A champagne toast, yes; but with Penedès champagne, clear, as we had been saying all our lives, until private interests wanted us to change it to the word cava. But Albert Jané has never bent his back and has fought to keep the word champagne in DIEC with its usual meaning. It is an example of his master’s degree in the Philological Section of the Institute of Catalan Studies.
Jané, renamed the grammar smurf when he turned 90, is also the sensible smurf. Never miss the monthly meeting of the Philological Section, in the Coromines room. He speaks little and listens carefully. But when he speaks, everyone is silent. It is the respect that all members have for a clear mind, which has given such excellent service to the Catalan language. Because when it comes to vocabulary, his postulates to dictionary definitions and examples are always surgically precise, so that the only possible answer to what he says is amen.
His work comes from afar, when in the magazine Cavall Fort he translated into Catalan the comic strips of characters as emblematic as the Smurfs or Lucky Luke, which trained and enthused young readers in the Catalan language. Little joke!
Even today, every month he sends a privileged few a letter containing linguistic considerations and texts of creation. Just yesterday, when the award was made public, Màrius Serra posted on the networks a photograph of the last delivery he had received, on March 4, entitled “The hundred personal preferences”, where he recalls some uses that he considers little genuine, next to their proposals.
With Albert Jané, the Philological Section of the IEC adds a fifth Living Catalan Letters Honorary Award to the ones it already has, such as the more than centenarian Josep Vallverdú (2000); the writer Jaume Cabré, author of Jo confesso (2010); the dialectologist Joan Veny (2015), and the poet Josep Piera (2023).
A toast, then, with Penedès champagne to a living myth of our recent history, which goes beyond language, because it has forged the first steps of the culture of many generations.
