Pompeu fabra

Pompeu Fabra i Poch (February 20, 1868, Gracia-December 25, 1948, Prades) was a Spanish industrial engineer and linguist, known for having established modern language regulations. catalan

Biography

He was born in 1868 in the neighborhood of Salud de Gracia, where he spent his childhood. Today, this town is part of the city of Barcelona. Fabra was the youngest of twelve siblings, only two of whom reached adulthood. He turned five the same year that the First Spanish Republic was proclaimed (1873) and, then, his father was elected mayor of Gracia. At the age of six, the family moved to Barcelona, and despite the fact that he left very young, he always felt a certain affection towards his place of origin.

Fabra studied industrial engineering, which he progressively alternated with a strong interest in philology, which he learned self-taught. In 1902 he won the chair of chemistry at the Bilbao School of Engineers, a city in which he lived continuously until 1912.

In 1912, he published in Spanish the work Gramática de la lengua catalana, which sets the foundations and limits of the following grammatical works on Catalan, in accordance with the most innovative trends in linguistics in Europe. Already in Barcelona, with the Catalan Gramàtica (1918), a work based on the previous one but of a strictly normative nature, the most fruitful stage of Fabra's philological works began. The grammar was adopted as official regulations by the Institute of Catalan Studies, which had previously, in 1913, published the Normas Ortográficas, elaborated mainly by Pompeu Fabra. The Converses filològiques (1924), a collection of short articles that raise and resolve the most frequent language doubts, respond to Fabra's desire to disseminate his linguistic reflections.

In 1932, due to his prestige, Fabra gained direct access to the chair of Catalan at the University of Barcelona, thereby officially entering the university sphere for the first time. Also in 1932 he published the Diccionari general de la llengua catalana, and in 1935 the fifth edition of his Gramàtica catalana.Curs mitjà, a manual for school use (republished in 1968 with the title of Introduction to Catalan grammar).

He was one of the signatories of the manifesto «Per la conservació de la raça catalana» («For the conservation of the Catalan race») published in 1934. This manifesto proposed that «biologists, hygienists, anthropologists, historians, demographers, economists, sociologists and jurists" collaborate "in this humanitarian and patriotic work of establishing the scientific bases of a Catalan population policy". These proposals were part of the eugenic currents of the time that gave rise to the First Spanish Eugenic Course (1928) or the I Symposium on Spanish Eugenics (1933), closed by Azaña and attended by figures such as Fernando de los Ríos, Roberto Novoa Santos, Gregorio Marañón, Ramón J. Sénder, Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora, Luis Jiménez de Asúa, Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira, Federico García Lorca or Rafael Alberti.

The 1932 dictionary (popularly known as the Fabra) was intended as an outline for a future official dictionary to be published by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. The criteria that presided over its creation were:

1. Exclusion of arcaisms and dialectalisms of difficult admission by speakers.
2. The rejection of terms from other languages that replaced Catalan words or prevented the creation of new terms.
3. The incorporation of technical words of Greek or universal origin, adapting them to the characteristics of the Catalan language.

Fabra was a great fan of hiking —he was a member of the Catalonia Hiking Center—, in addition to developing a remarkable career as a sports leader: after having formed part of the tennis section of the Barcelona Football Club, he founded his own club, the Badalona Lawn Tennis. From 1927 to 1935 he was president of the Lawn Tennis Association, the embryo of the current Catalan Tennis Federation. During the Second Republic he was the head of Catalan sports, as the first president of the Catalan Union of Sports Federations.

At the end of the Civil War, he went into exile in France —he crossed the border on January 31, 1939— and settled in the town of Prades, near the Pyrenees, where he died.

Sports manager

Fabra was linked throughout his life to what was called scientific hiking, and he was a member of the Catalonia Hiking Center from 1891. He made excursions around the Catalan geography and also stays in summer camps in the Pyrenees, with ascents to the most notable peaks. He was elected president of the Lawn Tennis Association (today the Catalan Tennis Federation) and later he was the first president of the Unió Catalana de Federacions Esportives. In addition, he was part of the tennis section of FC Barcelona. Fabra considered the sport essential for the formation of the person and the articulation of the nation. He used to play tennis on the courts of the Cros factory, in Badalona, with his daughter Carola.

In a report he talks about the importance of tennis in Catalonia, and says that «tennis is very important today in Catalonia. It is, our land, one of the main focuses of the Peninsula. The others are in Madrid, the Basque Country, Huelva, and now it is beginning to be cultivated in other cities. Tennis in Catalonia has reached a remarkable degree of importance and prestige, not only due to the increase in the number of people who practice it, but also due to the excellent quality of many players, a quality that surpasses that of the best in other mentioned places».

Therefore, with the presidency of the Unió Catalana de Federacions Esportives, Fabra became the top leader of Catalan sports during the years of the Republic, until they ceased their activity when the Civil War broke out.

Tributes

Pompeu Fabra i Poch was a man of great prestige and popularity in Catalonia. Between 1931 and 1936 he was the object of many tributes, being appointed professor at the University of Barcelona in 1932, doctor honoris causa from the University of Toulouse and honorary president of the Catalan Society for Historical Studies. He also presided over the Montpellier Floral Games (1946). In 1980, a street in the La Salud neighborhood, where he was born and spent his childhood, was named after him. On June 18, 1990, the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona was created, which bears his name. of the. The Pompeu Fabra metro stop in Badalona was also built.

Criticism

Although the Grammar and Spelling of Modern Catalan by Pompeu Fabra and the Institut d'Estudis Catalans was generally accepted in Catalonia, several language scholars and writers were against it. For example, Antoni Maria Alcover, author of the Diccionari català-valencià-balear, affirmed that Fabra had been one of the most disastrous grammarians the Catalan language had ever had, who had tried to impose an exotic orthography and that had created a state of violence among Catalan scholars, turning the language into a banner of separatism and hatred against Spain. The writer and bibliophile Ramón Miquel y Planas came to describe Fabra as a "great philological Mughal", "dictator in linguistic matters in Catalonia" and "damn language buster", affirming in 1918 that Catalonia had never before been a victim "of a tyranny as hateful as the one exercised today by our grammarians at the service of Fabra".

Other writers, among them prominent figures of the Renaixensa such as Francesch Matheu, Francesch Carreras y Candi, Jaume Collell y Bancells and Josep Pin y Soler, also opposed the Fabrian reform, considering it an attack against the true Catalan language, an attack which they baptized as "Decree of New Linguistic Plant".

Works

Monólito de homage to Pompeu Fabra at the Plaza de Lesseps in Barcelona.

• Modern Catalan grammar test (1891)
• It contributed to the gramàtica of the Catalan filler (1898)
• Tractat d' ortografia catalana (1904)
• Qüestions de gramàtica catalana (1911)
• Catalan language grammar (1912)
• Catalan Gramàtica (1918)
• Converses filològiques (1924)
• She coordinated it and subordinated it in the documents of the Catalan chancellor Durnt the 14th section (1926)
• Dictioni ortogràfic abreujat (1926)
• The conjugació dels verbs en català (1927)
• Dictioni ortogràfic: precedence d'una exposició de l'ortografia catalana (1931)
• Dictioni general de la llengua catalana (1932)
• The català literari (1932)
• Curs mitjà de gramàtica catalana (1932)