Catalan Language

Catalan Language, language that originated in Catalonia and Valencia, regions in eastern and north-eastern Spain. Catalan is spoken by around 6,667,000 people as a first language, in Spain, in the provinces of Aragón, Catalonia, Murcia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands; in Andorra (where it is an official language); in Italy, in Alghero, Sardinia; in France, in nearly the whole of the Pyrénées-Orientales; and in parts of South America.

The Catalan language is a Romance language and was the official language of the Kingdom of Aragón in the 12th century. Its literary tradition dates from that period. The 14th century saw the formation of the Generalitat de Catalunya, a body that, among other things, oversaw the standardization process of Catalan. In 1714, Philip V eradicated all official use of Catalan in Catalonia and Castilian (Spanish) was made the official language. In 1931 the Second Republic was formed in Spain, and Catalan was restored as the official language. The Generalitat de Catalunya was re-established but the rule of General Francisco Franco brought any promotion of the use of Catalan to an end. The standardization of Catalan was begun again in 1977, at the end of Franco’s government. The Generalitat was restored for this purpose and in order to promote public usage of Catalan. Standard Catalan is a learnt literary language only: it is not spoken.

For years some philologists held that Catalan was merely a dialectal offshoot of Provençal and that during the Middle Ages it had raised itself for a time to the dignity of a literary language. Subsequent research led other scholars to claim the complete independence of Catalan as a language. Ranged in the group of Hispanic languages, Catalan has a character as distinctive as that of Castilian, Portuguese, and Galician. Among the characteristics of Catalan are the following: a number of perfect participles are formed from the perfect stem instead of from the infinitive stem; the pronunciation of b and v has not merged; the voiced sound of intervocalic s has persisted; in unaccented final vowels, a is retained and other vowels are dropped; the Latin au is changed to o as in Castilian; final dentals are vocalized, which is held to be the essential characteristic of classic Catalan; noun declensions are totally absent; and the original pronunciation of the Latin ū is retained in cases in which French and Provençal use ü.

Catalan holds official status (along with Spanish) in the autonomous regions of Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. In Aragón, where the culture and heritage of the language are protected by law, there are campaigns for the language to be made official, and for its wider use in education (where at present it is an optional subject) and placenames. Catalan is the main language of instruction in schools in Catalonia, where it is also taught as a subject (as well as Spanish). There are several Catalan radio and television stations available in Catalonia. In Valencia, Catalan is also referred to as Valencià and has resisted the process of standardization somewhat. It is the language of instruction in some schools and a compulsory subject in Catalan-speaking districts of the region. “Island Catalan”, the name given to the Catalan spoken in the Balearics is in danger of being replaced by Spanish. Although it is taught in all schools, the culture is predominantly Spanish, with all newspapers, television, and radio stations being in Spanish, and no purely Catalan media.

Selected statistical data from Ethnologue: Languages of the World, SIL International.