

18. Daughter of evacuee and present during the closure of the frontier, Minerva Santini.

19. Daughter of evacuee and present during the closure of the frontier, Emily Desoto-Alecio, including son-in-law who was also present during the closure of the frontier, Alex Macdonald.

20. Daughter of evacuee and present during the closure of the frontier, Sonia de la Rosa.

21. Dr Laura Wright, ‘‘Aloof’s Ramp’, ‘Jardin de Glynn’: Gibraltar’s street names and an eighteenth-century Western Mediterranean spatial practice’, Lecture, Cambridge Language Sciences Annual Symposium, 24 November 2022.

22. Dr Laura Wright, ‘‘Aloof’s Ramp’, ‘Jardin de Glynn’: Gibraltar’s street names and an eighteenth-century Western Mediterranean spatial practice’, Lecture, Cambridge Language Sciences Annual Symposium, 24 November 2022.

23. Dr Laura Wright, ‘‘Aloof’s Ramp’, ‘Jardin de Glynn’: Gibraltar’s street names and an eighteenth-century Western Mediterranean spatial practice’, Lecture, Cambridge Language Sciences Annual Symposium, 24 November 2022.

24. Daniel Weston, ‘Gibraltar’s Position in the Dynamic Model of Postcolonial English’, English World-Wide: a journal of varieties of English John Benjamins e-Platform, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2011), pp. 338–367 (p.338). Edgar W. Schneider, ‘The evolution of Postcolonial Englishes: the Dynamic Model’, in Postcolonial English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp.21–71 (p.28).

25. Chief Minister of Gibraltar 2011-present, Fabian Picardo.

26. Deputy Chief Minister of Gibraltar 2011-present, Joseph Garcia.

27. Gibraltarian author, MG Sanchez.

28. Gibraltarian author, MG Sanchez.

29. Director of the Garrison Library, Jennifer Ballantine-Perera. Tito Vallejo, The Yanito Dictionary (Gibraltar: Panorama Publishing, 2003).

30. Leader of Together Gibraltar 2015-present, Marlene Hassan.

31. Chief Minister of Gibraltar 1988–1986, Sir Joe Bossano.

32. Survey concerning language use between grandparents and grandchildren aged 16–25 in Gibraltar.

33. GBC News, ‘National Book Council launched to encourage writing, reading & promoting Gibraltarian literature’, Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation, 2 March 2023 <https://www.gbc.gi/news/national-book-council-launched-encourage-writing-reading-gibraltarian-literature> [accessed 15 March 2023]. GBC News, ‘‘Llanito’ category added to Spring Short Story Competition’, Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation, 9 February 2023 <https://www.gbc.gi/news/llanito-category-added-spring-short-story-competition? [accessed 15 March 2023].

34. UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages, Document submitted to the International Expert Meeting on UNESCO Programme Safeguarding of Endangered LanguagesParis, 10–12 March 2003, p. 7 <https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/00120-EN.pdf>

35. Ibid.

36. Higgins, C. (2010). Raising critical language awareness in Hawaiʻi at Da Pidgin Coup. Creoles in education: An appraisal of current programs and projects. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.