Catalan language

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{{Infobox Language |name=Catalan, Valencian |nativename=català, valencià |familycolor=Indo-European |states=Spain, France, Andorra and Italy |region=Catalonia, Valencia, Balearic Islands, Roussillon, Aragon, Murcia, Sardinia and Andorra |speakers=More than 7.5 million |fam2=Italic |fam3=Romance |fam4=Italo-Western |fam5=Western |fam6=Gallo-Iberian |fam7=Ibero-Romance |fam8=East Iberian |nation=Andorra; Catalonia, Balearic Islands, Valencia in Spain |agency=Institut d'Estudis Catalans
Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua |iso1=ca|iso2=cat|lc1=cat|ld1=Catalan-Valencian-Balear|ll1=Catalan language}} Template:Catalan-speaking world

Catalan [[IPA|Template:IPA]] (Català IPA: Template:IPA) also called Valencian (Valencià IPA: Template:IPA) is a Romance language, the only official language of Andorra and co-official in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia. Spain has the majority of active Catalan speakers, and Catalan is the state's second most widely spoken language. It is spoken or understood by as many as 12 million people who live not only in Andorra and Spain, but also in parts of France and Italy.

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Classification

According to the Ethnologue, its specific classification is a member of the East Iberian branch of the Ibero-Romance branch of the Gallo-Iberian branch of the Western sub complex of the Italo-Western complex of the Romance group of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. It shares many features with both Spanish and French, and is the language nearest to Occitan, and is often thought of as a sort of "transitory" language between the Iberian and Gallic languages when comparing the modern descendants of Latin.

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Geographic distribution

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Catalan is spoken in:

Catalonia in Spain.
An adjacent strip of Aragon, Spain, in particular the comarques of Baixa Ribagorça, Llitera, Baix Cinca, and Matarranya.
Balearic Islands in Spain.
Andorra.
Part of the Land of Valencia in Spain. (where it is called Valencian)
Northern Catalonia in France.
The city of Alghero (l'Alguer) on Sardinia, an island in Italy.
A small region in Murcia, Spain, known as el Carche in Castilian and el Carxe in Catalan.

All these areas are informally called Catalan countries (Catalan Països Catalans), a denomination based originally on cultural affinity and common heritage, that some have subsequently interpreted politically.

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Official status

Catalan is the official language of Andorra. It is co-official in the Spanish autonomous communities of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, and Valencia. It has no official status in the parts of Aragon, La Franja, where it is spoken, but has gained some recognition by Aragonese laws since 1990. It has no official status in the other places where it is spoken.

Image:Catalan in Europe.png

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Number of Catalan speakers

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Territories where Catalan is official

Region	Understands	Can speak
Catalonia (Spain)	5,837,874	4,602,611
Land of Valencia (Spain)	3,512,236	1,972,922
Balearic Islands (Spain)	733,466	504,349
Andorra	62,381	49,519
TOTAL	10,145,957	7,129,401

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Other territories

Region	Understands	Can speak
Alghero (Sardinia, Italy)	20,000	17,625
Northern Catalonia (France)	203,121	125,622
La Franja (Aragon, Spain)	47,250	45,000
Carxe (Murcia, Spain)	No data	No data
Rest of World	No data	350,000
TOTAL	270,371	538,247

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World

Region	Understands	Can speak
Catalan Countries (Europe)	10,416,328	7,317,648
Rest of World	No data	350,000
TOTAL	10,416,328	7,667,648

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

Sources: Catalonia: Statistic data of 2001 census, from Institut d'Estadística de Catalunya, Generalitat catalana [1]. Land of Valencia: Statistical data from 2001 census, from Institut Valencià d'Estadística, Generalitat Valenciana [2]. Balearic Islands: Statistical data from 2001 census, from Institut Balear d'Estadística, Govern de les Illes Balears [3]. Northern Catalonia: Media Pluriel Survey commissioned by Prefecture of Languedoc-Roussillon Region done in October 1997 and published in January 1998 [4]. Andorra: Sociolinguistic data from Andorran Government, 1999. Aragon: Sociolinguistic data from Euromosaic [5]. Alguer: Sociolinguistic data from Euromosaic [6]. Rest of World: Estimate for 1999 by the Federació d'Entitats Catalanes outside the Catalan Countries.

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Dialects

In 1861, Manuel Milà i Fontanals proposed a division of Catalan into two major dialect blocks: Eastern Catalan and Western Catalan.

There is no precise linguistic border between one dialect and another because there is nearly always a transition zone of some size between pairs of geographically separated dialects, (except for dialects specific to an island). The main differences between the two blocks are:

Western Catalan (Bloc o Branca del Català Occidental):
- Unstressed vowels: Template:IPA. Distinctions between e and a and o and u.
- Initial or post-consonantal x is affricate Template:IPA. Between vowels or when final and preceded by i, it is Template:IPA.
- 1st person present indicative is -e or -o.
- Inchoative in -ix, -ixen, -isca
- Maintenance of medieval nasal plural in proparoxiton words: hòmens, jóvens
- Specific Vocabulary: espill, xiquet, granera, melic...
Eastern Catalan (Bloc o Branca del Català Oriental):
- Unstressed vowels Template:IPA. The unstressed vowels e and a become /ə/ and o and u become /u/.
- Initial or post-consonantal x is the fricative Template:IPA. Between vowels or final preceded by i it is also Template:IPA.
- 1st person present indicative is -o, -i or ø.
- Inchoative in -eix, -eixen, -eixi.
- The -n- of medieval nasal plural is dropped in proparoxiton words: homes, joves.
- Specific Vocabulary: mirall, noi, escombra, llombrígol...

In addition, neither dialect is completely homogeneous: any dialect can be subdivided into several sub-dialects. Catalan can be subdivided in two major dialect blocks and those blocks into individual dialects: Image:Dialectal map of Catalan Language.png

Western Catalan

North-Western Catalan (colour: dark green)
- Ribagorçà (from Ribagorça, a region of Catalonia)
- Pallarès (from Pallars)
- Lleidatà (from Lleida province)
Transitional Valencian or Tortosí (colour:striped in two shades of green)
- It is part of North-Western dialect and Valencian one. It is talked at River Ebre region (Catalonia), Matarranya (Aragon) and the region of Maestrat (Valencia)
Valencian (colour: light green)
- Castellonenc (from region of Plana)
- Apitxat, or Central Valencian
- Southern Valencian
- Alacantí (from the south region of the Province of Alicante)
- Majorcan from Tàrbena and la Vall de Gallinera (Valencian municipalities)

Eastern Catalan

Northern Catalan, or rossellonès (from Roussillon) (colour: light maroon)
Central Catalan (colour: red)
- Salat (from the Costa Brava)
- Barceloní (from Barcelona)
- Tarragoní (from Tarragona)
- Xipella
Balearic (colour: dark red/maroon)
- Mallorquí (from Majorca)
- Menorquí (from Minorca)
- Eivissenc (from Eivissa)
Alguerese (from the Italian city of Alghero)

See Catalan dialect examples for examples of each dialect.

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The status of Valencian

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Image:Valenciamaydayposter.jpg

The official language academy of the Land of Valencia (the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua) considers Catalan and Valencian simply to be two names for the same language. There is a roughly continuous set of idiolects covering the various regional forms of Catalan/ Valencian, with no break at the border between Catalonia and Valencia (i.e. villages contiguous to both sides of the border speak exactly the same), and the various forms of Catalan and Valencian are mutually intelligible. All universities teaching Romance languages, and virtually all linguists, consider these all to be linguistic variants of the same language (similar to Canadian French versus Metropolitan French).

Nevertheless, differences do exist: the accent of a Valencian is recognisable, there are differences in subjunctive terminations, and there are a large number of words unique to Valencian; but those 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).

The Valencian language has often been seen as a dialect of Catalan due to their mutual intelligibility. However, the issue of language versus dialect is as much a matter of politics as of linguistics. By the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Valencian and other varieties of Catalan are dialects of a single language; but according to this criterion, Galician and Portuguese are also dialects of a single language, as are Norwegian and Swedish, a contentious conclusion in either case. A language is defined by several factors, political ones among others.

What gets called a language is defined in part by mutual comprehensibility, but also by political and cultural factors. Historically, the perceived status of Valencian as a "dialect of Catalan" has had important political implications including Catalan nationalism and the idea of the Països catalans or "Catalan countries." Conversely, some Valencians who advocate distinguishing the languages do so to resist a perceived Catalan nationalist agenda aimed at absorbing Valencian language and identity, and incorporating Valencians into a constructed nationality centered on Catalonia. However, this idea is mostly supported by extreme right-wing organisations who usually don't support actual use of Valencian, but rather fear a possible union between Catalonia and Valencia towards their independence. It should be noted as well that it is common consensus amongst linguists to consider Valencian and Catalan to be the same language.

Similarly to Serbian and Croatian, the issue of whether Catalan and Valencian constitute different languages or merely dialects has been the subject of 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 the Autonomous Land of Valencia refers to the language as Valencian. In practice, the Catalan, Valencian, and Balearic versions of the EU constitution are identical, although some compromises over spelling may have been involved in making them so.

Most current (21st century) Valencian speakers and writers use spelling conventions (Normes de Castelló, 1932) that allow for several diverse idiosyncrasies of Valencian, Balearic, North-Western Catalan, and Eastern Catalan.

Recently, a judicial trial anulated a law that discriminated the Catalan teachers in Valencia, as they were not allowed to teach Valencian in public schools. Thus, Valencian and Catalan are legally the same language.

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Sounds and writing system

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Grammar

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An interesting feature of Catalan, as compared to most other modern Romance languages, is its complex and extremely conservative system of pronoun clitics.

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History

Catalan developed by the 9th century from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the eastern part of Pyrenees mountains (counties of Roussillon, Empuries, Besalú, Cerdanya, Urgell, Pallars and Ribagorça). It shares features with Gallo-romance and Ibero-romance, and it could be said to be in its beginnings no more than an eccentric dialect of Occitan (or of Western Romance). The language was spread to the south by the Reconquista in several phases: Barcelona and Tarragona, Lleida and Tortosa, the ancient Kingdom of Valencia, and transplanted to the Balearic Islands and l'Alguer (Alghero).

Catalan was exported in the thirteenth century to the Balearic Islands and the newly created Valencian Kingdom by the Catalan and Aragonese invaders (note that the area of Catalan language still extends to part of what is now the region of Aragon). During this period, almost all of the Muslim population of the Balearic Islands were expelled, but many Muslim peasants remained in many rural areas of the Valencian Kingdom, as had happened before in the lower Ebro basin (or Catalunya Nova).

During the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Catalan language was important in the Mediterranean region. Barcelona was the pre-eminent city and port of the Aragonese Empire, a confederation nominally ruled by the King of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia, Roussillon, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sicily, and — later — Sardinia and Naples). All prose writers of this era used the name 'Catalan' for their common language (e.g. the Catalan Ramon Muntaner, the Majorcan Ramon Llull, etc.) The matter is more complicated among the poets, as they wrote in a sort of artificial Langue d'Oc in the tradition of the troubadors. Italian resentment of this Catalan dominance appears to have been one of the wellsprings of the so-called "Black Legend". Image:Tirant.jpg During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the city of Valencia gains pre-eminence in the confederation, due to several factors, including demographic changes and the fact that the royal court moved there. Presumably as a result of this shift in the balance of power within the confederation, in the fifteenth century the name 'Valencian' starts to be used by writers from Valencia to refer to their language.

In the sixteenth century the name 'Llemosí' (that is to say, "the Occitan dialect of Limoges") is first documented as being used to refer to this language. This attribution has no philological base, but it is explicable by the complex sociolinguistic frame of Catalan poetry of this era (Catalan versus troubadoresque Occitan). Ausias March himself was not sure what to call the language he was writing in (it is clearly closer to his contemporary Catalan or Valencian than to the archaic Occitan).

Then, during the sixteenth century, most of the Valencian elites switched languages to Castilian Spanish, as can be seen in the balance of languages of printed books in Valencia city: at the beginning of century Latin and Catalan (or Valencian) were the main languages of the press, but by the end of the century Spanish was the main language of the press. Still, rural areas and urban working classes continued to speak their vernacular language.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Catalan and Valencian experienced a major revival among urban elites due to the Renaixença, a romantic cultural movement. The effects of this revival continue to be felt to this day.

In Francoist Spain (1939-1975), the use of Castilian over Catalan was promoted, and public use of Catalan was in fact forbidden, though thousands of books were published in Catalan (or sneaked under censorship). Following the death of Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy, the use of Catalan increased and the Catalan language is now used in politics, education and the media, including the newspapers Avui ('Today'), El Punt ('The Point') and El Periódico de Catalunya (sharing content with its Spanish release and with El Periòdic d'Andorra, printed in Andorra; and the television channels of Televisió de Catalunya (TVC): TV3 and Canal 33/K3 (culture and cartoons channel) as well as a 24 hour news channel 3/24; there are also many local channels available in region in Catalan, such as BTV and CityTV (Barcelona), Canal L'Hospitalet (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat) and Canal Terrassa (Terrassa). Additionally, for many jobs in Catalonia fluency in Catalan is a requirement.

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Examples

Template:IPA notice Some common Catalan phrases (pronounced as in the Central dialect -Barcelona and outskirts-):

Catalan: Català Template:IPA
hello: hola Template:IPA
good-bye: adéu Template:IPA (sing.); adéu siau Template:IPA (pl.)
please: si us plau Template:IPA
thank you: gràcies Template:IPA; mercès Template:IPA
sorry: perdó Template:IPA
that one: aquest Template:IPA (masc.); aquesta Template:IPA (fem.)
how much?: quant val? Template:IPA; quant és? Template:IPA
yes: sí Template:IPA
no: no Template:IPA
I don't understand: No ho entenc Template:IPA
where's the bathroom?: on és el bany? Template:IPA; on és el lavabo? Template:IPA
generic toast: salut! Template:IPA;
Do you speak English?: Que parla l'anglès? Template:IPA
Do you speak Catalan?: Que parla el català? Template:IPA

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Learning Catalan

Digui, digui... Curs de català per a estrangers. A Catalan Handbook. — Alan Yates and Toni Ibarz. — Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de Cultura, 1993. -- ISBN 84-393-2579-7.
Teach Yourself Catalan. — McGraw-Hill, 1993. — ISBN 0844237558.
Colloquial Catalan. — Toni Ibarz and Alexander Ibarz. — Routledge, 2005. — ISBN 0415234123.

Catalan courses are given at many universities both in Europe and in North America.

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English words of Catalan origin

Allioli, from all i oli, a typical sauce.
Barracks, from barraca, used for several kinds of buildings.
Mayonnaise, one of the proposed etymologies is the name of the city of Maó (salsa de maonesa).
cul-de-sac, from cul de sac, preserving the original form and meaning.

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