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Catalan català
Spoken in:	Andorra, Spain, France and Italy
Region:	Andorra, Catalonia, Balearic Islands, Roussillon, Aragon, Valencia, Murcia and Sardinia
Total speakers:	More than 10 million, around 7 million of those being active speakers.
Language family:	Indo-European  Italic   Romance    Italo-Western     Western      Gallo-Iberian       Ibero-Romance        East Iberian         Catalan
Official status
Official language of:	Andorra; Catalonia, Balearic Islands, Valencia in Spain
Regulated by:	Institut d'Estudis Catalans Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	ca
ISO 639-2:	cat
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	cat — Catalan-Valencian-Balear
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

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Catalan IPA: /ˈkætəˌlæn/ (Catalan: català, /kətə'la/ or /kata'la/) is a Romance language, the official language of Andorra and co-official in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Valencia (under the name Valencian) and Catalonia. Spain has the majority of active Catalan speakers. It is spoken or understood by as many as 10 million people who live not only in Andorra and Spain, but also in parts of France and in the city of Alghero in Sardinia, Italy.

Contents 1 Classification 2 Geographic distribution 2.1 Official status 2.2 Number of Catalan speakers 2.2.1 Territories where Catalan is official 2.2.2 Other territories 2.2.3 World 3 Dialects 4 The status of Valencian 5 Sounds and writing system 6 Grammar 7 History 8 Examples 9 Learning Catalan 10 English words of Catalan origin 11 See also 12 External links 12.1 Institutions 12.2 About the Catalan language 12.3 Catalan Literature 12.4 Dictionaries and phrasebooks 12.5 Catalan-language media 12.6 Catalan-language web searching 12.7 Catalan-language online encyclopedia

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 "transitional" language between the Iberian and Gallic languages when comparing the modern descendants of Latin.

Geographic distribution

Main article: Catalan countries

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.
• Valencia in Spain.
• Balearic Islands in Spain.
• Andorra.
• 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.

Official status

Catalan is the official language of Andorra. It is co-official with Spanish in the Spanish autonomous communities of the Balearic Islands, Valencia (under the name Valencian) and Catalonia. 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.

Number of Catalan speakers

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

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

World

Region	Understands	Can speak
Catalan communities	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.

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 or Branca del Català Occidental)	Eastern Catalan (Bloc or Branca del Català Oriental)
Vowels permitted in unstressed position: [a] [e] [i] [o] [u]. Phonemes /ɛ/ (è) and /e/ (é) are neutralised as [e] in unstressed position, as /ɔ/ (ò) and /o/ (ó) are neutralised as [o].	Vowels permitted in unstressed position: [ə] [i] [u]. Phonemes /a/ (a), /ɛ/ (è) and /e/ (é) are neutralised as [ə] in unstressed position, as /ɔ/ (ò) and /o/ (ó) and /u/ (u) are neutralised as [u].
Initial or post-consonantal x is realised as the affricate /tʃ/, e.g. xec /ˈtʃɛk/ 'cheque.' Between vowels or when final and preceded by i, it is /jʃ/, e.g. això /ajˈʃɔ/ 'that.'	Initial or post-consonantal x is realised as the fricative /ʃ/, e.g. xec /ˈʃɛk/ 'cheque.' Between vowels or final preceded by i, it is also /ʃ/ (i.e. i is not pronounced before x), e.g. això /əˈʃɔ/ 'that.'
The verbal suffix for the first person, indicative mood, present tense may be -e or -o, depending on the specific region: cante or canto, 'I sing.'	The verbal suffix for the first person, indicative mood, present tense may be -o, -i or zero, depending on the specific region: canto, canti or cant, 'I sing.'
The 'inchoative' verbal suffix (i.e. that deriving from the Latin inchoative suffix, though no longer having inchoative value), present in many -ir verbs, is -ix, -ixen, -isca: traduïx 'he translates,' traduïxen 'they translate,' traduïsca 'he translate' (subjunctive mood).	The 'inchoative' verbal suffix (i.e. that deriving from Latin inchoative suffix, though no longer having inchoative value), present in many -ir verbs, is -eix, -eixen, -eixi: tradueix 'he translates,' tradueixen 'they translate,' tradueixi 'he translate' (subjunctive mood).
The medieval form of the plural is maintained in formerly proparoxytonic words: hòmens 'men,' jóvens 'young people' (we say formerly proparoxytonic as they derive from words which were proparoxytonic in Latin, but have since been reduced to paroxytones).	The -n- of medieval nasal plural is dropped in formerly proparoxytonic words, via a process of analogy: homes 'men,' joves 'young people.'
Specific vocabulary: espill 'mirror,' xiquet 'boy' or 'boyfriend,' etc.	Specific vocabulary: mirall 'mirror,' noi 'boy,' etc.

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:

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) Valencian (colour: light green) Castellonenc (from region of Plana) Apitxat (in Valencia city itself) 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) Transitional Northern (from Empordà and other parts of the Girona province) 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.

Standard Catalan, as regulated by the IEC, centres on the speech of the educated classes of Barcelona, and so is closest to Central Catalan; however, not all of the features of Barcelonese speech can be considered standard, as there are lots of traditional dialectal traits and Castillian influence in that area. Aditionally, most important dialectal traits of other dialects are also considered standard. The orthography used to write Standard Catalan (and basically any Catalan text) is closest to Valencian pronunciation, although some instances of grave accented <è> correspond to Central Catalan. There is also a second standard form of the language, Valencian (valencià), regulated by the AVL. The Valencian standard is very close to IEC's but adds features characteristic of Western Catalan.

The status of Valencian

Main article: Valencian

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. Linguists, as well as universities teaching Romance languages, consider these all to be regional varieties of the same language; this situation is therefore somewhat similar to variation between Acadian French and Quebec 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).

Valencian has often been seen as a dialect of Catalan due to their mutual intelligibility, and because it was the Catalan who brought their language there when they conquered the land of Valencia (although some people argue that Valencian didn't evolve from North-Western Catalan at all. For more information on Valencian, its relationship to Catalan according to politicians and linguists and its origins according to the same people, refer to the article on Valencian). 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, Norwegian and Danish are dialects of the same language. 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. 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.

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. 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, but both the Valencian and the Catalan versions of the text were essentially the same, with slight dialectal differences.

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.

Valencian and Catalan have fewer differences from one another than do American English and English English (that is, the English of England), although this is partially because the English phonetical system is much more complex than that of Catalan. The differences between English English and American English are very similar to those between Valencian and Catalan. For example, English English and American English have a different vowel system, as do Valencian and Catalan. In Valencia, as in America, the language is generally rhotic (that is, final "r" is pronounced); in Catalonia, as in England, it generally is not. There are pairs of words similar to "truck"/"lorry" or "cookie"/"biscuit", for example "mirall"/"espill" (meaning "mirror") or "rentar"/"llavar" ("to wash"). There are different spellings for the same word à la "color"/"colour", for example "seva"/"seua" ("his"); although in this case the pronunciation is not the same, it is a common feature in dialectal and not-so-old Catalan to turn intervocalic "u" into "v", so "seva" and "seua" are phonologically identical (/'seua/), although phonetically different (['sevɘ] vs. ['sewa].) There are differences in conjugation just like "lit"/"lighted", for example, "acomplix"/"acompleix" ("accomplished"). There are verbal forms which are not frequently used in either dialect - "aní"/"vaig anar", just like "I advise that he come"/"I advise him to come". In short, much like English, Catalan is a multi-centric language - there exist two standards, one for Oriental Catalan, regulated by the IEC, which is centered around Barcelonese Catalan (with slight variations to include Balearic verb flexion) and one for Occidental, regulated by the AVL, centered around Valencian.

Sounds and writing system

Main article: Catalan phonology and orthography

Grammar

Main article: Catalan grammar

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

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".

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.

Examples

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

• Catalan: Català [kətəˈla]
• hello: hola [ˈɔlə]
• good-bye: adéu [əˈðew] (sing.); adéu siau /əˈðew siˈaw/ (pl.)
• please: si us plau [sisˈplaw]
• thank you: gràcies [ˈgrasiəs]; mercès /mərˈsɛs/
• sorry: perdó [pərˈðo], em sap molt de greu
• that one: aquest [əˈkɛt] (masc.); aquesta [əˈkɛstə] (fem.)
• how much?: quant val? ]ˈkwamˈbal]; quant és? [ˈkwanˈtes]
• yes: sí [ˈsi]
• no: no [ˈno]
• I don't understand: No ho entenc [ˈno wənˈteŋ]
• where's the bathroom?: on és el bany? [ˈonˈezəlˈβaɲ]; on és el lavabo? [ˈonˈezəlˈləˈβaβu]
• generic toast: salut! [səˈlut];
• Do you speak English?: Que parla l'anglès? [kə ˈparlə lənˈglɛs]
• Do you speak Catalan?: Que parla el català? [kə ˈparləl kətəˈla]

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 0-8442-3755-8.
• Colloquial Catalan. — Toni Ibarz and Alexander Ibarz. — Routledge, 2005. — ISBN 0-415-23412-3.

Catalan courses are given at many universities both in Europe and in North America. ^{[citation needed]}

English words of Catalan origin

• Barracks, from barraca, used for several kinds of buildings.
• Mayonnaise, one of the proposed etymologies of which is the name of the city of Maó (salsa maonesa - "sauce from Maó").

See also

• Common phrases in different languages
• Institut d'Estudis Catalans (Catalan Studies Institute)
• Pompeu Fabra
• Valencian
• Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
• Catalan literature
• Languages of France
• Languages of Italy
• Languages of Spain
• Catalan names
• New Catalan top-level domain .cat
• Swadesh list of Catalan words

External links

Institutions

• Institut d'Estudis Catalans
• Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua

About the Catalan language

• Ethnologue report for Catalan
• Catalan resources in the Web
• GRAMÀTICA CATALANA A Catalan grammar
• Catalan and its relationship with Occitan

Catalan Literature

• Lletra. Catalan Literature Online

Dictionaries and phrasebooks

• Catalan Dictionary from Webster's Dictionary
• Diccionari Català de l'IEC
• Online Catalan dictionary from Enciclopèdia Catalana
• Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear. In Catalan, published by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans and Editorial Moll.
• Diccionari Invers de la Llengua Catalana
• DACCO. Open source English-Catalan / Catalan-English dictionary project.
• Catalan phrasebook on Wikitravel
• Learn Catalan!. An introduction for the Catalonia-bound traveler.

Catalan-language media

• Televisió de Catalunya
• Televisió de les Illes Balears
• Televisió Valenciana
• Andorra Televisió
• Diari Avui — Catalan-language daily newspaper
• Diari El Punt — Catalan-language daily newspaper
• VilaWeb The main Catalan online newspaper
• Catalan Wikibooks
• El Periodico The most widely read newspaper in Catalunya, available in Catalan and Castillian

Catalan-language web searching

• Yahoo! Català Searching in Catalan
• Nosaltres.com
• Google (Catalan language)

Catalan-language online encyclopedia

• Enciclopèdia Catalana (in Catalan)
• Viquipèdia (Wikipedia in Catalan)

Romance languages

Aragonese | Aranese | Aromanian | Arpitan | Astur Leonese | Burgundian | Catalan | Corsican | Champenois | Dalmatian | Dgèrnésiais | Franc-Comtois | French | Friulian | Galician | Gallo | Istriot | Istro Romanian | Italian | Jèrriais | Ladin | Ladino | Ligurian | Lombard | Lorrain | Megleno Romanian | Mirandese | Moldovan | Neapolitan | Norman | Occitan | Picard | Piedmontese | Poitevin-Saintongeais | Portuguese | Romanian | Romansh | Sardian | Sicilian | Spanish | Venetian | Walloon