Ensenya’m la llengua

Since its origins in 2002, Editorial Gavarres has shown a strong commitment to the territory, being a pioneer in the recovery of oral memory and heritage through local journalism. The editorial’s work in this area is so significant that it has earned this year’s National Proximity Communication Award. Continuing with this approach, Grup Gavarres publishes “Ensenya’m la llengua” a new exercise in recovering the historical memory of words related to health, medicine, and remedies.

Written by Antoni Beltran, illustrated by Josep M. Pous-Culí, and with a prologue by Màrius Serra, this book aims to be a tool to recover a popular and colloquial vocabulary that until a few years ago was lively, explicit, and completely natural; a language filled with hearths, stumbles, and coverings.

The Catalan lexicon related to health and diseases is impoverished and has some flaws derived from the standardization of the language and the influence of Spanish. Tirons and desgarros gain presence in medical consultations to the detriment of estrebades and carns esqueixades, and chichons and sarpullits gradually replace nyanyos and granissades.