Valencian language

Older dictionaries trace it through the Mozarabic and the Real Academia Española.

also now traces it through the Valencian word, horchata, from the Italian, orzata.

Either way, the root is that Latin word linked to barley.

So the very first horchata was barley water, and over the centuries, as the drink spread to places with different ingredients on hand, the name just sort of began to be used for other milky drinks made in the same way.

Now, there is another slightly more glamorous, less word nerd story about the name, and you can actually see depictions of it painted on the wall of many a chateria in Valencia.

The legend says that a young woman offered this white sweet drink to Jaume I, the king of Aragon, and he asked what it was.

She said it was chufa milk, yit de chufes, and he answered in Valencian, okay i don't speak valencian or catalan so i did my best just there but this means literally this is not milk this is gold honey it's a good story it's a legend The dictionary etymology is barley, not golds, but the legend, what it does get right, is the timing.

The regulatory council says that there are written references from the 13th century to a drink called yed de chufes.

But that was not the way people used those names.

They could say, for example, there is a very, very strong polemic in Catalonia and Valencia about the way we could divide Valencian and Catalan in two languages or varieties of the same language.

And sometimes Valencians say, no, no, in the Middle Ages, people said... that we spoke Valencian.

Yes, but that does not mean that people were defending a different language from Catalonia.

The way people used the names was, we could say Lisbonese, the way people speak Portuguese in Lisbon.

It's for the workers.

It's for the, you know, in Valenciano.

So it's that even that was about community for us, right? You know, so it's invaluable.

Bringing us home.

He has gone back again, with a great fleet, and nobody yet knows what he will find.

And that same year of wonders, 1492, a Valencian cardinal, Rodrigo de Borja, whom the Italians call Borgia, was elected pope as Alexander VI.

Valencia is very proud of him, whatever Rome may say.

You arrive by the road from the north, as the sun is sinking behind the hills, and the sky over the sea turns from gold to violet.

And near the market, the merchants of Valencia are raising a magnificent new building, the Locha de la Seda, the Silk Exchange, with its forest of twisted stone columns like palm trees, which will be finished in a few years' time and will still stand five centuries later.

Valencia, in 1494, is one of the great cities of the Mediterranean, with perhaps 70 or 80,000 people, richer and more populous than Barcelona.

It is the capital of the Kingdom of Valencia, one of the realms of the Crown of Aragon, and it speaks its own language, Valencian, a form of Catalan.

It is a city of merchants, silk weavers, sugar traders, bankers and craftsmen.

If we pressure them to communicate, that actually works against us.

One of the things that you need to keep in mind is what will motivate my child to speak that second language.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Quiero un Panino con Cheese, the podcast for TCKs and multicultural families.

I'm your host, Gaia Striano.

Today, we're talking about something that comes up again and again and again in multicultural families, raising bilingual or even multilingual children.

If you've ever wondered whether you're speaking enough of your minority language, whether you should be using one parent, one language approach, Whether it's okay for your child to mix languages, or what to do when your child understands one language but refuses to speak it, you're definitely not alone.

And there's so much advice out there.

Some of it is helpful, some of it contradictory, and some of it can leave parents feeling like they're getting bilingual parenting completely wrong.

Oh, okay.

And in the east where I live, they, they speak Valenciano, which is like a mix of Catalan.

Mm.

Okay.

The firecrackers come from the 18th century, when a Bourbon king outlawed the celebration and, the story goes, the confectioners started making the fireworks out of sugar instead.

Today, more than five and a half million people live in the Comunitat Valenciana.

Only three regions in Spain have more people, and it still gets a fraction of the attention paid to Madrid on one side and Barcelona on the other.

So today, to celebrate the upcoming day of the Comunitat Valenciana, I'm going to break down what Valencia is, what the word means, the battle that still shapes how the region is governed, the language, and why it's so political.

[laughs] What the rest of Spain thinks about Valencia, the recent flood that was devastating for the region, the food, and, you know, this is the region that gave us paella, and has really strong opinions about what it is.

Welcome to Spain Explained.

I'm Marti Buckley, an author, journalist, and cook who has lived in Spain since 2010.

Thanks for listening.