top of page

Catalan

Catalan

Summary

Catalan is natively spoken by about 8.1 million people, primarily in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands in Spain, as well as in parts of France, Italy, and Andorra, where it is the official language. It is a crucial part of the cultural identity of Catalonia, with a rich tradition in literature, music, and festivals. Written in the Latin alphabet, Catalan grammar features a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, and like other Romance languages, it uses gendered nouns and a system of verb conjugations.

Stats

  • Language Family: Indo-European

  • Writing System: Latin

  • Writing System Type: Alphabet

  • Writing Direction: L to R

  • Tones / Pitch Accent: N

  • Morphology: Fusional

  • Cases: 0

  • Grammatical Gender / Noun Class: 2

  • Number of Verb Tenses: 6

  • Word Order: SVO

  • Number of Vowels (Monophthongs): 8

  • Number of Consonants: 25

Areas Where Spoken

  • Andorra (official) (32.3%) (26 k)

  • Spain (17.0%) (8.12 mil)

Resources

Courses

  • Parla.cat - Free course provided by the Catalan Government, there's also a paid course with a tutor (You need to create an account, but you don't have to use your real information. Available in: English, German, French, Spanish, Catalan)

  • University of Barcelona - Conversation Guides - (You can switch to different scenarios (22 in total) at the top of the page, using the drop-down list, although the website may produce some errors when doing so. Available in: Catalan with English translation.)

  • Orbis Latinus - Descriptive Grammar (Available in: English)

  • InterCat - complete beginner and basic level courses

  • ieLanguages.com - Catalan Tutorial (Available in: English)

  • Romanica Intercom - beginner lessons (Available in: Spanish, Catalan)


Flashcards

Online dictionaries

Catalan Monolingual Dictionaries

Translators

Verb Conjugation

Pronunciation


bottom of page