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The other day I noticed an ad on the metro in Barcelona for this campaign. Try to use more Catalan? Sure, I'd love to. As a foreigner who is motivated to learn, it'd be great if this campaign could perhaps tell me where I could do just that.
The page is seemingly only in Catalan, or at least there is no obvious way to find a translation. Okay, it might not be aimed primarily at me, but feels like it's a missed opportunity.
Scrolling down a bit further I come across a message in a couple different languages, so it does seem like they thought about foreigners.
Nothing in English for some reason, but at least it's a sign that there's something for me here. I don't speak Urdu, but I can navigate some Castellano. Clicking that header I find what I'm after – cursos de catalán. Perfect!
The link takes me to this website. There's a tiny button up top that lets me use the page in English. Alright, maybe I could learn from home? There's a link to a page about different course modalities... that takes you to a page that only exists in Catalan. Treball en línia a l’aula Moodle – my university degree wasn't completely useless, at least I know what Moodle is.
Let's just see if I can find a course:
Uhm. Alright, I click the question mark. Ah, it's about a placement test! Don't need that, I know nothing, so let's go to the other page. Again, important text only in Catalan. El meu nivell? Inicial, I guess. Look, I'm learning already. (Also: this is just bad UX and not about Catalan, but the postcode finder only recognises non-Barcelona post codes, you just have to figure out that you need to start typing "Barcelona".)
Finally I find a list of courses. I am met with this rather unwieldy table of information in a language I do not yet speak:
For some reason the word "days" is in English, but that's it.
I'll just click the first one. We're still in Catalan-only mode, with the sole exception of the header saying "find your course". After trying to figure out what's going on here, I find a big red button saying Plataforma d'inscripció i tràmits. Inscription platform, sure. Sounds like what I want.
Finally some English: a message telling me I can't register, and that the only time I can do so is during a 35-hour period starting next Thursday.
I learned nivell earlier. Prova de nivell? Sure.
Well, this is a change – we're now using Spanglish! Why this is a question they felt needed to be part of this particular user journey is beyond me. Anyway, I navigate my way past the registration form – which, with a couple of exceptions, is actually in English, and after a couple of technical battles with a verification code and a captcha I manage to log myself in. I start the test, which is just a couple of questions – Do you speak Spanish? Do you speak any other Romance languages? – and the platform immediately tells me that I should take the Bàsic 1 course...
...but that it is not open for enrollment. I guess I'm waiting for next Thursday, and hope I don't forget this whole thing by then – or wait until the next semester to start.
This whole thing is bad on so many levels. If it weren't for the fact that I've learned privately for a few months this would have been much harder to navigate, and if it weren't for writing this post I'd have given up a long time ago.
Dear Generalitat and Consorci: I agree we should all use more Catalan. I moved here not speaking the language, and I want to learn! Perhaps it would be a good idea to make that process a bit easier?
Post Details
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- 1 year ago
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- reddit.com/r/catalan/com...