plaidchuck Diglot Groupie United States facebook.com/plaidchRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 71 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish
| Message 1 of 4 14 October 2010 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
Hello all,
So I was planning to study abroad next year in Barcelona and therefore do some studying of Catalán in my free time with maybe Assimil and some online resources. Long story short, I found a study-abroad program better suited to my overall studies in Alicante, where Valencian is spoken. Now having been to Spain previously I'm aware of the political issues surrounding these languages, however the information on the web seems to say that most linguists consider Valencian a dialect of Catalán. My question to anyone who is familiar with these languages is simply: Would learning Catalán from Cataluña still help me be understood in the odd chance I meet someone who speaks Valencian?
I know Valencian is even less spoken day-to-day than Catalán, but you never who you'll run into.
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5807 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 2 of 4 14 October 2010 at 10:39pm | IP Logged |
Yes, there are very few real systematic differences.
The main differences are the pronunciation of unstressed A & E, but there's no potential for confusion, just "he speaks funny" and the way of forming the past tense. In Catalunya it's a pretty unique construction with "to go", whereas in Valencia the past tense is formed in pretty much the same way as Spanish.
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6499 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 3 of 4 14 October 2010 at 11:06pm | IP Logged |
I have visited Alicante a few years ago, and I didn't hear one word of Valencian during my stay there. In Valencia I did hear a limited number of persons speak Valencian, but even here Castillian is the dominating language. I think you have to get out in the countryside to be surrounded by speakers of Valencian - and then primarily in the Northern part of the Valencian region, not around Alicante.
Btw. the easiest way to recognize written Valencian is spellings like "meua" instead of Central Catalan "meva" (my, mine). And Valencian is so close to Central Catalan that you as a learner don't have to worry about the difference.
Edited by Iversen on 14 October 2010 at 11:10pm
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Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6899 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
| Message 4 of 4 15 October 2010 at 11:01am | IP Logged |
Iversen wrote:
I have visited Alicante a few years ago, and I didn't hear one word of Valencian during my stay there. In Valencia I did hear a limited number of persons speak Valencian, but even here Castillian is the dominating language. I think you have to get out in the countryside to be surrounded by speakers of Valencian - and then primarily in the Northern part of the Valencian region, not around Alicante. |
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I'll echo this. I've been to Valencia and Alicante and points in-between several times and only ever heard Valencian once in a restaurant in Dénia (about mid-way between Alicante and Valencia) where the restaurant owner was talking to friends who'd come for lunch.
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