Catalan (English pronunciation: /kætəˈlæn, ˈkætəlæn, ˈkætələn/[1]; Catalan: català, pronounced [kətəˈla] or [kataˈla]) is a Romance language, the national A national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country. National language may alternatively be a designation given to one or more and official language An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a language a legal status, even if that language is not of Andorra Andorra /ænˈdɒrə/ , officially the Principality of Andorra (Catalan: Principat d'Andorra), also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra, (Catalan: Principat de les Valls d'Andorra), is a small country in southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. It is the sixth smallest nation in, and a co-official language An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a language a legal status, even if that language is not in the Spanish autonomous communities An autonomous community is the first-level political division of the Kingdom of Spain, established in accordance with the Spanish Constitution. The second article of the constitution recognizes the rights of "regions and nationalities" to self-government and declares the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation" of Catalonia Catalonia is one of the Kingdom of Spain's seventeen autonomous communities, the administrative divisions that represent the country's historical nationalities and regions. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida and Tarragona. Its capital city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an official, the Balearic Islands The Balearic Islands are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula and Valencian Community The Valencian Community is an autonomous community of Spain located in central and south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Valencia. The region is divided into three provinces: Alicante, Castellón and Valencia - and thirty four counties, where it is known as Valencià (Valencian Valencian is the historical, traditional, and official name used in the Valencian Community of Spain to refer to the region's native language, known elsewhere as Catalan (català)), as well as in the city A city is a relatively large and permanent urban settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law of Alghero Alghero , is a town of about 42,000 inhabitants (down from 54,300 inhabitants since early 20th century) in Italy. It lies in the province of Sassari in northwestern Sardinia, next to the sea on the Italian Italy (pronounced /ˈɪtəli/ ; Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a country located partly on the European Continent and partly on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine island Categories: Mediterranean islands | Lists of islands | Mediterranean of Sardinia Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily and before Cyprus). It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are (clockwise from north) the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands. It is also spoken in the autonomous communities An autonomous community is the first-level political division of the Kingdom of Spain, established in accordance with the Spanish Constitution. The second article of the constitution recognizes the rights of "regions and nationalities" to self-government and declares the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation" of Aragon Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the region comprises three provinces from north to south: Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza (also called Saragossa in English) (in La Franja The term La Franja ("The Strip", more properly Franja de Aragón in Spanish; Franja d'Aragó or Franja de Ponent in Catalan; and Francha d'Aragón or Francha de Lebán (Eastern Strip) in Aragonese) is a term that refers to the territory comprising the Catalan-speaking territories of Aragon bordering Catalonia (Spain). Usually La Franja) and Murcia Murcia , a city in south-eastern Spain, is the capital and most populous city of the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia, and the seventh largest city in the country, with a population of 436,870 inhabitants in 2009 (about one third of the total population of the Region). The population of the metropolitan area was 638,217 in 2008. It is (in Carche El Carche , is a mountainous, sparsely populated area in Murcia, Spain, lying between the municipalities Jumilla and Yecla. The mountains reach an altitude of 1,371 metres at the Pico de la Madama and part of the region has the status of regional park (parque regional). Three villages border the park: Raspay, La Alberquilla, and Carche with a) in Spain Spain (pronounced /ˈspeɪn/ spayn; Spanish: España, pronounced [esˈpaɲa] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.[note 6] Its mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for, and, officially recognised to some extent, in the historic Roussillon Roussillon is one of the historical counties of the former Principality of Catalonia, corresponding roughly to the present-day southern French département of Pyrénées-Orientales (Eastern Pyrenees). It may also refer to French Catalonia or Northern Catalonia, the latter term used particularly by the Catalan-speaking community region of southern France France is a founding member state of the European Union and is the largest one by area. France has been a major power for several centuries with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and in the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America; during the 19th and early 20th, roughly equivalent to the current département The departments of France and many of its former colonies are administrative divisions. The 100 French departments are grouped into 22 metropolitan and four overseas regions, all of which have identical legal status as integral parts of France. The departments are subdivided into 342 arrondissements, which in turn, are divided into cantons. Each of the Pyrénées-Orientales Pyrénées-Orientales is a department of southern France adjacent to the northern Spanish frontier and the Mediterranean Sea. It also surrounds the tiny Spanish enclave Llívia, and thus has two distinct borders with Spain (Northern Catalonia Northern Catalonia is a term which is sometimes used, particularly in Catalan writings, to refer to the territory ceded to France by Spain through the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. The equivalent term in French, Catalogne du Nord, is only rarely used: the term Roussillon (in reference to the pre-Revolutionary province) is usually).
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History
See also: History of Catalonia The territory that now constitutes the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain, and the adjoining Catalan region of France, was first settled during the Middle Palaeolithic. Like the rest of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula, it was colonized by Ancient Greeks and Carthaginians and participated in the pre-Roman Iberian culture and Language politics in Spain under Franco Decree banning the Catalan languageThe Catalan language developed from Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin was the nonstandard form of the Latin language; because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography, and only Classical Latin was used in writing. It is sometimes called colloquial Latin on both sides of the eastern part of the Pyrenees The Pyrenees are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain. They separate the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of continental Europe, and extend for about 430 km (267 mi) from the Bay of Biscay (Cap Higuer) to the Mediterranean Sea (Cap de Creus) mountains (counties of Rosselló Roussillon is one of the historical counties of the former Principality of Catalonia, corresponding roughly to the present-day southern French département of Pyrénées-Orientales (Eastern Pyrenees). It may also refer to French Catalonia or Northern Catalonia, the latter term used particularly by the Catalan-speaking community, Empúries Empúries is a town on the Mediterranean coast of the Catalan comarca of Alt Empordà (Spain). It was founded in 575 BC by Greek colonists from Phocaea with the name of Εμπόριον (Emporion — "market"). It was later occupied by the Romans, but in the Early Middle Ages, when its exposed coastal position left it open to marauders,, Besalú Besalú is a town in the comarca of Garrotxa, in Catalonia, Spain, Cerdanya Cerdanya is a small region of the eastern Pyrenees divided between France and Spain and which is historically one of the counties of Catalonia, Urgell Urgell is one of the historical Catalan counties, bordering on the counties of Pallars and Cerdanya. Its maximal extension territory was between the Pyrenees and the taifa of Lleida, that is, the current comarques of Alt Urgell (or Urgellet), Noguera, Solsonès, Pla d'Urgell, Baix Urgell and the still independent country of Andorra. The historical, Pallars The County of Pallars or Pallás was a de facto independent petty state, nominally within the Carolingian Empire and then West Francia during the ninth and tenth centuries, perhaps one of the Catalan counties, originally part of the Marca Hispanica in the ninth century. It was coterminous with the upper Noguera Pallaresa valley from the crest of and Ribagorça Ribagorçan is the eastern dialect of Aragonese spoken in the western part of the county. Municipalities in the eastern part, bordering Catalonia, are part of La Franja, a geo-linguistic area, where the local language is a variety of Catalan. However, Aragonese and Catalan form a dialectal continuum here and the geographical limit of both). It shares features with Gallo-Romance The Gallo-Romance branch of Romance languages includes French , the langue d'oc, Franco-Provençal, and several other languages spoken in modern France, Northern Italy, Switzerland and east Spain. The Gallo-Romance languages, along with the Ibero-Romance group, form Western Romance. Like all Romance languages, the Gallo-romance languages are, Ibero-Romance This article is about a subdivision of the Romance language family. For the broader group of languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, see Iberian languages, and the Gallo-Italian Northern Italian or Padanian (recent name) or Cisalpine (infrequently used name) is a linguistic set with different definitions. Gallo-Italic (occasionally Gallo-Italian ) is imprecise, as it refers to just part of the Northern Italian complex (see Subdivisions below) speech types of Northern Italy. Though some hypothesize a historical split from languages of Occitan Occitan is a Romance language spoken in Occitania, that is, Southern France, the Occitan Valleys of Italy, Monaco and in the Aran Valley of Spain. It is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese . It is a co-official language in Catalonia, Spain (known as Aranese in Aran Valley). Modern Occitan is the closest relative of Catalan typology, the entire area running from Liguria on the present Italian coast to at least Alicante in Spain is more scientifically viewed as a classic dialect continuum A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the continuum are no longer mutually intelligible. The, with some eventual perturbation as a result of political divisions and overlay of standard national languages.
As a consequence of the Aragonese and Catalan conquests from Al-Andalus The Reconquista was a period of nearly 800 years (600 years in Portugal) in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula succeeded in retaking (and repopulating) the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Al-Andalus Province. The Islamic conquest of the Christian Visigothic kingdom in the 8th century (begun 710–12) to the south and to the west, it spread to all present-day Catalonia Catalonia is one of the Kingdom of Spain's seventeen autonomous communities, the administrative divisions that represent the country's historical nationalities and regions. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida and Tarragona. Its capital city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an official, Balearic Islands The Balearic Islands are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula and most of Valencian Community The Valencian Community is an autonomous community of Spain located in central and south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Valencia. The region is divided into three provinces: Alicante, Castellón and Valencia - and thirty four counties.
During the 15th century, during the Valencian Golden Age, the Catalan language reached its highest cultural splendor, which was not matched again until La Renaixença The Renaixença was an early 19th century late romantic revivalist movement in Catalan language and culture, akin to the Galician Rexurdimento or the Occitan Félibrige movements. The first stimuli of the movement date of the 1830s and 1840s, but the Renaixença stretches up into the 1880s, until it branched out into other cultural movements. Even, 4 centuries later.
After the Treaty of the Pyrenees The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed to end the 1635 to 1659 war between France and Spain, a war that was initially a part of the wider Thirty Years' War. It was signed on Pheasant Island, a river island on the border between the two countries. The kings Louis XIV of France and Philip IV of Spain were represented by their prime ministers,, a royal decree A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures (usually established in a constitution). It has the force of law. The particular term used for this concept may vary from country to country—the executive orders made by the President of the United States, for example, are decrees (although a decree is not by Louis XIV of France Louis XIV , known as the Sun King (French: le Roi Soleil), was King of France and of Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, and is the longest documented reign of any European monarch on 2 April 1700 prohibited the use of Catalan language in present-day Northern Catalonia Northern Catalonia is a term which is sometimes used, particularly in Catalan writings, to refer to the territory ceded to France by Spain through the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. The equivalent term in French, Catalogne du Nord, is only rarely used: the term Roussillon (in reference to the pre-Revolutionary province) is usually in all official documents under the threat of being invalidated.[2] Since then, the Catalan language has lacked official status in the Catalan-speaking region in France.
On 10 December 2007, the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales officially recognized the Catalan language as one of the languages of the department in the ARTICLE 1 (a) of its Charte en faveur du Catalan[3] (b), and seek to further promote it in public life and education.
(a) <<ARTICLE 1 : The General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales officially recognizes, beside the French language, the Catalan as language of the department. (Le Conseil Général des Pyrénées-Orientales reconnaît officiellement, au côté de la langue française, le catalan comme langue du département.')>>
(b) Carta a favor del Català[4]
After the Nueva Planta Decrees, administrative use and education in Catalan was also banned in the territories of the Spanish Kingdom. It was not until the Renaixença that use of the Catalan language started to recover.
In Francoist Spain (1939–1975), the use of Spanish over Catalan was promoted, and public use of Catalan was 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 forbidden, but was permitted from the early 1950s[5] in the theatre. Publishing in Catalan continued throughout the dictatorship.[6] 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.[7]
Following the death of Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy, the use of Catalan increased partly because of new affirmative action and subsidy policies and the Catalan language is now used in politics, education and the Catalan 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, the main channel, and Canal 33/K3 (culture and cartoons channel) as well as a 24-hour news channel 3/24 and the TV series channel 300; in València Canal 9, 24/9 and Punt 2; in the Balearic islands IB3; there are also many local channels available in region in Catalan, such as BTV and 8TV (in the metropolitan area of Barcelona), Barça TV, Canal L'Hospitalet (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat), Canal Terrassa (Terrassa), Televisió de Sant Cugat TDSC (Sant Cugat del Vallès), Gandia Televisió (Gandia, Valencian Country), Televisió de Mataró TVM (Mataró) and Catalan-dubbed television programs.
The number of persons fluent in Catalan varies depending on the sources used. The figures given below in the boxes were taken from the Wikipedia Catalan language site: The total of just over 9 million fluent speakers approximates the 9+ million speakers counted by the Catalan government in 2007.
The Wikipedia Catalan language site in Spanish uses a different method of counting by enumerating people who consider Catalan to be their mother tongue or language of identity, which gives a lower number than the actual number of people who can speak the language fluently. The number of habitual speakers given as 4.4 million and speakers as 7.7 million. In the face of evidence to the contrary, the figures are too low on the Spanish language site.
The 2004 language study cited below in this article does not indicate the total number of speakers, but an estimate of 9-9.5 million can be made, by matching the percentage of speakers to the population of each area where Catalan is spoken ("Sociolinguistic Situation in Catalan-speaking Areas." cited in the Section, External Links, of this article) The web site of the Generalitat gives the number as of June 2007 as 9,118,882 speakers of Catalan.
Classification
The ascription of Catalan to the Occitano-Romance branch of Gallo-Romance languages is not shared by all linguists. According to the Ethnologue, its specific classification is as follows:[8]
Catalan bears varying degrees of similarity to languages subsumed under the cover term Occitan. (See also Occitan language: Differences between Occitan and Catalan and Gallo-Romance languages.) As would be expected of closely cognate languages, Catalan also shares numerous features with other Romance languages, with similarities generally decreasing with physical distance.
Geographic distribution
Catalan is spoken in:
- Catalonia (Catalunya), in Spain.
- Most of the Valencian Community (Comunitat Valenciana), in Spain, where it is called Valencian.
- An adjacent strip (La Franja) of Aragon, Spain, in particular the comarques of Ribagorça, Llitera, Baix Cinca, and Matarranya.
- Balearic Islands (Illes Balears i Pitiüses), in Spain.
- Andorra (Principat d'Andorra).
- 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 in Murcia, Spain, known as Carche (El Carxe in Catalan).
All these areas are referred to by some as Catalan Countries (Catalan: Països Catalans), a denomination based on cultural affinity and common heritage, that has also had a subsequent political interpretation but no official status.
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Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:16:08 GMT+00:00
Glasgow Evening Times Van Bronckhorst was instrumental in the Catalan giants' glory run, helping them to win the Champions League and two La Liga titles. ...
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Catalan Catalan is a Romance language that is spoken along the Mediterranean coast of Spain in the French departement of Northern Catalonia and in the Balearic Islands It is the official
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hu, 26 Aug 2010 15:00:37 GM
After the Spanish Civil War, the . Catalan language. and flag were banned and football clubs were prohibited from using non-Spanish names. These measures led to the club having its name forcibly changed to Club de Futbol Barcelona and the ...
Q. I'm teaching myself the language and have found some pretty good sites out there but a lot of them are not entirely comprehensive. I'd like to know what would be some other good resources for learning this language. I know the Rosetta Stone people don't have a "Learn Catalan" package so that's out of the question, plus they are ridiculously expensive. Thank you.
Asked by Johnson P - Mon Apr 26 17:05:42 2010 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments
A. In the Catalan government website (gencat.cat) there are a lot of links to many websites that you can use to learn this language. A really good one is www.parla.cat. The direct link to the other websites available in gencat.cat is In this section you can search by level and with the options "digital" and "en linia" you can find lots of materials online. Espero que et sigui util, bona sort!!!
Answered by mimu - Mon Apr 26 21:17:04 2010
