Ofercat: indicadors sobre l'oferta de català a Santa Coloma de Gramenet

Resum

Basically, Santa Coloma has gone from being a town at the beginning of the 20th century to a city of 120,000 inhabitants in 1997 through two waves of immigration: that of the 1929 World's Fair and the wave of immigration of the 70's. In 1975, only 11 % of the population had Catalan as a habitual language and more than 50 % did not understand it. In recent years, important advances have been registered both as regards indices of understanding of Catalan and in its use. This study gives an idea of offerings in Catalan from the viewpoint of the organizations and the people who work in them. The following sectors were studied: the civil service, the economy and society, the mass media (print and television), public education (primary and secondary) and private and public health care. These sectors have been assigned a weighted value according to their social weight and representation. The aspects studied were the following: identifying signage, informational signage, written communication, oral identification language (the language in which the person initiates the conversation), oral adjustment language (the language in which the person adapts to the language used by the citizen being served). These aspects are assigned a weighted value that, calculated together with the percentage assigned to the sector, produces a final numerical result between 0 and 1. Spoken language is valued more highly than written language. The final result is a 0.47 (practically half the language offerings are in Catalan), which nevertheless presents large differences depending on the sector. The public sector uses Catalan much more than does the private sector. Written language presence is greater than oral presence. The adjustment language score is double the identification language score. This means that language capacity does exist; it should, however, be put into practice.