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Catalan Profile | ||
Tags: Catalan | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Collaborative writing |  | |
| Mga Groupie United States beastie.redirectme.n Joined 6911 days ago 67 posts - 66 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Arabic (Written) | Message 9 of 19 31 December 2005 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
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For the "Links" section, here is a Catalan grammar on the Zompist boards: GRAMÀTICA CATALANA Edited by Mga on 31 December 2005 at 3:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| txolo Tetraglot Newbie Spain Joined 6316 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan, English, Italian | Message 10 of 19 10 January 2007 at 8:02am | IP Logged |
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Maybe I can't help with this because I'm from Valencia
In first place, I wanted to say that catalan, euskara (basque) and galician are official languages and are like castilian (Spanish) or portuguese, are genuine languages. I read in the Spanish profile that there ir a "language" called "valencian", but that it's not right. Valencian is the way we call catalan in Valencia, but is the same language. There are philological studies confirming that, even the "Academia Valenciana de la Llengua" says this. There is a traditional regional rivality between catalans and valencians and for this reason some peopel says that valencian is independent language, but I think that on this website we must have philological criteriums, not political. I'll write later more information, I have to go now ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6491 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 11 of 19 10 January 2007 at 9:24am | IP Logged |
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I totally agree, - Valenciano is just another name for Catalan as spoken in Valencia. But we had a quite hot debate over just that in the thread Has anybody heard about Valenciano. The thing that surprised me most when I visited Valencia last year was that the Valencians don't buy newspapers in Valenciano (and even less Catalan newpapers from Barcelona). The Valencian government seems to be determined to further the cause, but what about the population?
Edited by Iversen on 10 January 2007 at 9:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| txolo Tetraglot Newbie Spain Joined 6316 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan, English, Italian | Message 12 of 19 10 January 2007 at 9:52am | IP Logged |
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Well, there is a political problem in all of this. The valencian government is headed by Partido Popular (conservative). In one side, they are centralist and they prefer to use just one language, castilian. But in other side they are very anti-catalan, so they use the "valencian issue" in order to confront with catalans.
But, in fact, they don't even use valencian and the most conservative newspaper, wich are saying that valencian is very important, are always writing in castilian. There is a lot of hipocracy, once I wrote to one of these papers saying that if they think on this way, it would be better and honest writing the paper in valencian. In Valencia capital is very difficult to find someone speaking valencian. Most of the people of the region lives in the capital, so we can say that on this way castilian is the most spoken language. But if we use territorial criterions, we could realize that in maybe the 70% of the region valencian is the most used language. As we can see everywhere, the big city has the power, and Valencia is a very centralized region. My family is from one "comarca" called Marina Alta, and there are towns where nobody understand you if you speak castilian, in fact on this comarca just the people from Denia and Xabia (the most important cities, with 30.000 and 20.000 people) can make a good conversation in castilian. This situation is the same in most of the comarcas (the region of Valencia is divided in three provinces, and those provinces are divided in many "comarcas") Writing about catalan, I wanted to say also that the people in Catalonia speaks more catalan than castilian. In Barcelona is difficult to listen it because with foreign people (or strange people)they think that it's better to speak castilian (Spanish). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6491 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 13 of 19 11 January 2007 at 4:26am | IP Logged |
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My Catalan was quite bad in 2004 when I visited Barcelona, while it was fairly good when I visited Valencia this year. I found that most official notices where bilingual, but I didn't get many chances to speak it. I haven't visited the Balearic islands, but it would surprise me if Catalan was spoken in the main tourist areas.
I think that these demographic facts should somehow be mentioned in the language profile. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| txolo Tetraglot Newbie Spain Joined 6316 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan, English, Italian | Message 14 of 19 11 January 2007 at 10:10am | IP Logged |
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In tourist areas you'll listen mainly English in the Balearic Islands. But I think that there Catalan is most used than in Valencia
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lullaby-in-bw Newbie Spain Joined 6086 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 15 of 19 28 August 2007 at 5:20pm | IP Logged |
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Hi everybody :) First of all, I'm Catalan and I'm from Barcelona. I have a degree in Catalan Philology, so maybe I can help a bit with the Catalan profile. I'd like to add two things in this topic:
- I think it's not realistic to judge if Catalan is spoken or not in Balearic Islands, Valencia or Barcelona just because you can hear it or not in the touristic places. For example, I live in Barcelona, I speak Catalan always with friends and family, at school, and at the university. The point is that usually Catalan speakers feel guilty speaking Catalan to a foreign, so they switch to Spanish. That's why tourists can't hear Catalan at all. But it's widely spoken in Catalunya and Andorra, and less spoken in the Balearic Islands and PaÃs Valencià , specially in the big cities. But for widely I mean that, for example, the 95% can understand it, that's not a little part. If you need it, I can look for recent statistics. - I totally agree Txolo with the Valencià -Català problem. It's only politics, not linguistic or science. All the academies and linguistic professionals, as well as the universities, agrees that they are the same language. As a personal thing, I'd add that some of my best friends are from Valencia, so no matter here. As I said, I've been studying Catalan Philology for five years, and I'll be really happy to help here. Just ask :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ^veganboy^ Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5707 days ago 51 posts - 51 votes | Message 16 of 19 04 January 2009 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
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One star is what is needed to reach fluency in such language. Edited by ^veganboy^ on 02 February 2009 at 9:45am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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