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Catalan
català
Pronunciation	Template:IPA-ca (EC) ~ Template:IPA-ca (WC)
Native to	Andorra, France, Italy, Spain
Region	See geographic distribution of Catalan
Ethnicity	Catalan people
Native speakers	11.5 million (2006)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Gallo-Iberian Gallo-Romance Occitano-Romance Catalan
Standard forms	Catalan (regulated by the IEC) Valencian (regulated by the AVL)
Writing system	Latin (Catalan alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	Andorra Spain: Catalonia, Valencian Community, Balearic Islands. Italy: Alghero (Sardinia) Latin Union
Regulated by	Institut d'Estudis Catalans Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ca
ISO 639-2	cat
ISO 639-3	cat
Linguasphere	51-AAA-e
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Catalan (/kætəˈlæn/, /ˈkætəlæn/, or /ˈkætələn/; autonym: català Template:IPA-ca or Template:IPA-ca) is a Romance language named for its origins in the historical region of Catalonia in the northeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula and adjoining parts of what is now France. It is the national and only official language of Andorra, a European microstate, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and the Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian. It also has semi-official status in the city of Alghero (where the Algherese dialect is spoken) on the Italian island of Sardinia. It is also spoken with no official recognition in the autonomous communities of Aragon (in La Franja) and Murcia (in Carche) in Spain, and in the historic Roussillon region of southern France, roughly equivalent to the current département of the Pyrénées-Orientales (Northern Catalonia).

Although recognized as a regional language of the department Pyrénées-Orientales since 2007, Catalan has no official recognition in France, as French is the only official language of that country, according to the French Constitution of 1958.

History

Middle Ages: origin

The Catalan language developed from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the eastern end of the Pyrenees mountains and valleys (counties of Razès, Conflent, Rosselló-Vallespir, Empúries, Besalú, Cerdanya, Urgell, Pallars and Ribagorça). It shares many features with Gallo-Romance, Ibero-Romance, and the Gallo-Italian speech types of Northern Italy. While Catalan has therefore been varyingly assigned to Ibero-Romance or Gallo-Romance, neither classification may be entirely appropriate. Catalan diverged from Old Occitan between the 11th and 14th centuries, early texts in the Catalan dialect being the Homilies d'Organyà and the Greuges de Guitard Isarn. Catalan is therefore united with Occitan into an Occitano-Romance group. Still in the modern period, the area covered from Liguria (on the present Italian coast) to Alicante (in Spain) can be seen as a classic dialect continuum, with some perturbation as a result of political divisions and overlay of standard national languages.

The mainstream historical account is that as a consequence of the conquests of Al-Andalus to the south and to the west by the Crown of Aragon, the language spread to all of present-day Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and most of the Valencian Community.

In the 15th century, during the Valencian Golden Age, literature in Catalan reached its apex, which was not matched again until La Renaixença, four centuries later.

Even though the official organizations state that the languages spoken in Catalonia and Valencia are the same, some Valencian scholars hold that Valencian owes more to the language already spoken there before the Catalan–Aragonese conquest than to the language brought by conquerors. Their main argument lies in the small number of Catalan colonists, as registered in documents such as the Llibre de repartiment. However, similar statistical studies based on town tax lists reject these thesis, claiming that 90% were Catalan.

18th century to the present: France

After the Treaty of the Pyrenees, a royal decree by Louis XIV of France on 2 April 1700 prohibited the use of Catalan language in present-day Northern Catalonia in all official documents under the threat of being invalidated.

Shortly after the French Revolution, the French First Republic prohibited official use of, and enacted discriminating policies against, the nonstandard languages of France (patois), such as Catalan, Breton, Occitan, Flemish, and Basque.

The deliberate process of eradicating non-French vernaculars in modern France and disparaging them as mere local and often strictly oral dialects was formalized with Abbé Grégoire's Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language, which he presented on 4 June 1794 to the National Convention; thereafter, all languages other than French were officially banned in the administration and schools for the sake of linguistically uniting post-Bastille Day France.

To date, the French government continues its policy of recognizing only French as an official language in France. Nevertheless, on 10 December 2007, the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales officially recognized Catalan as one of the languages of the department in the Article 1 (a) of its Charte en faveur du Catalan and seek to further promote it in public life and education.

Article 1: "The General Council of Pyrénées-Orientales officially recognizes, along with the French language, Catalan as a language of the department.

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18th century to the present: Spain

After the Nueva Planta Decrees, administrative use of Catalan, and Catalan language education, were also banned in the territories of the Kingdom of Spain. It was not until the Renaixença that use of the Catalan language started to recover.

In Francoist Spain (1939–1975), the use of Spanish in place of Catalan was promoted, and public use of Catalan was initially repressed and discouraged by official propaganda campaigns. The use of Catalan in government-run institutions and in public events was banned. During later stages of the Francoist regime, certain folkloric or religious celebrations in Catalan were resumed and tolerated. Use of Catalan in the mass media was initially forbidden, but was permitted from the early 1950s in the theatre. Publishing in Catalan continued throughout the dictatorship. There was no official prohibition of speaking Catalan in public or in commerce, but all advertising and signage had to be in Spanish alone, as did all written communication in business.

Following the death of Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy under a constitutional monarchy, the use of Catalan increased significantly because of new affirmative action and subsidy policies and the Catalan language is now used in politics, education and the media, including the newspapers Avui ("Today"), El Punt ("The Point"), Ara ("Now"), La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya (sharing content with El Periòdic d'Andorra, printed in Andorra); and the television channels of Televisió de Catalunya (TVC): TV3, the main channel, and Canal 33 (culture channel), Super3/3XL (cartoons channel) as well as a 24-hour news channel 3/24 and the sports channel Esport 3; in Valencia Canal Nou, 24/9 and Punt 2; in the Balearic islands IB3; in Catalonia there are also some private channels such as 8TV, Barça TV, Estil9 or Canal Català, in others. Furthermore, everywhere in the Catalan-speaking territories, there are local channels available in Catalan.

Classification

The ascription of Catalan to the Occitano-Romance branch of Gallo-Romance languages is not shared by all linguists, particularly those from Spanish-speaking areas.

According to Pierre Bec (in Occitan Pèire Bèc), its specific classification is as follows:

• Indo-European languages
  • Italic languages
    • Romance languages
      • Italo-Western languages
        • Western Romance languages
          • Gallo-Iberian languages
            • Gallo-Romance languages (has alternatively been classified as an Ibero-Romance language)
              • Occitano-Romance languages (has alternatively been classified as an East Iberian language)
                • Catalan language

Catalan bears varying degrees of similarity to the linguistic varieties subsumed under the cover term Occitan language (see also differences between Occitan and Catalan and Gallo-Romance languages). Thus, as it should be expected from closely related languages, Catalan today shares many traits with other Romance languages.

Geographic distribution

Catalan-speaking territories

Catalan is spoken in:

• Andorra (Principat d'Andorra), a sovereign state where Catalan is the national and only official language.
• Catalonia (Catalunya), in Spain.
• Most of the Valencian Community (Comunitat Valenciana, also known as País Valencià), in Spain, where it is called Valencian (valencià).
• La Franja, an adjacent strip of Aragon, in Spain (in particular the comarques of Ribagorça, Llitera, Baix Cinca, and Matarranya).
• Balearic Islands (Illes Balears), (Mallorca, Menorca, Eivissa and Formentera) in Spain.
• Northern Catalonia (Catalunya Nord: name used officially for the first time on 10 December 2007 by the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales), in France.
• The city of Alghero (L'Alguer) in Sardinia, Italy.
• A small region of Murcia, Spain, known as Carche (El Carxe).

These territories are sometimes referred to as the Països Catalans (Catalan Countries), a denomination based on cultural affinity and common heritage, that has also had a subsequent political interpretation but no official status. Various interpretations of the term may include some or all of these regions.

Number of speakers

The number of persons known to be fluent in Catalan varies depending on the sources used. A 2004 language study did not indicate the total number of speakers, but showed a total estimate of 9–9.5 million, by matching the percentage of speakers to the population of each area where Catalan is spoken. The web site of the Generalitat de Catalunya estimated that as of 2004 there were 9,118,882 speakers of Catalan. These figures only reflect potential speakers; today it is the native language of only 35.6% of the Catalan population. And according to Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Catalan has a total of 11,530,160 speakers.

Territory	State	Understand	Can speak
Catalonia	Spain	6,502,880	5,698,400
Valencian Community	Spain	3,448,780	2,407,951
Balearic Islands	Spain	852,780	706,065
Roussillon	France	203,121	125,621
Andorra	Andorra	75,407	61,975
La Franja (Aragon)	Spain	47,250	45,000
Alghero (Sardinia)	Italy	20,000	17,625
Carche (Murcia)	Spain	No data	No data
Total Catalan-speaking territories		11,150,218	9,062,637
Rest of World		No data	350,000
Total		11,150,218	9,412,637

Notes:

1. The number of people who understand Catalan includes those who can speak it.

2. Figures relate to all self-declared capable speakers, not just native speakers.

Dialects

The dialects of the Catalan language feature a relative uniformity, specially when compared to other Romance languages. The only exception is the isolated idiosyncratic Alguerese dialect.

In 1861, Manuel Milà i Fontanals proposed a division of Catalan into two major dialect blocks: Eastern Catalan and Western Catalan. The different Catalan dialects show differences in lexicon, grammar, morphology and pronunciation due to historical isolation. Each dialect also encompasses several regional varieties. The transitions between dialects tend to be smooth.

The main difference between the Eastern and Western blocks is their treatment of unstressed ⟨a⟩ and ⟨e⟩; which have merged to /ə/ in Eastern dialects, but which remain distinct as /a/ and /e/ in Western dialects.

The following diagram summarizes all the dialects and sub-dialects of Catalan:

Standards

Catalan is a pluricentric language with two main standards; one regulated by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC), general standard, with Pompeu Fabra's orthography as axis, keeping features from Central Catalan, and the other regulated by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL), restricted scale standard, focused on Valencian standardization on the basis of Normes de Castelló, that is, Pompeu Fabra's orthography but more adapted to Western Catalan pronunciation and features of Valencian dialects.

IEC's standard, apart from the basis of Central Catalan features, takes also other dialects' features in consideration as standard. Despite this, the most notable difference between both standards is some tonic ⟨e⟩ accentuation, for instance: francès, anglès (IEC) – francés, anglés (AVL) ('French, English'), cafè (IEC) – café (AVL) ('coffee'), conèixer (IEC) – conéixer ('to know'), comprèn (IEC) – comprén (AVL) ('he understands'). This is because of the different pronunciation of some stressed ⟨e⟩, especially tonic ē (long e) and i (short i) from Latin, in both Catalan blocks (/ɛ/ in Eastern Catalan and /e/ in Western Catalan). Nevertheless, AVL's standard keeps the grave accent ⟨è⟩, without pronouncing this ⟨e⟩ as /ɛ/, in some words like: què ('what'), València, èter ('ether'), sèsam ('sesame'), sèrie ('series') and època ('age').

There are also some other divergences like the digraph ⟨tl⟩ used by AVL in some words instead of ⟨tll⟩ like in ametla/ametlla ('almond'), espatla/espatlla ('back' an.) or butla/butlla ('bull'), the use of elided demonstratives (este 'this', eixe 'that' -near-) in the same level as reinforced ones (aquest, aqueix) or the use of many verbal forms common in Valencian, and some of these common in the rest of Western Catalan too, like subjunctive mood or inchoative conjugation in -ix- at the same level as -eix- or the priority use of -e morpheme in 1st person singular in present indicative (-ar verbs): jo compre instead of jo compro ('I buy').

In the Balearic Islands, IEC's standard is used but adapted for the Balearic dialect by the University of the Balearic Islands's philological section, Govern de les Illes Balears's consultative organ. In this way, for instance, IEC says it is correct writing cantam as much as cantem ('we sing') but the University says that the priority form in the Balearic Islands must be "cantam" in all fields. Another feature of the Balearic standard is the non-ending in the 1st person singular present indicative: jo compr ('I buy'), jo tem ('I fear'), jo dorm ('I sleep').

In Alghero, the IEC has adapted its standard to the Alguerese dialect. In this standard one can find, among other features: the definite article lo instead of el, special possessive pronouns and determinants la mia ('mine'), lo sou/la sua ('his/her'), lo tou/la tua ('yours'), and so on, the use of -v- /v/ in the imperfect tense in all conjugations: cantava, creixiva, llegiva; the use of many archaic words, usual words in Alguerese: manco instead of menys ('less'), calqui u instead of algú ('someone'), qual/quala instead of quin/quina ('which'), and so on; and the adaptation of weak pronouns.

In 2011, the Aragonese government passed a decree for the establishment of a new language regulator of Catalan in La Franja (the so-called Catalan-speaking areas of Aragon). The new entity, designated as Acadèmia Aragonesa del Català, shall allow a facultative education in Catalan and a standardization of the Catalan language in La Franja.

Status of Valencian

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The official language academy of the Valencian Community (the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua) considers Catalan and Valencian simply to be two names for the same language. All universities teaching Romance languages, and virtually all linguists, consider these two to be linguistic variants of the same language (similar to Canadian French versus Metropolitan French, and European versus Brazilian Portuguese).

There is a roughly continuous set of dialects covering the regional forms of Catalan/Valencian, with no break at the border between Catalonia and the Valencian Community, and the various forms of Catalan and Valencian are mutually intelligible This is not to say that there are no differences between them; the speech of Valencians is recognizable both in pronunciation as well as in morphological and lexical peculiarities. However, these differences are not any wider than among North-Western Catalan and Eastern Catalan. In fact, Northern Valencian (spoken in the Castelló province and Matarranya valley, a strip of Aragon) is more similar to the Catalan of the lower Ebro basin (spoken in southern half of Tarragona province and another strip of Aragon) than to apitxat Valencian (spoken in the area of L'Horta, in the province of Valencia).

What gets called a language (as opposed to a dialect) is defined partly by mutual comprehensibility as well as political and cultural factors. In this case, the perceived status of Valencian as a dialect of Catalan has historically had important political implications including Catalan nationalism and the idea of the Catalan Countries. Arguing that Valencian is a separate language may sometimes be part of an effort by Valencians to resist a perceived Catalan nationalist agenda aimed at incorporating Valencians into what they feel is a "constructed" nationality centered on Barcelona.

As such, the issue of whether Catalan and Valencian constitute different languages or merely dialects has been the subject of adversarial discussions for over a century and political agitation several times since the end of the Franco era. The latest political controversy regarding Valencian occurred on the occasion of the drafting of the European Constitution in 2004. The Spanish government supplied the EU with translations of the text into Basque, Galician, Catalan, and Valencian, but the Catalan and Valencian versions were identical.

While professing the unity of the Catalan language, the Spanish government claimed to be constitutionally bound to produce distinct Catalan and Valencian versions because the Statute of Autonomy of the Valencian Community refers to the language as Valencian. In practice, the Catalan, Valencian, and Balearic versions of the EU constitution are identical: the government of Catalonia accepted the Valencian translation without any changes under the premise that the Valencian standard is accepted by the norms set forth by the IEC.

Catalan may be seen instead as a multi-centric language (much like English); there exist two standards, one regulated by the IEC, which is centered on Central Catalan (with slight variations to include Balearic verb inflection) and one regulated by the AVL, centered on Valencian.

The AVL accepts the conventions set forth in the Normes de Castelló as the normative spelling, shared with the IEC that allows for the diverse idiosyncrasies of the different language dialects and varieties. As the normative spelling, these conventions are used in education, and most contemporary Valencian writers make use of them. Nonetheless, a small minority mainly of those who advocate for the recognition of Valencian as a separate language, use in a non-normative manner an alternative spelling convention known as the Normes del Puig.

Vocabulary

The basic vocabulary shows more affinities with the Gallo-Romance group than with Ibero-Romance (Spanish, Portuguese). These similarities are most notable with Occitan (examples below are from Languedocien).

Also, several words conserved in Spanish and Catalan, have different meanings.

Writing system

The Catalan alphabet consists of the twenty-six letters of the basic Modern Latin alphabet.

The letters K, W and Y are only used in loanwords, and in the case of Y also in the palatal digraph ny. Modified letters with diacritics include À, É, È, Í, Ï, Ó, Ò, Ú, Ü and Ç.

The Catalan spelling has a number of distinctive features. The graph l·l (named ela geminada 'geminate-l') is composed of an interpunct (or middot) between two ⟨l⟩ (e.g. intel·ligent 'intelligent', novel·la 'novel') and is used to distinguish phonetically /lː/ from /ʎ/ (written ll as in Spanish). Another special grapheme is the digraph ny /ɲ/, found in Hungarian, Malay and in some African languages (e.g. banys 'baths'). Also of note is the final digraph ig, pronounced /tʃ/ after a vowel (e.g. raig 'ray', veig 'I see') and /itʃ/ after a consonant (e.g. mig 'half', desig 'desire'). The combination of t + nasal or lateral consonant is pronounced as a geminate of the second consonant: tm /mː/, tn /nː/, tl /lː/ and tll /ʎː/ (e.g. setmana 'week', cotna 'pork rind', Betlem 'Betlehem', bitllet 'bank note'), whereas t + sibilant consonant indicates affrication: tx /tʃ/, ts /ts/, tz /dz/, tg and tj /dʒ/ (e.g. fletxa 'arrow', potser 'maybe', dotze 'twelve', jutge 'judge', platja 'beach'). Similarly, the less common graphemes dj /dʒ/ and ds /ts/ also stand for affricates. Other digraphs are rr /r/, ss /s/, ix /ʃ/, gu /ɡ/ and qu /k/.

Catalan spelling utilizes ç (called ce trencada, literally 'broken cee') when ⟨c⟩ takes the soft sound /s/ before ⟨a, o, u⟩ (e.g. caça 'hunt') or in final position (e.g. dolç 'sweet'). The letter x is normally pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar /ʃ/ (usually affricated to /tʃ/ in many Western Catalan dialects); e.g. xic /ˈʃik/~/ˈtʃik/ ('little'). In Latin and Greek learned words it represents /ks/ (e.g. fixar 'fix') and /ɡz/ (e.g. exacte 'exact'), as in other closely related languages. The digraph ix instead, always represents /ʃ/ (/i̯ʃ/ in Western Catalan dialects); e.g. calaixos ('drawers').

Phonology

Vowels

Standard Catalan and Valencian has the typical seven-vowel system from Vulgar Latin (/a/, /ɛ/, /e/, /i/, /ɔ/, /o/, and /u/). Notable features:

• While Central Catalan has both /e/ and /ɛ/, the relation of these two sounds to the corresponding Proto-Romance sounds is quite complex. In most cases, in fact, original Proto-Romance /e/ and /ɛ/ actually swapped places, with an intermediary step being a separate phoneme /ǝ/ that still exists in the Balearic Islands (in Western Catalan, most original /ɛ/ turned into /e/).
• Catalan is notable for vowel reduction in unstressed syllables: Eastern Catalan vowels reduce to three (/a/, /ɛ/ and /e/ → [ə]; /ɔ/, /o/, and /u/ → [u]; and /i/ → [i], except for most of Majorcan where a fourth unstressed vowel may appear, that is, unstressed /ɔ/ and /o/ normally merge with [o]), while Western Catalan vowels reduce to five (/a/ → [a]; /ɛ/ and /e/ → [e]; /ɔ/ and /o/ → [o]; /u/ → [u]; and /i/ → [i]).

Consonants

The consonant system of Catalan is rather conservative, shared with most modern Western Romance languages. Notable features:

• Most occurrences of /l/ are heavily velarized: [ɫ] (feature shared with European Portuguese).
• Voiced obstruents are devoiced word-finally (feature shared with Occitan).
• Voiced plosives /b d ɡ/ are lenited after a continuant. Exceptions include /d/ after lateral consonants and /b/ after /f/ (feature shared with Ibero-Romance languages, such as Spanish, Galician or European Portuguese, but also, within Occitano-Romance, with Gascon and Languedocien Occitan).
• Phonetic work done by Daniel Recasens shows the postalveolar sibilants /ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/ to be alveolo-palatal (palatalized postalveolars): [ɕ], [ʑ], [tɕ] and [dʑ], respectively (however, since ⟨ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ⟩ are overwhelmingly used in the linguistic literature on Catalan and Valencian, those characters are also used at Misplaced Pages).
• In standard Catalan, original /dʒ/ remains as /tʃ/ word-finally, and elsewhere splits lexically into /ʒ/ and /dʒ/ (cf. French and Portuguese, where /dʒ/ never occurred word-finally and with uniform reduction to /ʒ/ elsewhere). In standard Valencian instead, the presence of /dʒ/ for /ʒ/ reflects the historical change /ʒ/ > /dʒ/ and the failure for /dʒ/ to become /ʒ/ (feature shared with Occitan and standard Italian).
• Unlike elsewhere, no native /tʃ/ ever arose in the medieval period. Current /tʃ/ are largely due to late strengthening of /ʃ/ in certain Catalan dialects (and in words borrowed from them into standard Catalan), or in foreign borrowings.
• Unlike most other Western Romance languages, Catalan has phonemic geminate consonants. These are restricted to nasals, laterals and the voiced plosives /b/ and /ɡ/.

Phonological evolution

Grammar

The first descriptive and normative grammar book of modern Catalan was written by Pompeu Fabra in 1918. In 1995, a new grammar by Antoni Maria Badia i Margarit was published, which also documents the Valencian and Balearic varieties.

The grammar of Catalan follows the general pattern of Western Romance languages. The primary word order is SVO (subject–verb–object).

Substantives and adjectives are not declined by case, as in Classical Latin. There are two grammatical genders—masculine and feminine.

Grammatical articles developed from Latin demonstratives. The form of the article depends on the gender and the number of the subject and the first sounds of the word and can be combined with prepositions that precede them. A unique feature of Catalan is a definite article that may precede personal names in certain contexts. Its basic form is en and it can change according to its environment: en Joan meaning 'John', na Maria meaning 'Mary' (note clitic en has also other lexical meanings). One of the common usages of this article is in the word can, a combination of la casa shortened to ca ('house', as French chez) and en, which here means 'the'. For example la casa d'en Sergi becomes can Sergi meaning 'the house of Sergi', 'Sergi's house'. Note here, other definite articles (el, la, els, les) can also be used with personal names like in Portuguese, as la Maria ('Mary', Portuguese a Maria).

Verbs are conjugated according to tense and mood similarly to other Western Romance languages. Present, imperfect and simple preterite are based on classical Latin present, imperfect and perfect respectively, future and conditional are formed from the infinitive followed by the present and imperfect form of the auxiliary verb haver (written together and not considered periphrastic). Periphrastic tenses are formed from the conjugated auxiliary verbs haver ('to have') and ésser ('to be') followed by the past participle. A unique tense in Catalan is the "periphrastic simple preterite," which is formed of vaig, vas (or vares), va, vam (or vàrem), vau (or vàreu) and van (there is the usual wrong idea these forms are the conjugated forms of anar, which means 'to go'), which is followed by the infinitive of the verb. Thus, jo vaig parlar (or more simply vaig parlar) means 'I spoke'.

Nominative pronouns are often omitted, as the subject can be usually derived from the conjugated verb. The Catalan rules for combination of the object pronoun clitics with verbs, articles and other pronouns are significantly more complex than in most other Romance languages; see Weak pronouns in Catalan.

Morphology

• The definite articles el, la, els, les derive from Latin demonstratives ille, illa. The older forms lo (m. s.) and los (m. pl.) are still common nowadays in some western dialects and in Algherese. Several varieties of the Catalan language (Balearic Islands, Costa Brava, and Tàrbena) have maintained an article called salat (< Latin ipse, ipsa → es, sa), probably formed before the variants of ille developed. Singular articles are elided before vowel-initial words, in speech and writing: el + home > l'home 'the man', la + hora > l'hora 'the time'.
• Possessive adjectives are formed with the definite article (el meu gos 'my dog') like in Italian (il mio cane), Portuguese (o meu cão) and in many Occitan dialects (Languedocien and Pyrenean Gascon). Weak forms of possessive adjectives (mon, ma, mos, mes, etc.) are fossilized for certain usages, as close familiar relatives or in order to express a high degree of affection (for instance: mon pare 'my dad', ma mare 'my mum'; in Valencian ma casa 'my home', ma vida 'my life'). Also note the postposition of the possessive to express particular nuances, e.g. casa meva ('my home', literally 'a house of mine') as different from la meva casa ('my house').
• Plurals are formed in a number of ways:
  • -a becomes -es (e.g. casa 'house' > cases).
  • Most consonant- and vowel-final words (except -a) add -s: noi 'boy' > nois, detall 'detail' > detalls
  • Words ending in sibilants (-s, -ç, -x, -ig) form plurals with -os: gos 'dog' > gossos, peix 'fish' > peixos. Some plural words with -ig may alternate forming plural by adding -os or a silent -s: raig 'ray' > rajos/raigs.
  • Words ending in sibilant clusters (-sc, -st, -xt) may form plurals by adding -os or -s: bosc 'forest' > boscos/boscs, aquest 'this' > aquestos/aquests.
  • Words ending in a stressed vowel often take -ns: pi 'pine' > pins, cinturó 'belt' > cinturons (but esquí 'ski' > esquís, tabú 'taboo' > tabús). In Western Catalan dialects, some particular words ending in unstressed vowels may also form plural by adding -ns: home 'man' > hòmens (from Latin homo > homines).
• Partitive: While Catalan patterns with Ibero-Romance in the lack of a partitive article (e.g. vull pa 'I want some bread', cf. Spanish quiero pan but French je veux du pain), it does have a partitive pronoun, like in Gallo-Romance languages: jo en tinc tres 'I have three of them' (Spanish tengo tres but French j'en ai trois).
• The construction used to express punctual/perfective aspect in the past tense is one of the most distinctive features of Catalan. It is a periphrasis formed with a special conjugation of anar ('to go'), that comes from the Latin verb vadere, plus the infinitive form of the main verb. For example: jo vaig dir ('I said'). This construction has almost completely replaced the historical simple past form (jo diguí), which corresponds to the Spanish preterit or French passé simple.

Catalan names

Catalan naming customs are similar to those of Spain and Portugal; people take two surnames–their father's and their mother's–which are separated by the particle i, meaning 'and' (in Spanish the equivalent particle is written y, but often omitted altogether).

For example, the full name of the architect Antoni Gaudí is Antoni Gaudí i Cornet after his parents: Francesc Gaudí i Serra and Antònia Cornet i Bertran, meaning he was son of Gaudí and Cornet.

Catalan loanwords in the English language

See also

• Catalan orthography
• Catalan phonology
• Catalan conjugation
• Catalan literature
• Institut d'Estudis Catalans (Catalan Studies Institute)
• Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (Valencian Academy of the Language)
• Pompeu Fabra
• Normes de Castelló
• Alguerese
• Central Catalan
• Northern Catalan
• Balearic
• Valencian
• Languages of Catalonia
• Languages of France
• Languages of Italy
• Languages of Spain
• Names of Catalan language
• Òmnium Cultural
• Plataforma per la Llengua
• Spanish (Spain) keyboard layout (used to type Catalan)
• .cat (the first top-level domain based on the Catalan language and culture)

References

1. Catalan at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
2. ^ Some Iberian scholars may alternatively classify Catalan as an Ibero-Romance language/East Iberian.
3. Catalan Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. (Retrieved 20 March 2010).
4. ^ "Charte en faveur du Catalan". "La catalanitat a la Catalunya Nord". "Catalanité". cg66.fr. 28 July 2004. Retrieved 16 May 2010.
5. French Constitution, 1958: Article 2. The language of the Republic shall be French.
6. Riquer, Martí de, Història de la Literatura Catalana, vol. 1. Barcelona: Edicions Ariel, 1964
7. "Dictamen de l'Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua sobre els principis i criteris per a la defensa de la denominació i l'entitat del valencià". Report from Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua about denomination and identity of Valencian.
8. Guinot, Enric (1999). Els fundadors del Regne de València: replobament, antroponímia i llengua a la València medieval. Valencia: Tres i Quatre. ISBN 8475025919.
9. "L'interdiction de la langue catalane en Roussillon par Louis XIV" (PDF). "CRDP, Académie de Montpellier.
10. Abbé Grégoire. "Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". languefrancaise.net.
11. Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict, page 139. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
12. Thomas, Earl W. (1962), "The Resurgence of Catalan", Hispania (vol. 45, March No. 1): 43–8, doi:10.2307/337523.
13. Order from the Excmo. Sr. Gobernador Civil of Barcelona. EL USO DEL IDIOMA NACIONAL EN TODOS LOS SERVICIOS PÚBLICOS. 1940.
14. "Sociolinguistic situation in Catalan-speaking areas. Tables. Official data about sociolinguistic situation in Catalan-speaking areas: Catalonia (2003), Andorra (2004), the Balearic Islands (2004), Aragonese Border (2004), Northern Catalonia (2004), Alghero (2004) and Valencia (2004)". Generalitat of Catalonia. 7 August 2008. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
15. "Catalan, language of Europe" (PDF). Generalitat of Catalonia. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
16. Población según lengua habitual. Datos comparados 2003-2008. Cataluña. Año 2008, Encuesta de Usos Lingüísticos de la población (2003 y 2008), Instituto de Estadística de Cataluña
17. Ethnologue: Languages of the World (unknown ed.). SIL International..
18. ^ Sources:
    • Catalonia: Statistic data of 2001 census, from Institut d'Estadística de Catalunya, Generalitat de Catalunya .
    • Land of Valencia: Statistical data from 2001 census, from Institut Valencià d'Estadística, Generalitat Valenciana .
    • Land of Valencia: Statistical data from 2001 census, from Institut Valencià d'Estadística, Generalitat Valenciana .
    • Balearic Islands: Statistical data from 2001 census, from Institut Balear d'Estadística, Govern de les Illes Balears .
    • Northern Catalonia: Media Pluriel Survey commissioned by Prefecture of Languedoc-Roussillon Region done in October 1997 and published in January 1998 .
    • Andorra: Sociolinguistic data from Andorran Government, 1999.
    • Aragon: Sociolinguistic data from Euromosaic .
    • Alguer: Sociolinguistic data from Euromosaic .
    • Rest of World: Estimate for 1999 by the Federació d'Entitats Catalanes outside the Catalan Countries.
19. ^ Moll 2006, p. 32. sfn error: no target: CITEREFMoll2006 (help)
20. "Dictamen de l'Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua sobre els principis i criteris per a la defensa de la denominació i l'entitat del valencià". Report from Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua about denomination and identity of Valencian.
21. Central Catalan has 90% to 95% inherent intelligibility for speakers of Valencian (1989 R. Hall, Jr.), cited on Ethnologue.
22. Isabel I Vilar, Ferran. "Traducció única de la Constitució europea". I-Zefir. 30 Oct 2004. 29 Apr 2009.
23. Wheeler, Max H. (2006), Catalan, in the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics.
24. Colón, Germà (1993), El lèxic català dins la Romània, Valencia: Universitat de València, ISBN 84-370-1327-5 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |collection= ignored (help).
25. ^ Moll, Francesc de B. (1958). Gramàtica Històrica Catalana (in Catalan (original in Spanish)) (Catalan translation made in 1991. Reprinted in 2006 ed.). Universitat de València. p. 47. ISBN 13-978-84-370. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
26. Carbonell, Joan F.; Llisterri, Joaquim (1999), "Catalan", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–65, ISBN 0-521-63751-1.
27. The World Atlas of Language Structures. wals.info.
28. ^ Philip Babcock Gove, ed. (1993). Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, inc. ISBN 3-8290-5292-8.
29. ^ Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins Publishers. 1991. ISBN 0-00-433286-5.

• Wheeler, Max; Yates, Alan; Dols, Nicolau (1999), Catalan: A Comprehensive Grammar, London: Routledge.

External links

Institutions

• Institut d'Estudis Catalans
• Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
• Secretaria de Política Lingüística de la Generalitat de Catalunya

About the Catalan language

• Ethnologue report for Catalan
• Gramàtica de la Llengua Catalana (Catalan grammar)
• verbs.cat (Catalan verb conjugations with online trainers)

Monolingual dictionaries

• Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, from the Institut d'Estudis Catalans
• Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, from Enciclopèdia Catalana
• Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear d'Alcover i Moll
• Diccionari Valencià online
• Diccionari Invers de la Llengua Catalana (dictionary of Catalan words spelled backwards)

Bilingual and multilingual dictionaries

• Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana Multilingüe from Enciclopèdia Catalana (Catalan < > English, French, German and Spanish)
• DACCO open source, collaborative dictionary (Catalan < > English)
• Webster's Online Dictionary, The Rosetta Edition (Catalan < > English)
• Optimot: Catalan language consults, dictionary and thesaurus of Generalitat of Catalonia

Automated translation systems

• Traductor automated, online translations of text and web pages (Catalan < > English, French and Spanish)
• SisHiTra automated, online translations of text and web pages (Catalan < > Spanish)
• apertium.org Apertium (free software) translates text, documents or web pages, online or offline, between Catalan and Aranese, English, Esperanto, French, Occitan, Portuguese and Spanish
• translate.google.com online translations catalan <> English & several languages

Phrasebooks

• Catalan phrasebook on Wikitravel
• Basic Catalan phrases (with audio)

Learning resources

• Catalan Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words, from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix
• Learn Catalan Online with volunteers
• Interc@t, set of electronic resources for learning the Catalan language and culture
• Learn Catalan!, an introduction for the Catalonia-bound traveler
• On-line Catalan resources
• parla.cat

Catalan-language online encyclopedia

• Enciclopèdia Catalana

Articles related to the Catalan language

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Faetar Savoyard Valdôtain Old Gallo-Romance Ibero- Romance (West Iberian) Asturleonese Asturian Eastern Western Cantabrian Leonese Bercian Paḷḷuezu Palra Riberan Riunorese Mirandese Old Leonese Galician–Portuguese Fala Galician Galician–Asturian/Eonavian Portuguese dialects African Asian Brazilian Mineiro European Alentejan Oliventine Estremenho Minderico Northern Uruguayan Creoles Portugis Judeo-Portuguese Castilian Extremaduran Judeo-Spanish Haketia Tetuani Spanish dialects Equatoguinean Latin American Chilean Chilote Peruvian Peruvian Ribereño Rioplatense Peninsular Andalusian Llanito Castilian Castrapo Castúo Murcian Philippine Saharan Creoles Old Spanish Pyrenean–Mozarabic Andalusi Romance Navarro-Aragonese Aragonese Central Eastern Ribagorçan Benasquese Judeo-Aragonese Southern Somontanés Navalese Western Aisinian Ansó Aragüés Hecho Navarrese Old Navarrese Others Barranquenho (mixed Portuguese–Spanish) Caló (mixed Romani–Ibero- and Occitano-Romance) Occitano- Romance Catalan dialects Eastern Algherese Balearic Mallorcan Menorcan Central Northern Judeo-Catalan Patuet Western Ribagorçan Valencian Occitan Auvergnat Gascon Aranese Béarnese Aas whistled Landese Judeo-Gascon Judeo-Provençal Languedocien Limousin Provençal Niçard Vivaro-Alpine Gardiol Mentonasc Old Occitan Old Catalan Rhaeto- Romance Friulian Fornes Ladin Cadorino Nones Romansh Jauer Putèr Surmiran Sursilvan Vallader Others Franco-Italian Mediterranean Lingua Franca (Western Romance-based pidgin) Venetian (unknown further classification) Chipilo Fiuman Talian Triestine Others African Romance British Latin Pannonian Latin Sardinian Campidanese Logudorese Reconstructed Proto-Romance Italics indicate extinct languages Bold indicates languages with more than 5 million speakers Languages between parentheses are varieties of the language on their left. v t e Occitano-Romance languages and dialects Arverno-Mediterranean Auvergnat Limousin Provençal (including Niçard) Vivaro-Alpine (including Mentonasc and Waldensian) Central Occitan Languedocien (excepting Southern Languedocien) Aquitano-Pyrenean Catalan dialects Eastern Catalan Algherese Balearic Central Northern Western Catalan North-Western Valencian Gascon (including Aranese and Béarnese) Southern Languedocien Other varieties Old Provençal† Judaeo-Provençal† Judeo-Gascon† Judaeo-Catalan† Catalan Caló v t e Catalan / Valencian History Literature Geo-political distribution (Països Catalans) Grammar Pronunciation Phonetic history IPA guide Spelling-to-sound charts Orthography Alphabet Braille Morpho-syntax Nouns Personal pronouns Verbs Conjugation Varieties Central Catalan Northern Catalan (Roussillonese) North-Western Ribagorçan Valencian Northern Central Southern Insular Alguerese Balearic Ibizan Majorcan Minorcan Catalan Caló Judaeo-Catalan† Patuet† Organizations Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL) Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC) Institut and Fundació Ramon Llull (IRL & FRL) Geopolitical use v t e Languages of Europe Sovereign states Albania Andorra Armenia Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Kazakhstan Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Moldova Monaco Montenegro Netherlands North Macedonia Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia San Marino Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Vatican City States with limited recognition Abkhazia Kosovo Northern Cyprus South Ossetia Transnistria Dependencies and other entities Åland Faroe Islands Gibraltar Guernsey Isle of Man Jersey Svalbard Other entities European Union Sovereign Military Order of Malta Template:Latinunion Template:Catalan/Valencian-speaking territories

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• Use dmy dates from July 2012
• Ill-formatted IPAc-en transclusions
• Catalan language
• Iberian Romance languages
• Languages of Andorra
• Languages of France
• Languages of Italy
• Languages of Sardinia
• Languages of Spain
• Subject–verb–object languages