Ivana Baquero : Catalan and Spanish

Catalan and Spanish

How different are the two languages? Are they both based in Latin? I was curious because I looked at her profile and noticed she spoke Catalan in addition to Spanish and English (in America's Next Top Model they have a season where they go to Spain and speak Catalan). Don't mean to sound ignorant or anything, just a simple question as I love learning languages.

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Re: Catalan and Spanish

Catalan is a Romance language, just like Castilian (aka Spanish), French, Italian and many
others. So yes, it's based on (or derived from) vulgar Latin.

They're similar enough that a well-read Spanish speaker can read a text in Catalan with
little effort (most of the time), but Catalan is more closely related to Provenzal (another
Romance language that was at some point in the past the dominant language in southern
France) than to Castilian. Understanding the spoken language is another story, though.
Everybody (or very nearly so) in Catalan-speaking areas of Spain is perfectly fluent in
Castilian, though.

Re: Catalan and Spanish

Is a good and valid question and asked in a very respecful manner (unlike many other posters here)

Like the poster above me said, the Catalan (or Valencian) is indeed derived from latin, which means that it is a romance language. You can find a lot of information about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language

And yes, we, the people who speak spanish can understand a great deal of it because of its structure and the similarity of the words. Here is an example:

CATALAN

El català és una llengua romànica parlada per gairebé nou milions i mig de persones al món. També existeixen altres zones on es parla català al món per corrents migratoris, com a la província de San Juan a l'Argentina on es calcula que hi ha 4.000 5b4 valencianoparlants. Els límits del domini lingüístic inclouen Catalunya excepte la Vall d'Aran, el País Valencià (a excepció d'algunes comarques)

SPANISH

El catalán es una lengua romance hablada por aproximadamente nueve millones de personas en el mundo. También existen otras zonas donde se habla catalán en el mundo por las corrientes migatorias, como la provincia de San Juan en Argentina, donde se calcula que hay 4.000 valenciano-parlantes. Los límites del nombre lingüístico incluyen a Cataluña, excepto el Valle de Arán, y el País Valenciano (a excepción de algunas comarcas)

ENGLISH

The catalan is a romance language which is spoken aproximately by 9 million people worldwide. There are other zones overseas in which catalan is spoken due to migrations, such as San Juan's province in Argentina, where it is calculated that there are 4.000 valencian-speakers. The limits of the linguistic name include Cataluña, except the Valley of Arán, and The Valencian country (except some shires)


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As you can see, in both the spanish and catalan versions, the similarities are overwhelming, and understandable (at least in reading) to a very big extent to a spanish speaker.

Hope that helped :)





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Re: Catalan and Spanish

Agreed.. I speak Spanish and I can read Catalan pretty well.. Written it's easy to understand, some of the words are French so understand French helps too.. (for example petit is small in both French and Catalan, and they also seem to share parler). Spoken, however, it's a completely differently story! I have had a catalonian woman speak to me in Catalan and then write down what she said, and I couldn't understand a word of it when she was talking to me! More like portguesse, I would say?
Once you learn one romantic latin-derived language well, the rest fall into place so much easier.

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Re: Catalan and Spanish

Believe it or not, Portuguese and Castilian are closer to each other than Catalan is to any of them.

Re: Catalan and Spanish

I don't believe it! ;-)

Seriously, I have to agree with HerNameIsBeatrix. Catalan seems to be in a way much closer to Portuguese than to Castillian. When I only knew Spanish, I could read Catalan, but didn't understand any of it spoken. But after learning some Portuguese at least some spoken language started to make sense me.

As a good example: "Good Day".

Spanisch: "Buenos Dias"
Portuguese: "Bom Dia"
Catalan: "Bon Dia"

Almost identical in Portuguese and Catalan, but different in Spanish.
(And considering, that the pronounciation of ending "m" in Portugese is just a kind of nasal "n", you could think of the two expressions to be identical.)

Re: Catalan and Spanish

same here I speak Spanish and can easily read Catalan and I understand most of it when spoken (as long as its not spoken too fast)




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Re: Catalan and Spanish


Catalán, is basically French/Spanish into one. The phonetics are similar to both when spoken


Well, you have to take in consideration that the regions in which catalan is widely spoken in Spain are near the boarder with France, Barcelona, the area around the Pyrenees, etc. So there is no doubt that there is certain influence which would explain some similarities between those languages.

Furthermore, 2000 the occitan, another romance language which is also very similar to catalan, is quite common in the south of France and some parts in the north of Spain (and even some areas in Italy.)

At the end of the day, those languages share a both a common linguistic root and a geographic area as well :)

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Re: Catalan and Spanish

One of my friends is from Barcelona so she can speak both Catalan and Spanish. I know Spanish so I can kind of read Catalan. There are some similarities.

Catalan- Com estàs?
Spanish- Cómo estás?

There's a lot of differences though too though.

Re: Catalan and Spanish

Everybody in Spain can speak Spanish, which originally was only the language of central Spain. But the native language to the eastern shores of Spain is Catalan. This is why people from Madrid speak Spanish while people from Barcelona, like Ivana, speak both Catalan and Spanish. There are also other languages in Spain, like Basque in the north and Galician in the north-west.

Both Catalan and Spanish belong to the same family of Latin languages, but are different and have different standards. Close, like English and Dutch, but different. Portuguese is closer to Spanish than Catalan is, for example. Catalan is instead a bit closer to the old native language of southern France, Occitan.

Catalan is also the official language of Andorra, tiny country between France and Spain.

Re: Catalan
238
and Spanish

There is a considerable number of catalan people in southern France indeed.

The sound of a kiss is not as loud as a cannon's, but its echo lasts longer
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