hey,  to P&S!

Thank you, gracias, merci, folks.I am happy to be here.

Bacano 

I just caught the fact that you are a retired Spanish teacher. I really should read introduction post more closely. We have some Spanish speaking members so maybe when they post you can help us understand if they post in Spanish. I've always encouraged members to post in their own language if they are having difficulty explaining something.  Translators like Google are not always the best but often using them well allow us to understand better what is being said.  Now we can call on you if you don't mind.

Thank you Shawn.Anytime you can use me for Spanish, French, Italian, portuguese, catalan, romanian(my mother tongue).

Cool!  That is great.  Who you know quite a few languages!  May I ask what the origin of the Catalan language is?  I am not sure I am familiar with that.

Shawn, Catalan is a Romance language spoken in Cataluna, Spain, Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza,Andorra and southern France.They were prohibited to speak or write during the Franco regime, so their base was in Paris at Sorbonne. Many intellectuals from Cataluna, Barcelona mainly, exiled themselves to Mexico after '36.They produced there a fantastic literature in the catalan language.THis language is something between french and spanish.It has a couple of dialects spoken in Valencia region and the islands.Today Cataluna is an autonomous province of Spain and besides Spanish, Catalan is official language.
I started learning it on my own from some books I received from Spain in the '70.At the time they had an only paper in catalan and they published my letter to the editor as a model of correct catalan. I was 19.And very thrilled with learning this language. In Barcelona I could speak it with the locals and they were very happy(1998).I even translated some poets into Romanian and viceversa and published the translation in Barcelona in '84.And in Romania in '88.
In 1989 I had a conference in Bucharest with the theme "the Catalan Jews in The Middle Age" a fascinating topic.This was to celebrate 500 years from the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.The commemoration events were celebrated throughout Spain in 1992. I still have that conference text on my pages online is called SEFARAD '92 but it is in Spanish.
So, that's my story.

Wow!  Great story and information! This is one reason why the site is called "... and Stuff".    Thank you for taking the time to explain things.

Bitte

Welcome Miss Elly. Indeed you speak a lot of languages. I didn't know that Catalan is a language too. So I learned something today.....