Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencià (Valencian) and in the city of Alghero 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 Carche) in Spain, and, officially recognised to some extent, in the historic Roussillon region of southern France, roughly equivalent to the current département of the Pyrénées-Orientales.
Kingdom of Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.[note 6] Its mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the northwest and west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal. Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast, and two autonomous cities in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla, that border Morocco. With an area of 504,030 km², Spain is the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union after France.
Catalan Language
The Catalan language developed from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the eastern part of the Pyrenees mountains (counties of Rosselló, Empúries, Besalú, Cerdanya, Urgell, Pallars and Ribagorça). It shares features with Gallo-Romance, Ibero-Romance, and the Gallo-Italian speech types of Northern Italy. Though some hypothesize a historical split from languages of Occitan typology, the entire area running from Liguria on the present Italian coast to at least Alicante in Spain is more scientifically viewed as a classic dialect continuum, with some eventual perturbation as a result of political divisions and overlay of standard national languages.
As a consequence of the Aragonese and Catalan conquests from Al-Andalus to the south and to the west, it spread to all present-day Catalonia, Balearic Islands and most of Valencian Community.
During the 15th century, during the Valencian Golden Age, the Catalan language reached its highest cultural splendor, which was not matched again until La Renaixença, 4 centuries later.
After the Treaty of the Pyrenees, a royal decree by Louis XIV of France on 2 April 1700 prohibited the use of Catalan language in present-day Northern Catalonia in all official documents under the threat of being invalidated. Since then, the Catalan language has lacked official status in the Catalan-speaking region in France.
Dialect
In 1861, Manuel Milà i Fontanals proposed a division of Catalan into two major dialect blocks: Eastern Catalan and Western Catalan. The different Catalan dialects show deep differences in lexicon, grammar, morphology and pronunciation due to historical isolation. Each dialect also encompasses several regional varieties.
There is no precise linguistic border between one dialect and another because there is nearly always a transition zone of some size between pairs of geographically separated dialects (except for dialects specific to an island). The main difference between the two blocks is their treatment of unstressed vowels, in addition to a few other features:
* Western Catalan (Bloc o Branca del Català Occidental):
o Unstressed vowels: [a e i o u]. Distinctions between e and a and o and u.
o Initial or post-consonantal x is an affricate /tɕ/ (there are exceptions in Xàtiva, xarxa, Xavier, xenofòbia... these are pronounced with /ɕ/). Between vowels or when final and preceded by i, it is /jɕ/.
o 1st person present indicative is -e or -o.
o Latin long /eː/ and short /i/ have become /e/.
o Inchoative in -ix, -ixen, -isca
o Maintenance of medieval nasal plural in proparoxytone words: hòmens, jóvens
o Specific vocabulary: espill, xiquet, granera, melic...
* Eastern Catalan (Bloc o Branca del Català Oriental):
o The vowels /e/, /ɛ/ and /a/ become /ə/ when unstressed and /o/, /ɔ/ and /u/ become [u].
o Initial or post-consonantal x is the fricative /ɕ/. Between vowels or when final and preceded by i it is also /ɕ/.
o 1st person present indicative is -o, -i or there is no marker.
o Latin long /eː/ and short /i/ have become /ɛ/ (In most of Balearic Catalan they are pronounced [ə] and in Alguerese [e]).
o Inchoative in -eix, -eixen, -eixi.
o The -n- of medieval nasal plural is dropped in proparoxytone words: homes, joves.
o Specific Vocabulary: mirall, noi, escombra, llombrígol...