BarcelonaCatalan tennis player Paula Badosa has apologized for saying that Catalan “is not a language” in a short interview she gave to the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the national governing body of tennis in Great Britain.
Badosa, in an informal conversation, was asked about the number of languages he spoke, and after mentioning Espanyol, he emphasized that he also spoke Catalan, but not a language. However, it counted, along with English, the language in which the interview was conducted.
Despite being born in New York, in the United States, Badosa’s parents are Catalan and he has lived practically his entire life in Catalonia and the Valencian Country. Now the tennis player lives in the United Arab Emirates, where she has established her residence to pay taxes there. However, he claimed that he went to Dubai because of the training conditions, and not because of a tax issue.
The first reactions to Badosa’s words about Catalan came from Plataforma per la Llengua, a non-governmental and non-profit organization that works to promote the language as a tool for social cohesion. The platform cited the tweet from the interview in which Badosa claims that Catalan is not a language, but the British body has deleted the tweet, supposedly to avoid further controversies related to the tennis player.
Hours after the controversy ignited, and in statements to The morning of Catalunya RàdioPaula Badosa has assured that she feels disappointed and blames the interviewer for causing the misunderstanding: “He told me that [el català] it didn’t count as a language, and I had to express it that way. I’m very sorry that the news was misinterpreted, because it’s something that affects me and it’s wrong, so I apologize for this misinterpretation.”
Paula Badosa is playing in the tournament in San Jose, California, where yesterday she patiently beat the young Elizabeth Mandlik 6-2, 5-7, 7-6 after 2 hours and 32 minutes of play, and advanced like this in the quarter finals.
