Catalan is a Romance language spoken by approximately 10 million speakers, with roughly 4 million being native speakers. It is the only official language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia (where the language is known as Valencian). It also has semi-official status in the Italian comune of Alghero. It is also spoken in the eastern strip of Aragon, in some villages of Region of Murcia called Carche and in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France. These territories are often called Països Catalans or "Catalan Countries".

History

Historian Jaume Villanueva stated that the first sample of Catalan was a sentence in a now-lost manuscript from Ripoll. It was a whimsical note in 10th- or early 11th-century calligraphy: Magister m[eu]s no vol que em miras novel ("my master does not want you to watch me, newbie"). Around the 9th century, however, certain texts written in macaronic Latin start to show Catalan traits. However, it was not until the 11th century that texts written wholly in Catalan started to appear. Some of these texts are Oath of Radulf Oriol (ca. 1028-1047) Complaints of Guitard Isarn, Lord of Caboet (ca. 1080–1095), or The Oath of Peace and Truce of Count Pere Ramon (1098). However, it was often difficult at this time to determine if the language of some texts was Catalan or Occitan, as the two languages were extremely similar at the time.
Catalan lived a golden age during the Late Middle Ages, reaching a peak of maturity and cultural plenitude. Examples of this can be seen in the works of Majorcan polymath Ramon Llull (1232–1315), the Four Great Chronicles (13th-14th centuries), and the Valencian school of poetry which culminated in Ausiàs March (1397–1459).
By the 15th century, the city of Valencia had become the center of social and cultural dynamism, and Catalan was present all over the Mediterranean world.The belief that political splendor was correlated with linguistic consolidation was voiced through the Royal Chancery, which promoted a highly standardized language
After the Nueva Planta Decrees, the use of Catalan in administration and education was banned in the Kingdom of Spain. It was not until the Renaixença that use of the Catalan language saw a resurgence.
In Francoist Spain (1939–1975), the use of Spanish in place of Catalan was promoted, and public use of Catalan was initially repressed and discouraged by official propaganda campaigns. The use of Catalan in government-run institutions and in public events was banned. During later stages of the Francoist regime, certain folkloric or religious celebrations in Catalan were allowed to resume and were tolerated. Use of Catalan in the mass media was initially forbidden, but beginning in the early 1950s, it was permitted in the theater. Publishing in Catalan continued throughout the dictatorship. There were attempts at prohibiting the use of spoken Catalan in public and in commerce, and all advertising and signage had to be in Spanish, as did all written communication in business.
Following the death of Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy under a constitutional monarchy, the use of Catalan increased significantly because of new affirmative action and subsidy policies. The Catalan language is now used in politics, education and the media, including the newspapers Avui ("Today"), El Punt ("The Point"), Ara ("Now"), La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya (sharing content with El Periòdic d'Andorra, printed in Andorra); and the television channels of Televisió de Catalunya (TVC): TV3, and Canal 33 (culture channel), Super3/3XL (cartoons channel) as well as a 24-hour news channel 3/24 and the sports channel Esport 3; in Valencia à punt; in the Balearic islands IB3; in Catalonia there are also some private channels such as 8TV and Barça TV.

Linguistics

As a Romance language, Catalan is related to other well-known languages such as Spanish and French, as well as to lesser-known Romance languages such as Aromanian and Sardinian. It is more distantly related to other Indo-European languages such as English, Hindi and ancient Hittite.
Classification
Catalan's full classification is as follows:
Indo-European > Italic > Romance > Western Romance > Gallo-Romance > Occitano-Romance > Catalan
Morphophonemics
Catalan contains seven stressed vowel phonemes, which, depending on the dialect, often reduce down to three distinct phonemes when they are unstressed. There are 25 or 26 consonant phonemes, depending on the dialect. Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word.
Syntax
As in most Romance languages, Catalan nouns, adjectives, pronouns and articles are inflected for two genders (masculine and feminine) and two numbers (singular and plural). Apart from the pronouns, Catalan retains no case inflection.
Catalan exhibits more personal pronouns than either Spanish or Italian, with a total of 13, the subject forms are listed in the table below. Like most European languages, there is a T-V distinction in the language based on formality, so a different (more formal) pronoun would be used. There is also an additional, more respectful form of the second person singular pronoun that is archaic except in a few dialects and administrative texts, also included in the table below. Like many Romance language, pronomial objects (both direct and indirect) are represented as either clitics before the verb or as suffixes to the verb.

Pronoun	Meaning
jo, mi	1st singular
nosaltres	1st plural
tu	2nd singular informal
vosaltres	2nd plural informal
vostè	2nd singular formal
vostès	2nd plural formal
vós	2nd person respectful
ell	3rd person singular masculine
ells	3rd person plural masculine
ella	3rd person singular feminine
elles	3rd person plural feminine
si	3rd person reflexive
hom	3rd person impersonal

Catalan verbs can inflect for a wide variety of tenses, aspects and moods, and is typologically a fusional paradigm. Overall, there are 11 total verbal forms, though one of them is archaic. The non-finite forms are the infinitive, the root form of the verb, the gerund, the past participial; the finite forms include indicative present, imperfect, preterite (archaic), future and conditional; subjunctive present and imperfect; and the imperative. Within each finite paradigm, there are six different forms, representing each of the three persons and two numbers; like many other Romance languages, the formal second person forms conjugate in the manner of the third person.
Catalan word order is generally subject-verb-object, but can also be fairly free to allow for slight semantic differences and topic focuses.
Orthography
Catalan uses the Latin script, with some added symbols and digraphs. The Catalan orthography is systematic and largely phonologically based.Standardization of Catalan was among the topics discussed during the First International Congress of the Catalan Language, held in Barcelona October 1906. Subsequently, the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC, founded in 1911) published the Normes ortogràfiques in 1913 under the direction of Antoni Maria Alcover and Pompeu Fabra. In 1932, Valencian writers and intellectuals gathered in Castelló de la Plana to make a formal adoption of the so-called Normes de Castelló, a set of guidelines following Pompeu Fabra's Catalan language norms
Text sample:
Tenia prop de divuit anys quan vaig conèixer en Raül, a l'estació de Manresa. El meu pare havia mort, inesperadament i encara jove, un parell d'anys abans, i d'aquells temps conservo un record de punyent solitud. Les meves relacions amb la mare no havien pas millorat, tot el contrari, potser fins i tot empitjoraven a mesura que em feia gran. No existia, no existí mai entre nosaltres, una comunitat d'interessos, d'afeccions. Cal creure que cercava... una persona en qui centrar la meva vida afectiva.
Spoken sample:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN4fDhAcGTM (Wikitongues video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diITZkQlcxs&list=PLjDCKlXHQBGYSpTwIy3MSfs7qmn0Artz- (Playlist of Catalan folksongs)
Sources & Further reading
Wikipedia on Catalan
/catalan
What now?
This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.

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