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...So what you're saying is, you don't live in Catalonia and ergo don't speak Catalan in other regions. Go to Barcelona, nobody wants to speak Spanish. Obviously if you have Catalan friends outside of Catalonia (like in Sevilla or Granada or Madrid etc etc etc), the conversational language is not going to be Catalan, whether your Spanish friends are FROM Catalonia or not...
First of all, Catalan is speaking in other regions, not only Catalonia, actually, Arigarisha is from one of this regions and I guess that Catalan is her first language, or at least she is bilingual.
And in second place, in Barcelona there are more people with Spanish as first language that Catalan, so you have more chances of hearing Spanish than Catalan.
Barcelona is NOT safe, you shouldn't be lulled into a false complacency by thinking it. One must be constantly on alert because of pickpockets (ubiquitous). However English is widely spoken and understood.
That's a lie. I have plenty of friends from Barcelona and most of them speak Spanish on a regular basis. Only one Catalan from a small town asked me if I minded him speaking to me in Catalan because it's his mother tongue and he was more comfortable speaking it, while I replied to him in Spanish, no big deal.
The probles is not people from Barcelona not understanding spanish, the problem is them refusing to use it when in front of a foreigner who obviously does not speak it and instead tries his best to express himself in broken spanish.
It happened to me several times, and while I can pretty much understand 30 or 50% of spanish, I really don't understand catalan, and assuming that every foreigner will speak catalan is a bit exaggerated, especially if people have a good knowledge of standard spanish.
When F.C.Barcelona played last year here in Belarus against BATE, they had a press conference before the game.
The player Busquets insisted on speaking Catalan, even if the interpreter (a Belarusian guy who spoke Spanish) didn't really know the language.
Of course Catalan and Spanish are similar, so the interpreter somehow managed, but it was not always easy. And Busquets refused to speak Spanish (the coach as far as I remember did agree to use Spanish).
Barcelona is much safer than any american city of the same size. When I say american I mean from Alaska to Patagonia.
I don't find Barcelona dangerous but this is simply not true. Canadian cities are in the Americas between Alaska and Patagonia and basically all of them are as safe or safer than Barcelona.
So are Spanish cities. Spain as whole is a safer country than Canada. Check the facts. There are crime statistics out there. Example: Crime Index by Country 2016
Numbeo also shows Montreal and Toronto (the two Canadian cities of comparable size to Barcelona) have lower crime than Barcelona.
BTW, I don't think Barcelona is unsafe.
But it's well known that Canada cities are among the safest in the western world, along with Nordic cities and Australian cities.
I don't think we need a PhD thesis to prove it, no more than we need a statistical report to prove that it snows in most Canadian cities in the winter.
So are Spanish cities. Spain as whole is a safer country than Canada. Check the facts. There are crime statistics out there. Example: Crime Index by Country 2016
He didn't say otherwise. He just said that Canadian cities are as safe as Barcelona.
These crime statics means nothing on this discussion since they are based on countries, not cities.
Spain has a lower crime index than Canada or Australia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by victus
Those crime statics means nothing on this discussion since they are based on countries, not cities.
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