Talk:Catalan language/Archive 2

Carche

I'd like to say that Catalan is not spoken in the Carche area. I have been there and checked it by myself. mabuimo (13 Jan 2006) BTW, this article, among others is 100% political. I won't do further edition on it but I'd like that this comment stays here for the incoming users. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mabuimo (talk • contribs) 16 Jan 2006. It is not widely spoken anymore, but it IS spoken. 62.43.177.47 16 June 2006

serbo-croatian formula

Hi Reading all these language arguments, very familliar to me, I would just add that the Serbo-croatian formula ( more croatian than serbian ) of fighting about the name of the same language (serbocroatian), and looking for non-existing differences in it, just to fake it "different" eg.( cro vs serb ), is spreading out into western Mediterraneans ( catalons vs valencians ). Maybe it's a natural thing for all mediterraneans, and it will go on until all they realize that having a same language, with variety of dialects is a precious thing, something they need to be proud of and deeply respect it.. Cheers; —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.80.118.62 (talk • contribs) 18 Jan 2006.

More Examples

Could someone add a Catalan version of the Lord's Prayer for comparison, as is done for other languages? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.42.159.11 (talk • contribs) 12 Feb 2006.

Lord's Prayer:

Pare nostre, qui esteu en el cel,

sigui santificat el vostre nom; vingui a nosaltres el vostre regne; faci´s la vostra voluntat, així en la terra com en el cel. El nostre pa de cada día doneu-nos avui; i perdoneunos les nostres culpes, així com nosaltres perdonem els nostres deutors; i no permeteu que nosaltres caiguem en la temptació, ans deslliureunos del mal.

Amén!

Changing view of Catalan

This anonymous edit cut the following:

The concept of a "linguistic Catalan diasystem" was developed at the beginning of the 20th century as part of Catalan nationalist discourse; prior to that, Catalan was generally considered a dialect of Occitan and was included in the "linguistic Romanic-Occitanian diasystem". This newer "linguistic Catalan diasystem" would incorporate Valencian into the Catalan system, instead of both Catalan and Valencian being considered as dialects under the former "Romantic-Occitanian diasystem." This system brings Catalan nationalism the benefit of an increase in the official number of Catalan speakers. The term "Western Catalan" ("catalá occidental") was developed as part of this discourse, based on some lexical and phonetic similarities that the speech of the zone of Lleida (Lérida) had with that of Valencia.

While I don't necessarily like the political spin of the paragraph, I believe that what it said was basically accurate and should be restored (although reworded in a way that is less hostile to Catalan nationalism: it's not as if this was a Catalan nationalist reaction against scientific neutrality: most linguists today would say it was a corrective in terms of an earlier anti-Catalan framing. So I'd end up with something like:

The concept of a "linguistic Catalan diasystem" was developed at the beginning of the 20th century as linguists, doubtless influenced by rising Catalan nationalism, began to distinguish Catalan more firmly from Occitan. Prior to that, Catalan and Valencian were generally considered dialects of Occitan, included in the "linguistic Romanic-Occitanian diasystem". The term "Western Catalan" ("catalá occidental") was developed as part of this discourse, based on some lexical and phonetic similarities that the speech of the zone of Lleida (Lérida) had with that of Valencia.

Unless someone objects in the next few days, I'll restore this modified version of the paragraph to the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:39, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a linguist, but I suggest to supress any political references. So:

The concept of a "linguistic Catalan diasystem" was developed at the beginning of the 20th century as linguists began to distinguish Catalan more firmly from Occitan. Prior to that, Catalan and Valencian were generally considered dialects of Occitan, included in the "linguistic Romanic-Occitanian diasystem". The term "Western Catalan" ("catalá occidental") is based on the lexical and phonetic similarities that the speech of the zone of Lleida (Lérida) had with that of Valencia.

--Joan sense nick 15:34, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Besides it, I have to say that I talk normally in catalan/valencian to my Valencian and Balearic friends (just little diferences, similar to when I talk spanish with a latinamerican friend). But I've been in Val d'Aran and I can't understand Occitan language. --Joan sense nick 15:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually Gascon has enough personality that some class it apart of the rest of Occitan. --Error 00:56, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I have deleted that text. It is still nnpov--SMP - talk page (en) - talk page (ca) 18:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

English pronunciation

Is it needed to include the English IPA transcription?? It is normal to include the native, not the English.--SMP - talk page (en) - talk page (ca) 17:10, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it is necessary, as it's something there is considerable confusion about (amongst both native and non-native English speakers) - and something many may visit the article specifically for.

I've just changed it: the general English pronunciation is Cátalan /ˈka.təˌlan/. Some use instead the pronunciation Catalán /ˌka.təˈlan/, which is influenced by the Catalan word. (I've also heard /ˈka.tə.lən/ amongst non-native English speakers.) The OED has ˈkætəlæn (with no [] or // ). kieron 00:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Formentera

If they have dialects at Ibiza, Mallorca, and Menorca, how about Formentera? De mortuis... 20:05, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Eivissenc dialect is spoken in Eivissa and Formentera.--SMP - talk page (en) - talk page (ca) 14:45, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Comparisons to other regional-national dialects/languages/varieties/you-get-the-point

Off-hand comments comparing the situation of Catalan-Valencian-Occitan with other quite different realities, e.g. those of Serbo-Croatian and of "Canadian" French vs. Metropolitan French, do not help. It is best to view the Catalan-Occitan-Valencian reality as a case study, which in fact is what we linguists working in dialectology or sociolinguistics and language sociology tend to do. It would be great to have (on this talk page) much more discussion about these naming/categorization difficulties. Moreover, it would be informative to clarify terminology concerning dialect/variation/variety/variant. Anyone interested?

For example, I've been working on major re-writes and additions to Quebec French, Canadian French, and Joual. I invite you to read them: the article on Canadian French because the term is a misnomer, and the article on Quebec French due to the utter confusion connected to it. Note that in Quebec French, the section on social perception needs a complete re-write and as it stands, should not be considered reliable. After you read Canadian French, you'll understand why, in this article on Catalan, I changed the false analogy Quebec Fr. vs. Metropolitan Fr. to Acadian French vs. Quebec French. In fact, I suggest eventually avoiding the comparison altogether given the many factors the making most comparisons misleading. CJ Withers 12:31, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Just a correction. Please, note:

• Catalan-Valencian-Balear (ca)
• Occitan (oc)

They forked centuries ago and ceased to be an important communication interchange. See Treaty of Corbeil. In different historical contexts, they both would be presently an only language.

Because of the lack of an effective or successful standardization and French assimilation or diglossy, Occitan has indeed more dialectal diversity in its languedocien group than the whole Catalan language domain.

Best regards, Toniher 03:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

You mean hyper-correction. I never wrote nor implied they were the same language, or of the same dialect continuum, for that matter. Please read more thoroughly: the key words are "situation" and "reality". Also, the original and English-language term is diglossia. CJ Withers 04:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

On 15:44, 12 June 2006, some anonymous under the IP 80.36.189.123 removed comparisons between Valencian/Catalan vs. American English/English English giving the reason "Rv to avoid continous spam against Valencia community". Such comparisons are quite obviously not "spam againsy Valencia community", but just an example to state that Catalan is, like English, a multi-centric language. I have restored and explained better the comparison in hopes that it doesn't get reverted again in the same way, and that this doesn't turn into an edit war. Also, they reverted some other changes I had made: I had removed a comparison between Catalan/Valencian and Spanish/Portuguese because the comparison stated that Portuguese and Spanish are mutually intelligible, which they are not - they are supposed to have been the same language centuries ago, but that relationship would be closer to that of Catalan (and Valencian) with Occitan, although there seems to be no evidence whatsoever other than linguistic characteristics that Catalan and Occitan have ever been the same language. I've restored the changes I made. - 62.43.177.47

Section about being taught in many universities in North America & Europe

I'm not aware of it being taught in any major university in the US, it certaintely wasn't at the university I attended (at least when I attended in the 1990s). So I'd like examples of universities that teach it in the US. Thanks. Jon 18:08, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

hi jon. this map shows just those universities around the world where there is a catalan lector sent via the institut ramon llull (an official organisation to promote the catalan language outside catalonia)

http://www.llull.cat/llull/estatic/eng/quisom/lectorats-mapa.shtm

this is by no means all of the universities where catalan is taught (my university, for example, had valencian lectors, which it organised itself without going through any third-party organisation such as the institut ramon llull). i remember a more complete list of universities somewhere, so i'll see if i can find it.

teaching catalan abroad has really taken off in the last few years, so maybe if you were at university in the 90s you would have missed the phenomenon, i dunno. also, at the moment, catalan is usually taught within the spanish department as an optional course, rather than being a major/minor in its own right.

kieron 12:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Dispute / Merge

This is one of the most disputed pages I've run across in months. The issue of whether Catalan and Valencian are the same or are two variants of a "Catalan-Valencian" (cf. Portugese-Galician) is entirely unsettled. Or more accurately I should say unsettled here - no one is citing references on this topic, and this entire Talk page was virtually unusable until I restructured it, because it was filled with pages and pages of ad-hominem and political flamewars, largely relating in one way or another to this issue. I somehow doubt that linguists and the reference works they have published are in anywhere near as much confusion and disagreement on this issue as the posters on this Talk page and editors of this Article are. Hit the books, cite the facts, cite the prevailing theories, and end the dispute.

So, I'm flagging this with a Disputed template, and doing the same over at Valencian. If the dispute is resolved on the side of them being the same language, then the very first thing that should happen is a Merge template should be added to both, and folks who care to edit these articles in depth need to work together on a combined version, and redirect things appropriately. Or something along those lines. Perhaps there should instead be a large article on Catalan-Valencian or Valencian-Catalan, and smaller articles on each of them separately that go into what makes the (alleged) dialects different from each other.

I'm not even going to touch the question whether Catalan is really a dialect of Occitan!! The fact that that possibility has been raised here, with some fervor, is more than sufficient evidence that the facts of this article are truly disputed. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 17:16, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The part about English English and American English shows pretty much all the facts you need to discern Catalan and Valencian as a single language. Even under the ortography and rules of those who claim Valencian to be different, there's no substantial morphological or syntactic differences between the two - just phonology and some lexic, but, as I said, there's more divergence between American English and English English; the issue is entirely a political one, and as such it shouldn't be considered in an article about linguistics. As for Occitan, morphology IS different; syntax is quite different although it's similar to that of Northern Catalan; phonology is quite different, although you can establish a link to that of Catalan - but both evolved in separate ways, which is evidenced by different diphtongs which don't quite match always; the lexic is quite different as well, although with lots of cognate words. Although it's not quite the same, claiming that Occitan is the same language as Catalan is more or less like claiming that German and Dutch are the same language, or that Scots is English: you could justify it due to history, but any linguist will disagree.

So this is more a "cite sources" situation than a "factual accuracy" one, actually. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12 July 2006 (talk • contribs) .

Oh, as well, linking "Catalan-Valencian" to "Portuguese-Galician" is really unfortunate: while Portuguese-Galician is another case of politics meddling in linguistic fact, there are some non-political reasons you could use to claim Galician as a language evolved from an earlier Portuguese-Galician, although they are not all that important and, thus, many linguists consider both the same. But Valencian is essentially the same as North-Western Catalan, which some differences that, for example, a non-native speaker wouldn't really discern (or even a native speaker - it is not unusual for Valencians to be mistaken as people from Lleida when they travel to Barcelona. Generally, hearing a phrase or two is usually not enough to tell North-Western Catalan apart from Valencian, although obviously differences important enough to class them as separate dialects DO exist.) Really, this issue is quite simply a political one and I think the "factual accuracy" tag should be removed in favour of a "cite sources" one. Plus it has been some months since the last time there was fighting over the contents of the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12 July 2006 (talk • contribs) .

I would argue that the Valencian language is not a separate language, but is a valid article topic. This is exactly parallel to Moldovan language vs. Romanian. The common name (in English) of the language is Catalan; the topic here should be the claims that Valencian is a separate language (I think they are wrong, but they are real) and the politics behind the use of the name "Valencian" for that language by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, whose official stance is that there is only one language, but it's proper name is valencià. - Jmabel | Talk 06:45, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

(I am the anonymous who frequently posts at this page and made the two comments previous to Jmabel's.) I don't think the Valencian article should be deleted since, after all, it's one of the main dialectal blocks of Catalan and merits an article. However, it shouldn't have a page as a "Valencian language"; the theories about Valencian as separate from Catalan aren't supported by linguists: it is true that they should be mentioned, but they already are, which means that there's no fighting AT ALL over the articles. If nobody objects, I'll remove the disputed tag after a few days and replace it with a "cite sources" one. Also, perhaps we should rename this article to "Catalan-Valencian Language" to avoid this kind of fights...

Just to let you know there's still places containing "polaco"

Hello I came here from slashdot. Probably you already know this, but there are still some places throughout the text that contais the word polaco, or somesuch, where I would venture it should be català or catalan... My best regards Angelo

Mess of a paragraph

The following paragraph is a mess:

Valencian has often been seen as a dialect of Catalan due to their mutual intelligibility, and because it was the Catalan who brought their language there when they conquered the land of Valencia (although some people argue that Valencian didn't evolve from North-Western Catalan at all. For more information on Valencian, its relationship to Catalan according to politicians and linguists and its origins according to the same people, refer to the article on Valencian). However, the issue of language versus dialect is as much a matter of politics as of linguistics. By the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Valencian and other varieties of Catalan are dialects of a single language; but according to this criterion, Norwegian and Danish are dialects of the same language. A language is defined by several factors, political ones among others.

It argues with itself ("although", "however"). It gives a verbose and polemical redirect to another article. I think the problems are mostly in the first half; everything from the "however" on looks OK to me. Could someone who knows this topic better than me please try to disentangle the rival theories and write this in an NPOV manner, attributing theories, rather than an argument of the Wikipedia narrative voice with itself? That is who says that Catalans brought the language to Valencia? Who says Valencian evolved independently? - Jmabel | Talk 06:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

This paragraph is no mess. It points out that Valencian is often seen as a variant of Catalan, mainly by linguists, but that other people... SOME people, mainly politicians, think otherwise. On the other hand, the part after "However" strikes me as quite N-NPOV - it kind of implies that the unity of Catalan is a political matter (when, quite the contrary, it's the supposed independence of Valencian which is.)

So the problem is that the paragraph does not cite sources. But I don't think the redaction is not fine (although I'm biased, because I wrote the although part, in an attempt to avoid pro-Blavero vandalism. It should be noted that, before I edited it, the paragraph was quite clearly N-NPOV in favour of Valencian as a different language, or at least I perceived so.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.43.177.158 (talk • contribs) 21 July 2006.

Edit I'd appreciate having explained

The following edit was made: "Historically, the perceived status of Valencian as a 'dialect of Catalan' has had important political implicationsincluding Catalan nationalism and the idea of the Països catalans or 'Catalan countries.'" The stricken portion strikes me as being on the mark. Am I missing something? - Jmabel | Talk 06:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It is more or less right, but it is

a) Overtly simplistic. There are lots of other factors in Catalan nationalism and the concept of Catalan Countries, such as unfairness on the Spanish state, history, etc. It should be noted that in the period of history that the "Catalan Countries" concept more or less takes its map from, Valencia had more economic weight than Catalonia, so the phrase is not that good at all, as it kind of has the underlying meaning that the Catalan Countries idea puts Valencia as subordinate to Catalonia; and the same thing linguistically.

b) Misguiding. Valencian as a separate language is a political concept; Valencian as Catalan is a concept supported by linguists. The paragraph kind of makes readers believe that Valencian as a dialect of Catalan is a political concept associated to Catalan Nationalism, which it is not.

I think the Valencian/Catalan sections need a complete rewrite. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.43.177.158 (talk • contribs) 21 July 2006.

Confusing sentence

'There are verbal forms which are not frequently used in either dialect - "aní"/"vaig anar", just like "I advise that he come"/"I advise him to come".' I simply do not understand what is being said here.

Also, am I right in understanding that all the examples in this section are Catalan first, Valencian second? If so, we should say so; if they are not all in the same order, we should change that to something consistent and say so. - Jmabel | Talk 06:37, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It is confusing due to poor English, mainly. What it means is that "There are verbal forms unfrequent in one of the dialects - just as American English uses the subjuntive and English English normally does not, some variants of Valencian use the synthetic past (aní) as opposed to the more widespread use of the periphastic one (vaig anar) in Catalan." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.43.177.158 (talk • contribs) 21 July 2006.

Total rewrite of the Valencian section

(I'm the anonymous who frequently posts at this page.) Since there are no disputes about the rest of the page, and the main complaints are that nobody cites their sources and that the Valencian section is polemical and unclear for a number of reasons (mainly clashing views which are not separated and thus result in unclear and half-POV statements), I've removed the disputed tag from the article, but have added a cite sources one and a Complete Rewrite one to the Valencian section, which I think is much needed. I'll try to work on the rewrite one of these days, but, for the time being, I think it's better to leave things this way. If you disagree, please say so! I wouldn't like to be making polemical choices! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sputnikpanicpuppet (talk • contribs) 21 July 2006.

I look forward to seeing a rewrite of this section, laying out the various views in the matter, properly cited. - Jmabel | Talk 06:23, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Revert

I have reverted the last changes made to the page. Essentially, they introduce wrong info (the dialects are named "Barceloní" and "Tarragoní", and not "Barcelonès" or "Tarragonès", for example); they removed the needed rewrite and cite sources tags without fixing the problems; they remove important information like the relationship between Standard Catalan and other dialects; they restore the comparison with Canadian/Metropolitan French which has been argued against before; the only thing they might be right about is on the Scandinavian language comparison, but I'm not sure (I can't speak any Scandinavian language...) So, for now, I'll revert the changes --Sputnikpanicpuppet 02:10, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

language as linguistics definition

• "Any serious linguist and all universities teaching romance languages consider those
• "linguistics variants to be part of the same language (sort of Canadian French vs French of France)

and many other possible quotations

The definitions of language vs. dialect, despite the common belief, is not a linguistic one. Linguistics finds in different systems (and, actually, the system used by every person is different) similar features called isoglosses. Linguistic classification is isogloss map, that shows similarity and differences in distinct regions. But there is no rool or claim, that X common isoglosses define a language, while Y define a dialect. These are already defined - historically, politically and sociologically. In some cases many very different systems are called a language (German, Arabic), and are divided into dialects (Arabic - Syrian, Algerian, Lebanese etc.). In other cases very similar systems defined as different languages (Dutch - Flemish). So, linguists tell "language is a dialect with flag and navy" Therefore, it is not a linguistic discussion! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.228.127.127 (talk • contribs) 10 September 2006.

English words of Catalan origin

This section is rather silly. If you follow the links to "barracks", "mayonnaise" and "cul-de-sac", you learn these words are derived from French (well, barracks could have been derived from Italian or Spanish as well). Allioli definitely is a Catalan/Valencian word, but in English "aioli" is commonly used, which is the French version on allioli. Sorry to say, but we didn't influence the Enlish langue in any way that I know of. 69.181.148.6 05:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Most English words come from French. But in a great many cases they come from other sources *via* French. This is certainly the case with 'mayonnaise,' and may well be with the other two examples you cited. It is those articles, rather than this one, which need to be changed. kieron 23:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Joan Corominas considers barraca "primitively Catalan, of unknown origin, maybe pre-Roman". Around the war of the Thirty Years French barraque (now baraque) passes to the rest of European languages.

Neither aioli nor allioli are originally French. The word is either Catalan or Occitan.

--Error 18:00, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

According to the OED, none of that is definitive. "Barrack" is "of uncertain origin" but that it "occurs early in [Castillian] and Catalan", while "aïoli" is of French origin - the etymology given is: [Fr. aïoli (Trésor, 1744), f. mod.Pr. aioli, f. ai (F. ail) garlic + oli (F. huile) oil.] Gromitjc 20:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Not even Mayonaise gets credited unequivocally to Catalan in the OED:

 Several etymologies have been suggested. Like numerous dictionaries, N.E.D. (1906) describes it as 
 ‘prob. feminine of mahonnais of Port Mahon, capital of Minorca, taken by the duc de Richelieu in 1756’, 
 but the lateness of the word in French would argue against this, as would perh. also the spelling 
 mayonnaise rather than mahonnaise already in the earliest attestation.
 Bayonnaise (feminine of bayonnais < the name of the French town of Bayonne + -ais -ESE) is attested 
 in the same meaning only two years later, and mayonnaise is freq. explained as a corruption of this 
 word, as in the following early discussion (giving the earliest examples of the form mahonnaise and 
 of bayonnaise in this sense):
 1808 G. DE LA REYNIÈRE Man. des amphitryons II. vi. 211 Les puristes, en cuisine, ne sont pas d'accord sur 
 la dénomination de ces sortes de ragoûts; les uns disent mayonnaise, d'autres mahonnaise, et d'autres 
 bayonnaise. Le premier de ces mots n'est pas français; et le second indique une ville où rien n'est renommé 
 pour la bonne chère; c'est ce qui fait que nous nous sommes décidés pour bayonnaise, dont l'étymologie est 
 dans le nom d'une ville qui renferme beaucoup de Gourmands inventeurs, et qui, de plus, donne naissance 
 chaque année aux meilleurs jambons de l'Europe.
 However, the French chef M. A. Carême (1784-1833) preferred the spelling magnonnaise and an etymology 
 from French manier to handle (see MANNER n.), explained as referring to the method of preparation of the 
 sauce.] "

--Philbarker 16:23, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Another word that comes from catalan is "paper". Its origin is certainly the latin "papirus", but it went into english through catalan.

Catalan and Spanish

Hello I was interested in someone explaining how inteligable Catalan is to Spanish. There's a lot about Valecian and Catalan, but I want to know how a castillian speaker would go listening in on a conversation in Catalan. Can a Spanish speaker understand Catalan literature? I have heard conflicting statements. A paragraph dealing with Catalan's similarities with other languages would be really interesting. I hope someone can either answer my question and perhaps add a section to the page. 58.169.157.145 14:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Anechdotically, I was told that spoken Portuguese and Catalan are more mutually intelligible than Catalan and Spanish. But there is a difference between Brazilian and European Portuguese. The reason is the similarity of the vowel systems. --Error 18:12, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

If you consider a castilian speaker with no previous exposure to catalan, not knowing other languages, listening to a speech in catalan, given slowly and clearly, he will understand some random words, but will not get anything of what is being said.

How close is it?

Genetically, so to speak, the closest languages to Spanish are:

• (1) the Ladino language, which could perfectly be considered part of a Spanish diasystem;
• (2) the Asturian language (Eastern varieties being closer than Western ones); Z
• (3) the Galician-Portuguese diasystem (the Galician language being closer than the Portuguese one);
• (4) the Aragonese language (Western varieties being closer than Eastern ones);
• (5) and then, the 5th closest would probably be Catalan, Western varieties (NW Catalan and Valencian) being apparently a little closer, and some Eastern varieties (Majorcan and particularly Algherese, in Sardinia, Italy) being not so close. These last two, particularly the last one, are often hard to understand even for some speakers of the language.Occitan, by the way, is the closest language to Catalan (the 6th closest to Spanish). A speaker of Spanish would probably understand quite a lot of a written text in Catalan, but listening comprehension is a bit more complicated (it all depends too on which Catalan variety is being spoken, the speed and so on). Similar to what will happen to him/her with Portuguese or perhaps a bit more complicated. Sometimes people have referred to Catalan as somewhere between Spanish and French (actually, it is between Occitan and Aragonese, but the average person hasn't ever heard about those minoritarian languages). This ressemblance is due to the fact that many words are similar and also because of a common impression in Spanish speakers that Catalan, just like French, "cuts" final vowels (e.g., Spanish mano 'hand' is mà in Catalan, main in French; Spanish justo is just both in Catalan and French). All this said, intelligibility is always a personal thing. A speaker of Spanish who also knows French or perhaps Italian would understand Catalan much easily, for example. --Info 20:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Catalan is very diferent from castillan, for example, castililan has only 5 vowel sounds, and catalan has 8 sounds, and "j" or "g" has a diferent sound in catalan or castililan, in castilian "g" or "j" are like the english "h", and in catalan are like the english "j". This are some of the differences between the two languages, of course, if you see a dictionary, you will find most of the words are diferent, like for exemple english to german. Coronellian 18:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I thought "j" in Catalan was pronounced [ʒ], like in Portuguese or in French. That is not the same pronunciation of English "j", which is pronounced [dʒ] instead. 161.24.19.82 17:18, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Coronellian, saying that spanish to catalan is the same as english to german is quite wrong. An average Castilian speaker with no previous exposure to Catalan can almost understand written Catalan as for spoken Catalan it would take like 2-3 weeks. Catalan (or Valencian) spoken in Valencia is even easier since the accent is softer. There is about 10% of words that are completely different but the rest are very close (you can try some words in this Catalan dictionary http://www.grec.net/home/cel/dicc.htm). I love Catalan but please don't exaggerate and let's keep the facts straight.

Much removed

I would hope that someone who knows more about this topic than I would look closely through the changes of the last few weeks. It seems to me that a lot I would consider correct has simply been removed from the article. Among other things, the following paragraph was removed; insofar as it touches on matters I know about, it seems to me to have been entirely correct (if perhaps not ideally worded), and I don't see any equivalent in the present article.

Standard Catalan, as regulated by the IEC, centres on the speech of the educated classes of Barcelona, and so is closest to Central Catalan; however, not all of the features of Barcelonese speech can be considered standard, as there are lots of traditional dialectal traits and Castillian influence in that area. Aditionally, most important dialectal traits of other dialects are also considered standard. The orthography used to write Standard Catalan (and basically any Catalan text) is closest to Valencian pronunciation, although some instances of grave accented <è> correspond to Central Catalan. There is also a second standard form of the language, Valencian (valencià), regulated by the AVL. The Valencian standard is very close to IEC's but adds features characteristic of Western Catalan.

- Jmabel | Talk 05:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

It's now been restored. - Jmabel | Talk 08:24, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Incoherent "transition"

"…and is often erroneously thought of as a sort of "transitory" language between the Catalan and Gallic languages…" I'm reminded of the Neil Young line "like a cross of himself and a fox". How can it be thought of (erroneously or otherwise) as transitory (presumably "transitional") beteen itself and something else? - Jmabel | Talk 21:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Number of speakers

It states 12 million speakers in the introduction, but when sources are added it goes down to 10.4 and the infobox says more than 7.5, while they are not technically contradicting, I think more coherent data could be given. Anyone? Knights who say ni 23:39, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

People who understand Catalan in Catalonia (and Andorra) are often counted as potential speakers of the language. While that is not so in the other Catalan-speaking territories (for lack of officiality or strict implementation of it), sometimes potential speakers include all or almost of all the people living in a Catalan-speaking territory. That's why, when figures need being high, potential speakers are used. Other language statistics (including some about English and Spanish) have a tendency to do so. In my opinion, only people who can actually speak the language, in one way or another, should be included. Then, my guess is that Catalan is spoken (as a mother tongue or a second language) by more than 8 million people, perhaps a bit more than 8,5. I'd say 10 millions is really too much, unless we include those who understand it perfectly and would only dare say something in Catalan on certain occasions. I guess the reason they say 12 in the article is because they say spoken or understood, while the table accounts for the number of total speakers and says more than 7,5. Yes, definitely it's more than 7,5 and more than 8 too, but more recent census should be done in order to offer accurate data, specially since immigration in the past 10 years has increased the population in those territories. Info 08:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.8.244.126 (talk • contribs).

relationship with spanish

there should be a section explaining the relationship between spanish and catalan language (how similar or different they are). Loosmark (talk) 22:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

May I ask why? I mean, why noy a section explaining the relationship between French and Catalan? --77.224.26.82 (talk) 00:53, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Why not have a section explaining the relation of Catalan to both Spanish and French? Grunnen (talk) 16:32, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

well mainly because it is interesting and many people don't know the difference between the two languages. but of course explaining the relation to French is interesting to. Loosmark (talk) 14:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

the suggestion is very justified. you only need to compare an info pamphlet on barcelona airport written in catalan and spanish(or any other one in catalunya) with open eyes to see that there are great similarities. relatives of mine near barcelona tell me, that people from barcelona and madrid have little problem understanding each other, if they are both willing. this has nothing to do with catalonians learning spanish at school. on the other hand, a frenchman would be hard pressed to understand any catalonian and vice versa. finally, many place catalonian in the language family with aragonese and kastillian as next of kin which, at least, is an indication of a very close relationship and which also justifies the suggestion above. Sundar1 (talk) 15:11, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It could be interesting such a comparison, but also including french. Don't forget that, as spanish catalan speakers see simmilarities between catalan and spanish languages, french catalan speakers do the same with catalan and french. In fact, catalan, if we talk about grammar, is more simmilar to french than to spanish (including it in the gaulic-iberian latin group and not in the west-iberian latin group, where spanish belongs), and if we talk about vocabulary, the most simmilar language is italian (in this case because it has kept more latin words than other romance languages influenced by arab or german languages). The only interest in comparing catalan just to spanish is political, as many non-spaniards don't even know in Spain there are many spoken languages apart from spanish (mainly because the spanish government has hidden those other languages in its international relations), so they try to see those new discovered languages in relation to Spanish.

Look, dude! We just want to understand is Catalan like Spanish so that we can understand what the heck it is. I'm not Spanish, I'm American. So I could care less about some gay EU regionality dispute. I just come to the encyclopedia to learn things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.246.153.42 (talk) 11:26, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I grew up speaking Spanish. Afterwards I became fluent both in Italian and Catalan, and can understand some French. My impression (shared by many speakers who speak some or all of those languages) is that Catalan falls nicely in the middle of the triangle Spanish-French-Italian, very much like it happens geographically. It is indeed closer to French in phonetics (which makes it somehow hard to understand when spoken to Spanish speakers) and closer to Italian in vocabulary--whenever the Catalan word is not similar to the Spanish one, you can almost always work it out through Italian. Hope that helps as a description, if obviously not very quantitative. Fsoto1969 (talk) 10:34, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

This is not going to be done here, this article is already very messy to add such unnecessary comparison, it could be also compared with Occitan (Catalan's sister language) or with Portuguese, Aragonese or Asturian-Leonese-Mirandese, which are closer languages to Catalan than Castilian (check ca:Lleis fonètiques del català and sources: Catalan and Castilian diverge the most when compared with the other Romance languages). Jɑυмe (xarrades) 20:58, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

FYI - Lexical similarity: 87% with Italian, 85% with Portuguese and Spanish, 76% with Ladin [lld], 75% with Sardinian [src], 73% with Romanian [ron]. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=cat Eyesighter (talk) 02:48, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Just a comment on this discussion. We cannot allow Wikipedia content to be determined by over-sensitive people with a political or national agenda. One of the people above questions why a Spanish-Catalan comparison is necessary; indeed he acts like such a thing is astonishing to even suggest! But I guarantee you the majority of people (like me) looking up this article do so because we are interested in the Spanish-Catalan comparison. It is a very valid issue, even if it hurts someone's feelings. (I could make similar remarks for the Valencian vs. Catalan argument above. It reminds me of people of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia who refuse to acknowledge the mutual intelligibility between their language and Bulgarian. Politics rears its ugly head yet again...). 69.196.184.109 (talk) 21:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, the linguistic consensus is that Catalan is most closely related to Occitan, and that both belong to the Gallo-Romance languages, which also includes French (more distantly related) but not Spanish. Linguists group languages according to shared innovations, and Catalan therefore presumably shares innovations with French that it does not share with Spanish, while Spanish and Catalan do not share innovations that French does not also possess. This is a bit simplistic of course, because languages don't always develop neatly according to a family tree, but my experience is that Catalan and Occitan resemble each other much more closely than Catalan and Spanish. I do think that a Spanish-Catalan comparison may be useful, but I think the reality is that they are not actually as similar once you start looking at the history. The loss of final -o and -e is a very notable difference which is shared by all Gallo-Romance languages, and therefore goes back at least 1000 years, but there are many more. CodeCat (talk) 23:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

"Decree banning the Catalan language in France"

The so-called "Decree banning the Catalan language in France" does not, in fact, say what the caption says it says. It does *not* ban the Catalan language in France. It only decrees that public acts such as court decisions and such must from henceforth be written in French rather than Catalan. This hardly constitutes "banning" a language.

I therefore suggest to either: 1) change the caption to "Decree from 1700 changing the official language of the newly-acquired Catalan speaking regions to French", or 2) remove the picture as it is not really very interesting (in my opinion).

not logged in, next time sorry. (212.114.247.96 (talk) 22:07, 20 May 2011 (UTC))

You are right, either option is good. First Catalan was diminished to a nonstandard language ("patois") by the Kingdom of France. Then right after the centralised Kingdom of France (1789-1792), the also centralised French Republic banned and started discriminating the nonstandard languages of France. IMO the section 18th century to the present: France should be expanded and mention "La Vergonha" and the French policies against "patois". We should also mention here "The report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". Jɑυмe (xarrades) 18:41, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

At no point did the French government pass a law making speaking, writing or publishing in Catalan illegal. So it was not "banned", I'm sick of hearing that word regarding Catalan. At no time in its history has Catalan been banned.

Boynamedsue (talk) 22:06, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Catalan was banned from legal/government/official use. That is now clear in the article.75.134.23.211 (talk) 20:50, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Lexical comparison needs cleanup

It's true that Catalan has some unique lexicon, but at least two of these do not qualify: Situated between two large linguistic blocks (Iberic and Gallic), Catalan has many unique lexical choices, such as enyorar ("to miss somebody"), apaivagar ("to calm down somebody"), or rebutjar ("reject"). Cat. apaivagar is cognate to Sp. apaciguar, and rebutjar finds congeners in Aragonese and Old Spanish repoyar.75.134.23.211 (talk) 01:07, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Error in comparative analysis

The article records "pardo" as the Spanish word for gray, making a point of the difference between Spanish and Catalan. However, "gris" is exactly the same word in both languages, gray. I'm not a linguist, so if anyone can explain why they've used "pardo" instead of the more commonly used "gris", I would like to hear it. Justanaccountnothingmore (talk) 01:59, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

In Spanish, gris is a Provençal loanword (unstressed -is is uncommon in Sp.). It seems pardo was the original word. Anyway, it's a recent borrowing not attested during the medieval period.--Fauban 07:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

So we base analysis on Spanish as it was hundreds of years ago, with loanwords not considered valid, or Spanish as it is spoken and understood now? Because "pardo" is not the word for gray, rather for the color brown. If we discount the present use of gris, why substitute "pardo" in, when it is not used as a word for gray in Spanish? I couldn't find any attestation that "pardo" was used archaically to mean gray, and the word descends from the Latin "pardus", for leopard. Is perhaps using "gray" as a comparative example a poor choice given this wrinkle? Justanaccountnothingmore (talk) 23:28, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

It is very important to use the medieval form of the languages because it helps with the classification of Catalan. We're talking about language families. Spanish gris is not valid for this comparison because it's a modern borrowing from Occitano-Romance. In any case, we should look what was the Old Spanish word for "gray". The source says it's pardo. Also:

De una manera general e inespecífica, «pardo» alude a las coloraciones rojas a amarillo anaranjadas, medias a oscuras y de saturación moderada a muy débil. También se puede decir «pardo» por ocre, ocre claro, ocre oscuro, castaño, grisáceo, gris, desaturado, sucio, oscuro u opaco. Gallego, Rosa; Sanz, Juan Carlos (2001). Diccionario Akal del color--Fauban 10:06, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Very interesting book

I found this book (from Google Books). It's in English, and features an extensive overview of the language. http://books.google.es/books?id=XZAMHDbMtwIC&pg=PT146&dq=catalan+dialects&hl=ca&sa=X&ei=_Ao8UqvNOsmntAbs0IGQDw&ved=0CFsQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=catalan%20dialects&f=false I guess it's going to be very useful.--Fauban 12:37, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Length

The article contains a lot of good information now, but it has become very long and the information is scattered around in a bit of an unstructured way. For example, it seems a bit odd to me to sandwich three sections about dialects, standards and Valencian in between phonology and grammar. In my mind, phonology and grammar belong more closely together because they both give a "technical" overview of the language while the dialects are more "geographical" or "cultural". And the standards and Valencian sections should probably be incorporated into the dialects section too. CodeCat (talk) 14:52, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I totally agree. Yesterday, I put phonology before dialects because the former also contains many phonological information, but I don't know... Only one language (Swedish language) is a FA, so I don't know which gidelines should I follow (and it doesn't seem very different from other B or C-quality articles).

In Catalan language, the approach of the former editors was that of giving equal treatment to every block or dialect (political correctness?). However, all the linguistics books I've read treat Central Catalan as the sandard, and give it much preference (also, most articles in this wiki focus on the standard varieties). Therefore, I wanted to put most dialectal characteristics in the dialects section. But maybe I shouldn't. Maybe dialects should be a mere enumeration, and I should put the differences in phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Or repeating it? I'm a bit unsure about putting the differences in verb conjugation in the verbs section, because almost all the sources focus on the standard endings, and so many sets of endings would be confusing. Maybe I should move some things to the new Catalan dialects article. I've also asked at the Teahouse if I should put internal wikilinks between sections, but apparently nobody does that.

Finally, yes, standards and dialects should be put together, but I'm not so sure about status of Valencian. I see the first 2 sections as more "linguistic", whereas the last one is completely "political", and as per WP:WEIGHT, I didn't want to mix something that has linguistic validity with something that doesn't. I was actually thinking of creating a new section about social and cultural aspects, where status of Valencian would fit better.

Well, those are my thoughts, but I don't know... Sorry for so much rambling. Cheers!--Fauban 08:41, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Is this a good link?-- Són bojos, aquests catalans!?

Is this a good external link?

• Són bojos, aquests catalans!? Are these Catalans crazy!? (English subtitles), on YouTube

It is different from other links, but I think it may be valuable. But - perhaps - it is to much political? What do you think?

Here is my discussion with CodeCat (who said it is not a good link): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:CodeCat#Catalan_language

Jaceknow (talk) 00:49, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Valencian secessionism movement

I'm affraid that valencian linguistical secession movement is more a political than linguistical issue, and should be considered in that way. I mean, of course do Lo Rat Penat and RACV exist, but ¿Which representativity do they have? As We can see in the French, Spanish and Catalan articles of the proposed separate normative for Valencian language, We can find that that normative has never had any consideration at University level, that has never used offically (except for the fallas organisation, and only during 6 years), that Spanish laws have considered that Catalan and Valencian are the same language, and other. I mean, the "separate Valencian language" is virtually a language with no usage. As We can see in the only study about the use of the "Puig Normative" and written production, between 1979 and 2004 it was used (totally or parcially) in 656 works, with 28 authors having a bibliography of 9 or more books, and with those 28 authors meaning more than 50% of the total production (more than 325 works). Obviously, the Valencian Secession Movement has existed and exists. But which representavity it has? We should be careful to not over-represent any political movement, because We could be biasing the article.--Coentor (talk) 18:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Scholars in favour of RACV theses?

I have made a change that has been reverted and I have been asked to start a discussion, so this is what I'm doing now. I had deleted that some scholars defend the RACV theses, because I consider that no scholar defends these theses. A scholar is someone active in the academic world, which is formed by universities and other research institutions. The RACV isn't included in that kind of institutions, and no one in the academic world, defined as I do above, defends these theses. The source given in the article is from Miquel Àngel Lledó. If you search the web, you'll see that this man is a close collaborator of the RACV, and he presents himself as having a diploma in Valencian Philology, which is a diploma that doesn't exist in Spain. If you search further, you'll find that he wrote a doctoral dissertation on the works of Mariano Madramany, a Valencian writer of the 18th century who wrote in Latin. Therefore, this man is not an expert on Romance languages nor a linguist. The source given in the article is a chapter written by Lledó, in which he defends the RACV orthography. Obviously he is defending the association that employs him.

The challenge for anyone who is against the deletion I did is to find any work by an expert on Romance languages or on Catalan language who defends the RACV theses. I think you won't find it, because these theses are totally unscientific and they are postulated because of political reasons, and the presentation of these kind of theses as scientific is something that should be avoided in the Wikipedia.--Toni P. (talk) 08:32, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

We could replace There is a minority of scholars ... with There is a minority .... --Jotamar (talk) 15:19, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion. The fact is that the polls say that there is a majority of people who think that Valencian is a separate language, as the article says, but there is actually no scholar who says that. This is something that can be checked consulting any specialised publication. I deleted the second part of the paragraph, and the first part reflects this popular opinion, so you cannot say "there is a majority of people" and then "there is a minority". —A minority of what?—, would think any reader.--Toni P. (talk) 11:15, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Browsing this page, I see that several members of the Real Academia de Cultura Valeciana are university professors, which means that they can be considered scholars. --Jotamar (talk) 18:01, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Ok, Jotamar. Just browsing that page we can discover in which extent the RACV is totally excluded from the academic world in the field of linguistics. As you say, there are several university professors, actually 18 out of 38 members, almost half of them. This could lead to the idea that this institution is formed partly by scholars, but in a more in-depth scrutiny we can find in which field these scholars are specialised: there are 3 historians, 2 doctors (medicine specialists) and the rest belong to diverse fields as topography, law, landscape science, Spanish literature, architecture, engineering, geography, arts, physics or statistics. Only one of them, Jaime Siles, is specialist in Latin philology, a field in which linguistics is included. However, if you search the web a bit more for him, you find an article in the Spanish Wikipedia where he is rather known for being a poet, always in Spanish, so that he doesn't seem to be very interested in the Catalan/Valencian language.

With this, we could say that there are scholars supporting the RACV views on Valencian, but not linguist scholars. This has the same value as a linguist making statements on heart diseases or on building highways. As you can see, the RACV is an organism devoted to defend linguistic positions, but no linguist is a member. So maybe the statement in this article could be that "no linguist scholar supports the RACV theses?"--Toni P. (talk) 10:45, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

The text as it stands now says There is a minority of scholars .... There is no mention of linguists, scholars in linguistics, etc. Therefore the text is correct, in my opinion. If Toni P. insists in mentioning in addition that not one of these scholars is a linguist, we would be back to the No true Scotsman paradox. In conclusion, I would leave the text as it is. --Jotamar (talk) 15:54, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Jotamar, I think that your arguments have become very poor after I showed what kind of scholars are members of the RACV. The true Scotsman paradox is based on the fact that no one can define what a true Scotsman is, but it is very clear what a scholar is and in which fields a scholar is specialised, so I don't see in which way the true Scotsman paradox can apply here. If you are speaking of, say, biology, you can give the opinion of experts in biology, but I don't imagine anyone giving the opinion of a Nobel prize in economy for a discussion on biology. When someone refers to the opinion of scholars when talking of a certain topic, it is very clear that scholars specialised in that topic are referred to, so in an article on a language as this one, I find a real nonsense to mention the opinion of scholars in fields totally unrelated to linguistics. I would make the change I did at the beginning: just to delete the statement saying that a minority of scholars support the RACV theses. This is an article about a language and the opinion of scholars with no relation to linguistics shouldn't be considered here, so if we stick to linguists, there is NO scholar who supports the RACV theses.--Toni P. (talk) 12:20, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

The relationship between Linguistics and, say, History, Anthropology or Sociology is not of the same kind as the one between Biology and Ecomomics, because there is a lot of common ground in the first case, and often fuzzy limits. In addition to that, the opinion of linguists is not that relevant, as it has been generally agreed in the last decades that one cannot establish if two languages are the same or different on purely linguistic grounds. --Jotamar (talk) 17:17, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

It is true that linguistics is more related to the disciplines you mention than to others. In this way, we have branches of linguistics such as historical linguistics, ethnolinguistics or sociolinguistics, and also others such as clinical linguistics, computational linguistics, neurolinguistics or psycholinguistics, and yet others, but that doesn't mean that the limit is fuzzy. What really strikes me is your second statement. Maybe you could explain who has generally agreed that languages can be classified not on purely linguistic grounds. There is no such agreement, given that the question of the classification of languages isn't solved because it is impossible to fix a criterion valid for all language families. It is true that ethnological aspects are taken into account, yet the major criterion to classify languages is mutual intelligibility. An example of criteria for classification can be found in this page of The Ethnologue, but also this criteria are challenged. In any case, the scholars who perform classifications are linguists, even though they may use ethnological criteria. Be that as it may, every language family has its experts and its own classification, and we are dealing here with Romance languages, which is one of the best attested and studied families of the world, and the fact is that no scholar in the field of Romance languages supports the thesis that there is a Valencian language separate from Catalan. But we are getting lost after so much discussion and now I would ask which is your point: do you mean that the fact that three historians and a Latin philologist support the thesis of a separate Valencian language implies that a minority of scholars support this view? The very fact is that absolutely no one in the field of Romance or Catalan linguistics supports this view and the statement "a minority of scholars" implies the idea of a group of scholars in these fields who are a minority. No one reading "a minority of scholars" in this article could imagine that this means "three historians and a Latin philologist". I think that the argument is quite strong, but if the discussion continues, maybe we should open a dispute.--Toni P. (talk) 09:32, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

If you didn't know that the intelligibility criterion or others are now considered of little use, then it will be difficult to go on with this discussion. Check Dialect#Dialect or language first, for example (I didn't write that section!). As for your proposal of simply deleting the statement about minority of scholars, I consider that mere censorship. Propose something else. And search for sources instead of just insisting that we take your word that no (true ?) linguist supports that. --Jotamar (talk) 15:46, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I think that you are not assuming good faith because you are avoiding the main argument and using arguments that avoid the central question. Because deleting a false statement is not censorship, it's just deleting a false statement, and you're now coming back to the true Scot argument, when I made clear in a previous comment why this argument has nothing to do here. The main question is who supports the RACV thesis. I wonder if you prefer that we write "3 historians and a Latin philologist support the RACV theses". I would agree that the statement is true, but looks quite absurd for the article, or you can tell me if you would write this. This is the central question. You ask me for sources, but it is you who should cite scholars who support the RACV theses, as you did when you said that some RACV members are scholars, and then I discovered in which fields they are scholars. I think that this discussion is arriving to a standstill and therefore I'm going to look for a third opinion if you don't agree to delete the false statement or write something according to what we have discussed, what I consider quite difficult.--Toni P. (talk) 07:54, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Since there is no further comment to this discussion, I’m going to do the changes according to my line of argument. The whole section called “Status of Valencian” is giving Lledó as a source. This source is a chapter of a book about language and ethnic identity. I understand that Lledó’s views are representative of the RACV’s views, and therefore they are a good token of the views of a part of the Valencian people, which is interesting for a book on ethnolingustics, but Lledó is defending the RACV views in his chapter, and this doesn’t imply that what is stated in the chapter is a reliable source. On the contrary, this chapter can be considered as a biased or opinionated source, in the sense that Lledó’s statements are reproducing the opinions of the RACV, but they cannot be considered a source for facts regarding the language. In this respect, several statements in Lledó’s chapter implying that there is a minority of scholars who defend that there is a separate Valencian language are simply false, because the unity of the Catalan language is a fact accepted by the whole academic world and there is no academic discussion on this fact. My argument can be easily falsified finding an academic work in the field of Linguistics that defends the RACV theses. So I’m going to change the whole section so as to make clear that no minority of scholars defends the RACV theses, that is, no linguist defends the RACV theses.--Toni P. (talk) 12:24, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

You are not giving new arguments or sources for your position. Third party opinions are welcome, of course. --Jotamar (talk) 16:20, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

User:Toni P. last editions include a very serious misbehaviour: after not reaching consensus about his/her proposals, he/she has unilateraly imposed them. This is very much against the most basic rules of WP editing. Notice also that his/her changes included deleting sourced material. --Jotamar (talk) 18:30, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I edited the article because there was no response to my last comment before the edit. I consider that your attitude is really not assuming good faith. You're asking me for new arguments, when I have already written lots of arguments, and you're always going around and don't really want to reach a consensus, because you always go back to a previous place. Now you're threatening to start an edit war, what I won't do. I'll look for help following the Wikipedia procedures.--Toni P. (talk) 08:26, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

This discussion has been brought to the active disagreements section of the Third Opinion page--Toni P. (talk) 08:56, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

Well, since the source [[1]] middle of bottom paragraph] actually omits the words "of scholars," maybe we should do that too. Or how about omitting them, but also making the previous sentence about scholars (/ "intellectual elite") rather than about "younger generations" so that "minority" has the same antecedent? 0nlyth3truth (talk) 09:37, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict, sorry)

Thanks to both editors for their contributions. It would help if both of you could post a short sentence summarizing your views, perhaps in this format:

I want "comment" in "section" of the article because "arguments in favour" and the alternate viewpoint of "another editor" is disagreeable to me because "argument why it is less suitable".

Just a hint, it may be useful to bear in mind that not all sources on the issue are necessarily using the same definition of "a (different) language". Differences easily identifiable to native speakers may give very little trouble with mutual comprehension, such that professional linguists may not even label them as different dialects. Here we should give Wikipedia readers, in Wikipedia's voice, a good idea of the professional consensus. We should also give some account of the various other points of view, being careful to attribute them to their originators rather than to give them in Wikipedia's voice.

As 0nlyth3truth got in before me I'll leave this discussion now, but will keep it on my watchlist for a few days. Richard Keatinge (talk) 10:08, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll try to sum up here the good amount of arguments exposed above. Anyone who is familiar with the field of Romance languages knows very well that the whole academic community considers that the speakers in Catalonia and Valencia speak the same language, and this is the fact that I would like to be expressed in the article. Sometimes it is complicated to give sources for something obvious, but the easy way to falsify it is to provide an academic source arguing that there is a separate Valencian language. This would invalidate the fact that "no scholars" defend the RACV theses and the true statement would be "a majority of scholars", which Jotamar defends. There is a source (Lledó) saying "the Valencian intellectual elite is divided into two groups". This is simply false. I argued that the source is a biased or opinionated source because the author has worked for the RACV, as can be seen just searching in Google. The source is in a book on ethnolinguistics, and therefore this author is good as a token of the views of a part of the Valencian people, but his statements are clearly biased because he is a representative of one current of opinion, but not of scholar opinion: he represents a current of popular opinion. Re-summing up, the question is very clear: are there "no scholars" or "a minority of scholars" who defend the RACV theses? Only an academic work defending the RACV theses would disprove the "no scholars" option, otherwise, the "no scholars" option is the true statement.--Toni P. (talk) 10:43, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't want to sound dismissive, but the main argument for my last edit is as simple and solid as a rock: the RACV organization, which defends the autonomy of Valencian vis-à-vis Catalan, includes several University professors, therefore those are scholars in favor of the RACV theses. I already pointed this out, if the other editors take the time to read this whole discussion. Notice that everybody agrees that they are a minority. Notice also that I didn't write the original statement that I recovered in my last edit, in fact I have no idea about who wrote it and I didn't know the source. About this particular source being biased, well, yes, most sources dealing with this highly emotional question are biased to some degree. --Jotamar (talk) 09:12, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I was going to keep quiet, but may I suggest that you remove the word "scholars" and use the more relevant "professional linguists" instead. (The relevant scholarly community is professional linguists, not experts in any other field.) You may find it much easier to come to a consensus version on that basis. Richard Keatinge (talk) 12:14, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

So just if we refer to "professional linguists" we will observe that no professional linguist supports the RACV theses. Jotamar is coming again to a previous argument that I refuted by demonstrating that there is no professional linguist among the RACV scholars. He or she is doing the same along the whole discussion: coming back to previous arguments. In this way, the discussion is always going around in circles and it's impossible to arrive at any agreement. If there existed this "minority" of scholars/professional linguists, it should be very easy to say who they are, but it isn't possible simply because this "minority" doesn't exist.--Toni P. (talk) 13:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I had missed User:0nlyth3truth observation about intellectual elite. I'm absolutely open to change the wording of the disputed statement, in this and other aspects. However, I'm afraid that User:Toni P. wants this statement to be erased altogether, and no other solution seems to be good for him/her. Again this is obvious from reading the whole discussion, and of course what I can't accept. --Jotamar (talk) 19:18, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

There definitely seems like there will be a need for compromise here. The two extremes of the issue are: leaving the sentence with "minority of scholars" -or- deleting the sentence. As the source itself does not use the word "scholars," it seems like a ready compromise is using another word, perhaps "thinkers." The question of whether a linguistic form is an independent language is both a sociopolitical question and a linguistic question. [2] Though there is a linguistic definition, note that professional linguists spend very little time on these questions since they are almost purely semantic and therefore academically uninteresting. As "scholar" generally communicates a relevant academic connection, and as language vs dialects is not a very prominent academic question, I think it makes sense to both 1) change the word "scholar" 2) continue including the information from that source. 0nlyth3truth (talk) 19:36, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

About professional consensus: as I said above, the professional consensus among linguists is that there is no safe criterion to identify 2 linguistic varieties as the same or different. It's true that most linguists deal with Valencian and Catalan as just one language, and it's ok by me to state that in the page. However, what User:Toni P. wants is that the page explicitly asserts that not most but exactly all linguists consider them just one language. My point is, not just that that can't be proved, as exemplified in the No true Scotsman paradox, but also that we have here one member of the RACV, a professor of Latin Philology, and also the author of the source, Lledó, both of whow can easily be counted as linguists, it just depends on your particular definition of linguist. Even so, I'm ready to accept any reliable source stating that not just most, but all consider ..., if such a source ever appears. --Jotamar (talk) 19:42, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, I see that this discussion is becoming quite long. I'm really sad that trying to write in a Wikipedia article a fact that I know perfectly that it's true takes so much effort and discussion. I'll try to say it very clear. Anyone who is familiar with the field of Romance linguistics or Catalan linguistics knows very well that there is no debate in the academic community on the nature and scope of the Catalan language. Since Linguistics was starting to be treated as a scientific discipline in the 19th century and the Romance languages were studied scientifically, no one has ever questioned that the varieties spoken in Valencia and Catalonia are the same language. Only during the Spanish transition at the end of the 70's there was a political movement who defended that Valencian was a separate language, but this was indeed a political movement with no echo in the academic world. This is something that every student in the field of Romance languages knows very well. The RACV was created out of this political movement, and you can see what sort of academic institution it is, that deals mainly with language but its members belong to many sorts of disciplines, but there is only one related to Linguistics, namely specialist in Latin philology. Lledó is not a linguist. If you search in Google, you will find that he wrote a thesis on a book written in Latin in the 18th century, so this belongs to the field of Latin literature. You can find him presented as having a diploma in Valencian Philology, which is a diploma that doesn't exist in Spain. Talking about minorities of linguists or experts means that there is some debate in the academic community, what is actually false.

Yet, I can try a compromise. We can write that "the RACV members are scholars in several fields of knowledge, but there is only one member expert in something related to Linguistics, namely in Latin Philology". This is the truth. The RACV scholars are the only ones that you'll be able to find defending their own theses.--Toni P. (talk) 08:36, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I can still propose another compromise. You can write that "there is a minority of scholars", but then I'll have the right to put a who-template, so that I'll challenge you to explain who are this minority. In this case, the first statement that now says "the vast majority" could be reformulated in a more neutral way as "Linguists hold..." and "by the Valencian scholars". Otherwise it could be written "All linguists but a minority..." The idea is that you write "a minority", but I can challenge it with a who-template. In this way, it will be clear that an editor has edited something that is challenged by another editor.--Toni P. (talk) 12:44, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

As I see it: A) It is important to explain that a small minority of scholars reject the unity of the Catalan language. B) It is also important to say that none, or virtually none of these scholars are linguists.

In my opinion, this is quite similar to the climate change debate: there is a very small minority of researchers who say AGW is a hoax, but almost none of them are climate scientists, and to omit this last detail would be intellectually dishonest.

Therefore, my proposed wording is: "There is a minority of scholars active in fields other than linguistics who defend the position of the Royal Academy of Valencian Culture (Acadèmia de Cultura Valenciana, RACV), which uses for Valencian an independent standard from Catalan." --Leptictidium (mt) 16:12, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Leptictidium's (unsigned) proposal is fine for me. In addition, I would accept a formula like virtually all linguists instead of just all linguists, for example. --Jotamar (talk) 16:11, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't find the point of saying that "Some non-linguist scholars are members of the RACV association", more when this is an article about languages (except for Voro López, none of the others are languages speciallists) and all those issue is more about... politics.--Coentor (talk) 18:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

As Coentor says, the issue is more on politics than on linguistics. Yet from a sociolinguistic point of view it is important to show that many people have an idea of their own language different from that of the academic community, and that this popular concept is supported by a pseudo-academic institution as the RACV. In this sense, I think that Leptictidium's proposal is a true statement, but I would refine it by stating the position of the RACV and then explaining that it is formed by non-linguist scholars. The statement might be so: "The Royal Academy of Valencian Culture (Reial Acadèmia de Cultura Valenciana, RACV) uses for Valencian a standard independent from Catalan. This academy is formed by scholars active in fields other than linguistics". This explains better in which way "scholars active in fields other than linguistics" are defending the RACV theses.

Regarding the statement at the beginning of the section, now "the vast majority of linguists", Jotamar's proposal to change it by "virtually all linguists" expresses practically the same. If you don't want to write "all linguists", I propose a more neutral term as "the academic community considers the varieties spoken in Valencia and Catalonia the same language". Here I want to remark that talking of "Catalan and Valencian" is not very accurate, because Valencian as a dialect doesn't have clear boundaries and there is no dialect called "Catalan", but "Central Catalan", "North-Western Catalan" and "Northern Catalan".--Toni P. (talk) 12:19, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Is there no opinion about my last proposal? If nobody says nothing against it, I should consider it accepted, or at least I should consider that there is nobody interested in giving an opinion, which should imply that nobody is against my proposal.--Toni P. (talk) 11:24, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

It made some sort of sense, but it was also too complicated and weaselish for an encyclopedia. At this bold edit I have rewritten the section for better flow, and I have removed certain ill-referenced, controversial, and un-necessary words. I hope this is a change that everyone can live with. Your opinions are welcome of course. Richard Keatinge (talk) 12:52, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

I understand that this is a very long discussion, but I think that you haven't bothered to read only the last posts. This discussion started with the positions of Jotamar and me, defending respectively to write "most linguists" [defend the unity of the Catalan and Valencian idioms] and "all linguists". Leptictidium proposal "There is a minority of scholars active in fields other than linguistics" [who defend the RACV theses] is somehow successful: Jotamar has accepted it and I acknowledge that it is a true statement, although I proposed a slight modification. And now that we are on the verge of an agreement, now you come and modify the article writing "a minority of academics", which means the same as "a minority of scholars" and therefore is representing the initial position of Jotamar. This is not a good way to solve a discussion, to make a change without agreement and going back to the beginning of the discussion. I'm going to change the article according to Leptictidium's proposal. Regarding the text "the vast majority of linguists", I'll change it to my proposal, since there has been no post against it.

On the other hand, you have written that the AVL "describes Valencian as a dialect of Catalan", when they aren't saying this in the source. The former text ("declares the linguistic unity between Valencian and Catalan") was more faithful to the source. Please read the sources before making changes based on sources.--Toni P. (talk) 11:16, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Nobody has produced an actual source for any comment about a majority of linguists; those comments are therefore original research. It's better to state the positions of the relevant bodies, with the agreed facts about mutual intelligibility. As for the text "declares the linguistic unity between Valencian and Catalan" it is indeed a more faithful translation. It is also longer than necessary and, to an English speaker, it appears un-necessarily pompous. Having read the arguments carefully, it seemed clear that a third alternative for the text would be an improvement. It still does. Do you have any better suggestions? Richard Keatinge (talk) 19:01, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Regarding your first sentence, it doesn’t make much sense. There is no source about how many linguists support the unity of Valencian and Catalan idioms simply because you won't find any academic source that denies this unity, and I don't know which original research you mean here. To illustrate the matter, we can imagine the same discussion regarding American and British English. We can state that all linguists support that American and British English are the same language, and, do we need to find a source that says that? Can you imagine this discussion with American and British English? Can you imagine someone asking for sources that say that all linguists agree that American and British English are the same language? The only difference from Catalan and Valencian is the idea of many Valencian people about their own language, but this is something that belongs to sociolinguistics.

Regarding the translation, I don't see why it is pompous. Moreover, your translation isn't accurate, because you cannot talk of "Catalan" and "Valencian" as dialects. Note that North-Western Catalan is closer to Valencian than to Central Catalan, so I think that as I put it, "unity between Valencian and Catalan varieties", is much more accurate.

And finally, you talk of third alternative, but a third alternative is just Leptictidium's proposal, which I have incorporated in the article.--Toni P. (talk) 12:38, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Fine. I will leave you with the thought that yes, if we are making a positive and contested claim, about linguists or anything else, we probably do need a source. Rather than repeat myself I'll just take this page off my watchlist. Richard Keatinge (talk) 16:00, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Link to reference Enciclopèdia Catalana

It seems the link to the reference Enciclopèdia Catalana is broken (as in references 15, 23, 26, 93 and 97 of the current revision). Does anyone know how it could be repaired? MuDavid (talk) 03:34, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Latin and Greek learned words?

I've never come across the term "learned words" to describe the contents of this section.... was it intended to be "loanwords"? Or has linguistic terminology changed since I went to university? 220.221.138.154 (talk) 16:50, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Thy're learned words (scholarly, erudite, bookish words), that is, words that are used mainly in academic writing and other learned forms of language.

Regions were Catalan is spoken

I start this discussion because I have been asked to, after my last edit was reverted. I edited the infobox of Catalan Language, in the part of <<regions: Catalan Countries, Geographical distribution Northeast, around Barcelona; Catalonia, Valencia provinces, Balearic Islands; Carche region, Murcia Province in Spain.>> Sorry, but this statement really doesn't make sense..."...NE, around Barcelona..." NE where? and Barcelona is not a region!...That sentence simply doesn't make any sense at all. I edited this section and added the regional flags belonging to the four actual countries where Catalan is co-official or officially accepted. My point was, and still is, making that region section accurate (which the present edition isn't). By inserting the regional flags, we acknowledge that all those regions have kept the original flag used in the medieval Crown of Aragon, united and ruled by the Counts of Barcelona (1167-1410) (House of Barcelona). This was the origin of the Catalan language expansion. I think it is historically important and relevant to understand and clearly see its origins. As my edition of the Template flags has been removed, I seek for concensus. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ethra2016 (talk • contribs) 09:32, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

You are embarked on a personal mission to give your own opinion and to promote the Catalan language. You must back up your changes with citations and references to good primary source evidence. There is no need to clutter the page with lots of flags of various regions. I suggest you spend time becoming familiar with the way things are done on WP and to look through the guidelines, or which there are many, before rushing in with large alterations to articles.Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:20, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

First of all, Roger 8 Roger, I'm not embarked on any personal mission whatsoever, and I don't intend to give my personal opinion neither. My will is just to apport clear, verified and official information. Flags are NOT a personal opinion at all. I just included official regional flags of the regions in which the language is co-official or oficially recognized. Again, that is NOT A PERSONAL OPINION. I did that because the information about the regions on the infobox is NOT CLEAR at all, and you will notice that, if you read it. I wonder if you have. I don´t understand WHY you prefer that unintelligible edition rather than the FLAGS. Just wanted to make the article more accurate with a better edition and that's all. and all of them are official. If you search on the wikicommons for the official French Rousillon's CoA, the Italian Alguero's CoA or all of the 3 Spanish regional flags, you will see that those are far from being an opinion someone can have or disclaim. Ethra2016 (talk) 00:05, 18 January 2017 (UTC)