This article deals with Catalan as it relates to NationStates. For more general information, see the Wikipedia article on this subject.

Catalan IPA: [ˈkʰæ.təˌlæn] (català IPA: [kə.tə'la] or [ka.ta'la]) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia (in the latter with the name of Valencian), and in the city of L'Alguer in the Italian island of Sardinia. It is also spoken, although with no official recognition, in the autonomous communities of Aragon (in La Franja) and Murcia (in El Carxe) in Spain, and in Northern Catalonia, a historical region of Catalonia in southern France, which is more or less equivalent to the département of the Pyrénées-Orientales.

Classification

The ascription of Catalan to the Occitano-Romance branch of Gallo-Romance languages is not shared by all linguists. According to the Ethnologue, its specific classification is as follows:[1]

• Indo-European languages
  • Italic languages
    • Romance languages
      • Italo-Western languages
        • Western Italo-Western languages
          • Gallo-Iberian languages
            • Ibero-Romance languages
              • East Iberian languages

Catalan is very similar to Occitan. (See also Occitan language: Differences between Occitan and Catalan and Gallo-Romance languages.)

Although Catalan language is often thought of as a transitional language between the Iberian Romance languages (such as Spanish) and Gallo-Romance languages (such as French), this characterization is not accurate. For instance, phonologically, Catalan is more similar to Portuguese than to Italian, Spanish or French.

Like many modern languages, Catalan contains numerous words originally borrowed from other languages: Germanic (Ramon:[2] Raymond, espia: spy,[3] ganivet: knife, guerra: war... and the place-names finished with -reny, as Gliscareny), French (brioix: brioche, garatge: garage, fitxa: card...), Italian (piano: piano, macarró: macaroni, pantà: marsh, finestra: window, porta: gate...), Occitan (espasa: sword, beutat: beauty, daurar: to gild, suffixal -aire...), Arabic and Mozarabic (alcohol: spirit, sucre: sugar, alcova: bedroom... and most of toponymy like Benicàssim, Albocàsser...), from Spanish (senzill: easy, xoriço: kind of salami, amo: owner, burro: donkey...), from Basque (esquerra: left, isard: surly, estalviar: to save money... and toponymy as Aran, Benavarri or Algerri...) and from English (bar, web, revòlver...)

Catalan in NS

In Vassfforcia Catalan is a national language and there are about 15 million native speakers. It is spoken mainly in the northwest third of the country (Umperia, Vilnia and Septéntrion) and in Montaura and parts of Filibustenia and Tirritidivá Island. From these regions, media transmits on Catalan only in Montaura and the northwest. Because of the distribution of Catalan in the country there has been much discussion about making it an official language since the Reform of 52; however, the Grand Senate has never passed any resolution issuing this.

Each of the Catalan-speaking regions has its own dialect. The Monaturan dialect is considered the most correct and it is used as the standard. Although the dialect from the northwest is most numerous on its number of speakers, it is regarded as the least correct because it is the dialect with most loanwords from both Spanish and Arabic. The dialect of Filibustenia is not very different from Montauran, but it also uses more laonwords. The Catalan from Tirritidivá Island is considered to be part of the Filibustenian dialect with the difference that is has become coexistant with Spanish and Occitan in the island, hence it has only a couple of thousand speakers.