Catalan language
The Catalan language is a Romance language spoken in Catalonia, Valencian Community, the eastern part of Aragon, the Balearic Islands, a small zone of Murcia (all of them in Spain), Andorra, North Catalonia (in France) and the Italian city of L'Alguer. Together, those places are often called the Catalan Countries.[4][5]
| Catalan/Valencian | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| català/valencià | ||||
| Pronunciation | [kətəˈla]/[valensiˈa] | |||
| Native to | Spain, Andorra, France, Italy | |||
| Native speakers | 4.1 million[1] (2012) Total number of speakers: More than 10 million (L1 plus L2; 2018)[2] | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Early forms: | Old Catalan
| |||
| Standard forms | Catalan (regulated by the IEC)
| |||
| Writing system | Latin (Catalan alphabet) Catalan Braille | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | ||||
| Recognised minority language in | ||||
| Regulated by | Institut d'Estudis Catalans Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | ca | |||
| ISO 639-2 | cat | |||
| ISO 639-3 | cat | |||
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-e | |||
 Territories where Catalan is spoken and is official Territories where Catalan is spoken but is not official Territories where Catalan is not historically spoken but is official | ||||
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The language that most similar is Occitan. Catalan also has similarities to other Romance languages, such as Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese. It came from Vulgar Latin and was first spoken in the in the Eastern Pyrenees in the Middle Ages.[6][7]
There are about 4 million people who speak Catalan as a first language and about 6 million people as a second language. Catalan is the sixth-most-spoken Romance language and also the most-spoken language that is not an official language in the European Union.
Catalan Language Media
A speaker of Catalan (Majorcan dialect).
Artur Mas, former president of Catalonia, discussing individual identity, collective identity and language.
Catalan Countries (Països Catalans): (In orange, strict Catalan-speaking area) NE modern Spain (Catalonia, Valencian Community and Balearic Islands), SE. France (Roussillon, touching the Pyrenees) and Comune of Alghero (NW coast of Sardinia, an island belonging to Italy)
The Crown of Aragon in 1443. King James the Conqueror [1208–1276] dictated his autobiographical chronicles entirely in Catalan. Some of this territory nowadays makes up the Catalan Countries.
Homilies d'Organyà (12th century)
Fragment of the Greuges de Guitard Isarn (c. 1080–1095), one of the earliest texts written almost completely in Catalan,[8][9] predating the famous Homilies d'Organyà by a century
Linguistic map of Southwestern Europe
School map of Spain from 1850. On it, the State is shown divided into four parts:- "Fully constitutional Spain", which includes Castile and Andalusia, but also the Galician-speaking territories.
Official decree prohibiting the Catalan language in France
"Speak French, be clean", school wall in Ayguatébia-Talau (Northern Catalonia), 2010
References
- ↑ "Catalan". Ethnologue. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
- ↑ "InformeCAT 50 dades sobre la llengua catalana" (PDF) (in Catalan). 7 June 2018.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) Report on the Catalan language by Plataforma per la Llengua based on recent reference sociolinguistic surveys - ↑ 3.0 3.1 Some Iberian scholars may alternatively classify Catalan as Iberian Romance/East Iberian.
- ↑ Minder, Raphael (21 November 2016). "Italy's Last Bastion of Catalan Language Struggles to Keep It Alive". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/world/europe/catalan-italy-alghero.html. Retrieved 21 January 2017.
- ↑ Wheeler 2010, p. 191.
- ↑ Wheeler 2010, p. 190–191.
- ↑ Costa Carreras & Yates 2009, pp. 6–7.
- ↑ Veny 1997, pp. 9–18.
- ↑ Moran 2004, pp. 37–38.
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This language has its own Wikipedia project. See the Catalan language edition. |