The Catalan Language

When I arrived in Barcelona, I was surprised at the amount of Catalan I heard and how different it was to Spanish. Catalan is a Romance language and therefore evolved similarly to Spanish and French from Vulgar Latin. Therefore there are many resemblances between these languages, as you can see from these lexical comparisons:

English	Latin	French	Spanish	Catalan
Window	Fenestra	Fenêtre	Ventana	Finestra
Morning	Matvtīnvs	Matin	Mañana	Matí

Catalan has 26 letters in the alphabet which are identical to Modern Latin and English. However, the letters K, W and V are only used in loan words from other languages. Also, diacritics such as Ç are used regularly to aid pronunciation and differentiate between different words. For example, if it is before a vowel or at the end of a word, it is softly sounded.

Catalan phonology depends on the dialect. In Barcelona there is a ‘central’ dialect. This is comparable to the ‘standard English’ dialect generally spoken on news programmes in the UK. However, there is a huge divide between the dialects in eastern Catalonia compared to the West. Even though there are differences in phonology, they also have different vocabulary and grammar. For example, ‘I speak’ in the west is ‘parle’, but is ‘parlo’ in the east.

As you can see, this is a fascinating language but it is very specialised to the few areas that it is spoken and hardly found anywhere else. In order to rejuvenate Catalan to the state it was before the Francoist Regime, the government needs to do more than print Catalan signs. They need to promote and spread awareness of the language all over the world so that more people learn the language and its’ future it secured.