Catalan language

The Catalan language (proper spelling català [kətəˈɫa] in Eastern Catalan, [kataˈɫa] in Western Catalan) belongs to the family of Romance languages. Catalan is an official language in Andorra and, along with Spanish, an official regional language in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia. It is also one of the regional languages of France (in Roussillon/Département Pyrénées Orientales).

Some linguists consider Catalan to be one of the Gallo-Romance languages, while others classify it as part of Ibero-Romance. On the one hand, there is a close relationship with Occitan - Catalan has more phonetic and lexical similarities with Occitan than with the other languages of the Iberian Peninsula. On the other hand, Catalan shares some features with Ibero-Romance languages, so that it is often referred to as a bridge language (llengua-pont) between Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance. This may be due to the fact that the domain of the Iberian Visigothic Empire reached as far as Septimania, in the middle of the Occitan linguistic cultural area; conversely, Frankish influence under Charlemagne also extended across the Pyrenees into the Catalan counties. Thus, the Pyrenees did not form a natural border between the political empires and cultural areas of Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula in the period of the development of the Romance languages.

Distribution

Catalan has about 11.5 million active speakers, and about 12.6 million people understand Catalan. The area of distribution of the language includes the following regions:

• In Spain, Catalonia, most of the region of Valencia - the local variety of Catalan is also called Valencian (valencià) -, the Balearic Islands, where the dialects called Mallorquín (mallorquí), Menorquín (menorquí) and Ibizan (eivissenc) - grouped together as Balearic - are spoken, and a strip of land in eastern Aragon, the Franja de Aragón, with català ribagorçà.
• in the south of France, the department of Pyrénées-Orientales, also known as "Northern Catalonia" - the local variety of Catalan is called rosellonès,
• in Italy, the town of Alghero in Sardinia (Catalan L'Alguer, where few people still speak alguerés, see below),
• Andorra.

These areas are also collectively referred to as Països Catalans ("Catalan Lands"). Today, the Porta dels Països Catalans near Salses-le-Château stands on the northern linguistic border.

The Catalan language area as a whole is divided into two dialect groups: Eastern Catalan, which includes the eastern part of Catalonia, the Catalan-speaking part of France, the Balearic Islands and Alguer, and Western Catalan dialects. The main criterion for this division is the pronunciation of the unstressed vowels o, e, and a. While in Western Catalan they are always pronounced as they are written, in the pronunciation of Eastern Catalan o in unstressed position becomes u, e and a become short open vowels or a schwa sound ([ə]) similar to German e in bitte.

The status of the language varies depending on the region. In Andorra, Catalan is the sole official language; in Spain, it is the regional official language. In the "Language Law of Aragón" (Ley de Lenguas de Aragón), passed on 9 May 2013 by the Aragón regional parliament under the leadership of the Partido Popular, the language is designated for its own governmental area with the glottonym Lengua aragonesa propia del área oriental (LAPAO). In the French department of Pyrénées-Orientales, a Charter for the Promotion of the Catalan Language (French: Charte en faveur du Catalan) was adopted in December 2007 to protect and develop Catalan in northern Catalonia. In Alguer, the local language variety is taught by the hour in school.

Dialects of the Catalan language


Language area of Catalan

Grammar and vocabulary

Alphabet and pronunciation

Letter	Variations	Eastern Catalan	Western Catalan	Comment
A, a	À, à	[a], [ə]	[a]	In Eastern Catalan: stressed [a], unstressed [ə], tending to [ɐ].
B, b		[β], [b]	[b]	In Eastern Catalan: Only in the absolute initial [b]
C, c		[k]	[k]
C, c (before e and i)		[s]	[s]
Ç, ç (before a, o, u and final)		[s]	[s]
D, d		[ð], [d]	[ð], [d]	Only in the absolute initial [d]
E, e	É, é; È, è	[e], [ɛ], [ə].	[e], [ɛ]	As é [e], as è [ɛ], in Eastern Catalan unstressed [ə], tending to [ɐ].
F, f		[f]	[f]
G, g		[ɣ], [g]	[ɣ], [g]	Only in the absolute initial [g], pronounced as -ig [t͡ʃ].
G, g (before e and i)		[ʒ]	[d͡ʒ]	tg (before e and i) always [d͡ʒ].
H, h				The h is not spoken
I, i	Í, í; Ï, ï	[i], [j]	[i], [j]	In vowel proximity only as ï and í not [j].
J, j		[ʒ]	[d͡ʒ]	As tj always pronounced [d͡ʒ].
K, k		[k]	[k]	Only in foreign words
L, l	ŀl	[ɫ]	[l], [ɫ]	Pronounced as ll [ʎ] (in the Balearics [j]), Ṁl is pronounced [ɫː] or [lː].
M, m		[m]	[m]
N, n		[n], [m], [ɲ], [ŋ]	[n], [m], [ɲ], [ŋ]	Before /b/, /p/, /f/, /v/ [m], before /g/ and /k/ [ŋ], as < ny> [ɲ]
O, o	Ó, ó; Ò, ò	[o], [ɔ], [u]	[o], [ɔ]	As ó [o], as ò [ɔ], in Eastern Catalan (except most of Mallorca) unstressed [u].
P, p		[p]	[p]
Qu, qu	Qü, qü	[k], [k͜w]	[k], [k͜w]	Before a, o, u [k͜w], before e, i only as <qü> as [k͜w].
R, r		[r], [ɾ]	[r], [ɾ]	At the beginning of the word and as rr always [r], in some regions silenced at the end of the word.
S, s		[s], [z]	[s], [z]	At the beginning of a word and as ss always [s], between vowels [z].
T, t		[t]	[t]	Used before l, ll, m, n for elongation, so tl = [ɫː] or [lː], tll = [ʎː], tm = [mː] and tn = [nː], often silenced after consonants at the end of words.
U, u	Ú, ú; Ü, ü	[u], [w]	[u], [w]	In vowel proximity only as ü and ú not [w].
V, v		[β], [b]	[v]	In Eastern Catalan as b
W, w		[w], [β], [b]	[w], [v]	Only in foreign words
X, x		[ʃ], [k͡s].	[t͡ʃ], [ʃ], [k͡s].	Eastern Catalan: At the beginning of a word, between consonant and vowel, as ix [ʃ], between vowels [k͡s], in Balearic (especially Mallorcan and Menorcan) also between two vowels [ʃ] (Caixa (German: Bank, Kasse): [kaʃə] ("pocket"), or ugs. also [kɑʃə]). Western Catalan: At the beginning of the word, between consonant and vowel [t͡ʃ], as ix [jʃ], between vowels [k͡s].
Y, y				Occurs only as ny, and is then pronounced [ɲ].
Z, z		[z]	[z]	Pronounced as tz [d͡z].

Orthographic peculiarities

• Catalan written language, like Spanish, uses the tremolo to make the pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ clear when it is placed between g or q and e or i.

Ex: llengües 'languages'.

Ex: qüestió 'question'.

• In addition, Catalan (unlike Spanish) also uses the trema to indicate that i and u after vowel are syllabic:

Ex: països (trisyllabic, without trema it would be disyllabic) 'countries'.

Ex: diürn (two syllables, without trema it would be one syllable with i as syllable carrier) 'belonging to the day'.

• Furthermore, Catalan uses a so-called punt volat (German Mittelpunkt, literally 'flown point') between two 'l's when the pronunciation [l] is to be maintained.

Ex: coŀlecció 'collection', pronunciation [l], pronounced elongated by some speakers: [l:]

as opposed to castellà 'Castilian language', pronunciation [ʎ].

The use of this midpoint is linguistically unique in its meaning. Comparable are at most the use of the hyphen to separate "s" and "ch" in Engadine, the punt interior (German Mittelpunkt) in Gascon or the punt volat in Franco-Provençal.

Morphology and syntax

Catalan grammar has a number of similarities to Spanish and French grammar, but also some peculiarities. In the area of nouns, as is generally the case in Romance languages, there is a distinction between feminines and masculines in Catalan; case forms are only connected, clitic personal pronouns, which in the 3rd person also distinguish between accusative and dative objects. Catalan, like Spanish but unlike French, is a pro-drop language, i.e. it allows the omission of subject pronouns and therefore uses unconnected subject pronouns mainly contrastively.

Conjugation includes simple (synthetic) tenses in the subjunctive, conditional, preterite and future tense (which is also formed here, as e.g. in French, on the basis of the infinitive forms). There are three verbal classes with regard to conjugation patterns, the first group with the infinitive on -ar, the second on -er and -re, and the third on -ir. It is noticeable, however, that not all verbs with the same infinitive ending are conjugated in the same way; there are a large number of exceptions. Els verbs conjugats by Joan Baptista Xuriguera lists 120 conjugation tables.

In the case of compound tenses, Catalan also has the frequently encountered passive forms with the auxiliary verb 'to be' + participle and perfect formations with the auxiliary verb 'to have'. In addition, Catalan also has another and very unusual periphrastic past tense (called pretèrit perfet perifràstic), formed with an auxiliary verb anar 'to go', whose present tense forms derive from Latin vadere (cf. vaig, vas, va, vam/vàrem, vau/vàreu, van/varen), plus the infinitive of the full verb. Example:

El teu germà va venir anit The your brother "goes" come last-night (or tonight) = Your brother came last night.

Compare the outwardly identical French construction (il) va venir, which, however, has the meaning of a future tense (as does Western Romance in general, so also Spanish port. ir (+ a) + inf.). Catalan is the only Romance language (and perhaps the only one ever) where the auxiliary verb "to go" denotes a past tense. It should be added, however, that some forms have a different meaning in the proper sense of "to go" than in this function as an auxiliary verb, such as anem "we go" versus vàrem venir "we came".

Particularities can also be found in the word order. In most cases, the word order in Catalan sentences (as in other Romance languages) is given as subject-verb-object (SVO). On closer inspection, however, we find that the position of the subject, in particular, varies significantly according to the informational structure: When the subject corresponds to a topic, i.e. takes in known information, it is placed before the verb, but when it corresponds to new information, it must be placed at the end of the sentence. This can be seen in the behaviour in the context of questions:

Què va portar en Joan?	En Joan va portar el llibre.
"What brought Joan?"	"Joan brought THE BOOK.
Qui va portar el llibre?	El llibre el va portar en Joan.
"Who brought the book?"	"The book (pron) brought JOAN".

This behavior is different from that in strict SVO languages like English: What did John bring? - John brought the BOOK. and likewise Who brought the book? - JOHN brought the book.

Furthermore, with intransitive verbs, one finds that it is generally "difficult to determine whether the position of the subject before or after the verb has a more neutral effect." These and other properties of postposed subjects have led some linguists to consider the position of the subject at the end of the sentence (i.e. VOS) as the basic position. The possibility of a postposed subject (inversion) also exists in other Romance languages, but is more extended in Catalan (similar to Spanish and Portuguese) than in French or Italian, for example.

Vocabulary in comparison with other Romance languages

Catalan is very closely related to Occitan within the Romance languages, as can be seen from its vocabulary, among other things.

Unlike Spanish, Catalan did not undergo extensive diphthongization (from /o/ to /we/ and from /i/ to /je/). Nor was there the development of shifting f-initial words to /h/ (now silent):

Catalan	Occitan	Spanish	French	Portuguese	Italian	Romanian	German
bo	bon	bueno	bon	bom	buono	bun	good
corda	còrda	cuerda	corde	corda	corda	coardă	Cord
farina	farina	harina	farine	farinha	farina	faină	Flour
fill	filh	hijo	fils	filho	figlio	fiu	Son

Other etyms also serve as a basis for Gallo-Romance than in Ibero-Romance. Here, too, the position of Catalan as a transitional language (llengua-pont) becomes clear:

Catalan	Occitan	Spanish	French	Portuguese	Italian	Romanian	German
demà	deman	mañana	demain	amanhã	domani	mâine	tomorrow
papallona	parpalhon	mariposa	papillon	borboleta/mariposa	farfalla	fluture	Butterfly
formate	formate	queso	fromage	queijo	formaggio (cacio)	brânză	Cheese

Other words, on the other hand, indicate no relationship with Spanish or French:

Catalan	Occitan	Spanish	French	Portuguese	Italian	Romanian	German
groc	jaune/cròc	amarillo	jaune	amarelo	giallo	galben	yellow
gos/ca	gos/can	perro	chien	cachorro/cão	cane	câine	Dog

A special feature of Catalan is that the final /n/ has disappeared from many words. However, it is respected again in the formation of the plural:

Catalan	Occitan	Spanish	French	Portuguese	Italian	Romanian	German
capità	capitani	capitán	capitaine	capitão	capitano	căpitan	Captain
capitans	capitanis	capitanes	capitaines	capitães	capitani	căpitani	Captains
informació	informacion	información	information	informação	informazione	informație	Information
informacions	informacions	informaciones	information	informações	informazioni	informații	Information

The Catalan lexicon also features words of Germanic origin that found their way into the language during the Migration Period. However, they only make up a small part of the vocabulary:

Catalan	Occitan	Spanish	French	Portuguese	Italian	Romanian	German
blue	blue	azul	bleu	azul	azzurro/blu	albastru	blue