Catalan
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 Valencian, as well as in the city of Alghero on 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 (Northern Catalonia).
The first descriptive and normative grammar book of modern Catalan was written by Pompeu Fabra in 1918. In 1995 a new grammar by Antoni M. Badía i Margarit was published, which also documents the Valencian and Balearic varieties.
The grammar of Catalan mostly follows the general pattern of Western Romance languages.
Substantives and adjectives are not declined by case, as in Classical Latin. There are two grammatical genders—masculine and feminine.
Grammatical articles originally developed from Latin demonstratives. The actual form of the article depends on the gender and the number and the first sounds of the word and can be combined with prepositions that precede them. A unique feature of Catalan is a definite article that may precede personal names in certain contexts. Its basic form is en and it can change according to its environment (the word "en" has also other lexical meanings). One of the common usages of this article is in the word can, a combination of "casa" shortened to ca (house) and en, which means "The house of." For example "Can Sergi" means "Sergi's house".
Verbs are conjugated according to tense and mood similarly to other Western Romance languages—present and simple preterite are based on Classical Latin, future is formed from infinitive followed by the present form of the auxiliary verb haver (written together and not considered periphrastic), and periphrastic tenses are formed from the conjugated auxiliary verbs haver and ésser followed by the past participle. A unique tense in Catalan is the periphrastic simple preterite, which is formed from the conjugated present form of the verb anar (to go) which is followed by the infinitive of the verb. Thus, "Jo vaig parlar" (or more simply "Vaig parlar") means "I spoke."
Nominative pronouns are often omitted, as the person can be usually derived from the conjugated verb. The Catalan rules for combination of the object pronoun clitics with verbs, articles and other pronouns are significantly more complex than in most other Romance languages.
There are two main standards for Catalan language, one regulated by Institut d'Estudis Catalans, general standard, with Pompeu Fabra's orthography as axis, keeping features from Central Catalan, and the other regulated by Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, restricted scale standard, focused on Valencian standardization on the basis of Normes de Castelló, that is, Pompeu Fabra's orthography but more adapted to Western Catalan pronunciation and features of Valencian dialects.
IEC's Standard, apart from the basis of Central Catalan features, takes also other dialects features considering as standard. Despite this, the most notable difference between both standards is some tonic "e" accentuation, for instance: francès, anglès (IEC) - francés, anglés (AVL) (French, English), cafè (IEC) - café (AVL) (coffee), conèixer (IEC) - conéixer (to know), comprèn (IEC) - comprén (AVL) (he understands). This is because of the different pronunciation of some tonic "e", especially tonic Ē (long "e") and Ǐ (breves "i") from Latin, in both Catalan blocks ([ɛ] in Eastern Catalan and [e] in Western Catalan). Despite this, AVL's standard keeps grave accent "è", without pronouncing this "e" [ɛ], in some words like: què (what), València, èter (ether), sèsam (sesame), sèrie (series) and època (age).
There are also some other divergences like the tl use by AVL in some words instead of tll like in ametla/ametlla (almond), espatla/espatlla (back) or butla/butlla (bull), the use of elided demonstratives (este this, eixe that (near)) in the same level as reinforced ones (aquest, aqueix) or the use of many verbal forms common in Valencian, and some of these common in the rest of Western Catalan too, like subjunctive mood or inchoative conjugation in -ix- at the same level as -eix- or the priority use of -e morpheme in 1st person singular in present indicative (-ar verbs): "jo compre" (I buy) instead of "jo compro".
Some phrases in the Catalan:
Catalan: català
Hello: hola
Good-bye: adéu; adéu siau; siau; deu (colloquial use)
Please: si us plau or sisplau; per favor
Thank you: gràcies; mercès; merci (colloquial use)
Sorry: perdó, em sap greu; ho sento
This one: aquest (masc.); aquesta (fem.)
How much?: quant val? ; quant és?
Yes: sí
No: no
I don't understand: no ho entenc
Where's the bathroom?: On és el bany? ; On és el lavabo?
Generic toast: salut! ;
Bless you! (after sneezing): Jesús; salut!
Do you speak Catalan?: Parles català?
