Talk:Catalan language/Archive 1

message: Adéu siau is not always plural (see Gran diccionari de la llengua catalana: Adéu siau, definition in Catalan). It's just a more formal way of saying good bye.
--Outlyer 19:46, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adéu siau may be singular too 

message: Is yes 'oc' as in Occitan ?--Jondel 07:29, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Found 'si' in the online dictionaries.--Jondel 07:33, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's "sí".
The form 'oc' does also exist, but it was only used in Medieval literature, like that of Ramon Llull.
62.43.177.47
I lived for 53 years in Mallorca (one of the balearic islands) and never heard "oc" for "yes", they allways said "si". Coronellian 18:01, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Yes in Catalan

message: Removed from the "Classification" section: "It is frequently associated with separatist activity from Catalonia, which wants to split from Spain." At best this was misplaced. But more importantly, for the most part, the Catalans do not speak Catalan as a political statement. They speak it because it is their native language.
This reminds me of a joke, circa 1996: "I think it's perfectly normal that the Catalans speak Catalan. The real hecho diferencial would be for them to speak Gallego." -- Jmabel | Talk 20:45, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I noticed that the article has no numbers on how many Catalan speakers have it as first language or home language. They would be interesting, supposing it has meaning in the many cases of bilingual individuals. --Error 02:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hecho diferencial 

message: If there is no oposition, I will rewrite the portion regarding the Valencian-Catalan relation in a more NPOV, presenting the two sides of the issue. -- Afaus 15:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The other issue is marginal, and exclussively politic, there isn't any linguistic matter. The official language academy in the Land of Valencia (Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua) defend the unity of the language, altough it also states that names used for the whole language are two: Catalan, and Valencian. The concept is "one language, two names" isn't unique, it's the same case for two names for Spanish, "castellano" and "español". --Joanot Martorell ✉ 18:41, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV rewrite

message: I find the maps on this page hard to read without a larger context. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  maps 

message: On December 10, 2007 the Conseil Général of Pyrénées-Orientales passed a law "officially recognizing, together with French, the Catalan language as a language of the département"  . Can we state then that Catalan is an official language of that territory? --SMP - talk (en) - talk (ca) 10:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think not. According to the French Constitution the pnly official language in France is French. Catalan has simply been recognised as a language of the departement without any legal implications.--88.11.220.90 (talk) 19:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  French recognition 

message: At present, the article contains precious little information on the relationship between Catalan and Spanish - surely one of the main areas of inquiry for anyone who has looked up this article.  I understand that a "comparison" section was removed as OR, but can't someone who knows something of the subject do something here?  This is crucial information which is completely missing. Mr. IP (talk) 00:31, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship to Spanish 

message: Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalonia Gobern) link and font:
http://www20.gencat.cat/portal/site/Llengcat/menuitem.df5fba67cac781e7a129d410b0c0e1a0/?vgnextoid=fe8c949b22741110VgnVCM1000000b0c1e0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=fe8c949b22741110VgnVCM1000000b0c1e0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=detall&contentid=65502b4d4bc87110VgnVCM1000008d0c1e0aRCRD  —Preceding unsigned comment added by AguaitantPV (talk • contribs) 22:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Catalan in 88 languages rank 

message: "The number of people who speak it is greater than those who speak Finnish or Danish, and it is equivalent to the number of speakers of Swedish, and Greek in Europe."  -  What's the relevance of this? Lfh (talk) 11:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This paragraph was recently added by 194.151.190.23 on August 27 . I think the editor may have been trying to give some comparison, but I almost reverted it right away that day but decided not to be revert happy. It seems like a lot of the comparison is just random languages, and there isn't a source for all the claims. Ethnologue has Greek at 12.3 million native speakers and Catalan at 6.7 million native speakers. Maybe by putting "equivalent to the number of speakers of Swedish, and Greek in Europe", the editor was trying to exclude Swedish and Greek speakers outside of Europe, but that is a very dubious comparison in my opinion.  I think the first part about the ranking in the European Union may be appropriate if it's sourced, but I think the rest of it can just be removed. Kman543210 (talk) 11:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Our own table puts Catalan well below 7th in the EU, and that was calculated pre-Enlargement.  I hate to get involved in this "league table" style of language assertiveness at all, but the claim as it stands does seem dubious. Lfh (talk) 12:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's not accurate, the entire paragraph should probably be removed. Kman543210 (talk) 13:11, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  More speakers than Danish 

message: Aubergine comes from the French word for eggplant, which, itself (if I'm not mistaken) comes from Arabic (think berenjena in Spanish or berinjela in Portuguese). Even if this weren't the case - that it comes from Arabic - we would have to assume that the word in French, Spanish and Portuguese all come from Catalan.
Here is information from www.etymonline.com (an English etymological resource).
aubergine  
1794, from Fr., "fruit of the eggplant" (Solanum esculentum), dim. of auberge "a kind of peach," from Sp. alberchigo "apricot." But Klein derives the Fr. from Catalan alberginera, from Arabic al-badinjan "the eggplant," from Pers. badin-gan, from Skt. vatin-ganah. As a color like that of the eggplant fruit, it is attested from 1895. 
So, not even Arabic can claim this one as original as it goes through Persian and Sanskrit. So, it's much like saying we get the English word tomato or chocolate from Spanish, when in reality we get it from Nahuatl (the Aztecs), who probably got it from some other Meso-American group.
Tom Douglas
Los Angeles, CA  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.205.224.64 (talk) 05:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word Origin 

message: there's a new resource for learning catalan online.
it is promoted by consorci per la normalitzacio linguistica and the ramon llull insitute
it is in Català  | English  | Castellano  | Français  | Deutsch,
and it has several levels.
i think it's quite complete so i'd be a good idea adding it. 
http://www.parla.cat/
--Josepsbd (talk) 20:51, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  new link 

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Catalan_language&curid=5282&diff=248054983&oldid=248013582: I have no idea whether this is a fix of vandalism. Would someone with native-speaker knowledge (and maybe some knowledge of Gaudì) please take a look and either confirm here that it is good or that you have reverted? Thanks. - Jmabel | Talk 21:19, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey, thanks for pointing it out! It was indeed a nonsense and I've just removed it. --Carles Noguera (talk) 08:44, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fix or vandalism 

message: There is a contradiction in the Infobox information of the Catalan language: Everywhere in the main article, language appears as catalan, following the linguistic criteria ( The Catalan language entry in the Britannica, another entry: Merriam-Webster, an interview to the main authority of the Valencian "We agree that there is only one language" , ...]), not the controverted political criteria. But in the Infobox: the name appears for 2 or 3 times as Catalan, Valencian language. You can see, also, that in the Language codes part of the Infobox it appears, only, as Catalan, because the international recognition is for only one language with some variants, one of them named Valencian. As I've said, this is the scientific criteria. All other criteria are opinions derived from political interests (you can opine that the the sun turns over the earth, if you want. But the scientific criteria is that is the earth what turns over the sun, sure!)
So, I'm going to revert the mistake in the Infobox, naming the language, only, as Catalan.--Tripallokavipasek (talk) 13:07, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: What you say, although essentially true, does not imply that we should remove the denomination Valencian. The fact is that it is a pluricentric language with two regulating institutions, IEC and AVL, that use different two different denominations but never deny the unity of the language. Taking into account that we have two separate articles in Wikipedia (Catalan language and Valencian; purportedly to deal extensively with Valencian varieties in a separate article) we should not give the impression that this implies that they correspond to different languages. That's why it is important to keep both official denominations in infoboxes. --Carles Noguera (talk) 08:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The name of the language and the Infobox 

message: I added a section on the dialect in the Empordà region. This was deleted on the grounds that it didn't fit with the other sections on dialects. I understand this, but my contribution was too small to be a page on itself. It would be interesting to have a page or a section highlighting the differences between the dialects, though I only have a small bit of information on one dialect. How can we proceed to include this kind of information, either as a new page or a new section?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pete maloney (talk • contribs) 12:32, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Good, I have seen that you followed the suggestion and added your contributions to Central Catalan, where they belong. I further encourage you to provide your sources (as it stands now that article is unreferenced). Cheers! --Carles Noguera (talk) 07:55, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dialects of Catalan

message: I am studying Catalan and i want to type it. I can't find the middle dot - punt volat on keyboards. I tried it on Windows and on Fedora. I couldn't find a "Catalan" layout in either of them, they only have "Spain".
Any help? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think i found it - Shift-3, right? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:09, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typing the middle dot 

message: Are there any rules for using the Inverted question and exclamation marks in Catalan?
See discussion at Talk:Inverted question and exclamation marks#Used in Catalan?. Thanks in advance for any help. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:36, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: In Catalan they aren't used but, if the sentence is too long or ambiguous(you don't know where the interrogative or exclamative sentence begins) you can use them.--Jarna3 (talk) 00:15, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inverted question mark 

message: Besides the short phrases, maybe there should be a long quote example of the language, possibly with translations in Spanish and/or other Romance languages, to give a bit more of the "feel." It's just that I don't get a lot out of the short phrases. --True (talk) 03:07, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long quote example? 

message: Hey! I'd like someone to correct one thing. Here in the "Catalan language" article says that català is #93 in the ranking of languages by number of native speakers. But in the Valencian article says that catalan is in the #88 of the same ranking. How is it possible? I'd correct it but I don't know which of them is the good one! :P--Layonard (talk) 09:03, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mistake 

message: Merriam-Webster's dictionary says that "aioli" is of Occitan origin. Occitan is close to Catalan, but it's separate. If there's no source that defines the etymology of aioli as Catalan, then it should be removed. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 10:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The word/compound exists in all Occitano-Romance languages, and it isn't spelled aioli in any of them, so I wouldn't attribute it to either specifically. It's either older than the split of Occitano-Romance into separate languages or it has spread in a way that blurs its origin. Or maybe allium et oleum goes back to the Romans?--87.162.23.79 (talk) 05:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aioli etymology 

message: "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." Could this sentence be improved in some way to make the concept of "cultural splendour" a little more understandable?Jimjamjak (talk) 09:16, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cultural splendour 

message: I made a start but then gave up. Much of this is clearly not written by a speaker of English (perhaps not a writer of any language). Missed articles, "doesn't" "isn't" "like" and just gibberish - it reads very badly. Would anyone care to tidy this up - I would rather it be an experienced linguist rather than me; after all I may "mess up." This really is very badly written  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.15.11.74 (talk) 16:43, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Very badly written article

message: Is this a joke? Per WP:NOTGUIDE, it ought to be removed. Unfortunately, this article seems replete with unencyclopediac content. RobertM525 (talk) 08:28, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Per WP:BOLD, I've gone ahead and removed it. RobertM525 (talk) 08:31, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you, many sections need to be rebuilt. Jɑυмe (xarrades) 20:58, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Learning Catalan" section 

message: There doesn't seem to be any information on this page covering the dialect of Catalan in Andorra. I can't find any page on Wikipedia dealing with it. That should be something to note.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.112.242.125 (talk) 14:55, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Andorran is included in North-Western Catalan :) Jɑυмe (xarrades) 08:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Andorran Dialect 

message: It's completely wrong to make an exception with valencian. The name of Catalan is the same, wherever you go. Valencian is one of the dialects inside the Catalan. It would be the same to say that in USA they do not speak english, but american. The problem arise when the name of the language is related to the name of an autonomous community (Catalonia), so it seems that Valencian is a minor language. This is also completely false. In catalonia there are other dialects, like the central Catalan. But if you consider that must be noted that in Valencia the language is Valencian, then in the Balearic Island the languages are Mallorquí, Eivissenc and Menorquí. The problem with Valencian is more about a political topic than linguistic. --Jose piratilla (talk) 12:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a little confused here.  What is the problem in the article we're trying to address?  What's the change being proposed?  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I've read the whole discussion.  Still not sure.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 04:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

text: It is important to note that the official Valencian Academy of Language has acknowledged that Valencian and Catalan are variants of the same language (link to a newspaper page in Spanish). --jofframes (talk) 14:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Valencian

message: The infobox, citing Ethnologue, erroneously claims that the number of native speakers is 11.5 million. The figure (source) is the population of the regions where Catalan is spoken — which obviously doesn't equal the number of native speakers. ✎ HannesP · talk 02:39, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of native speakers 

message: What are they for? --John (talk) 07:16, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox flags 

message: A user has been insisting that we use U instead of V in Classical Latin words on this page, but hasn't made their point consistently as they have left the V in 'levare'. Classical Latin had no letter U, so presumably if the intent is to accurately reflect the original spelling (which the all-caps seems to suggest) then there should not be any U in those words. I therefore have reverted the change but said user has pushed their point through instead, twice. CodeCat (talk) 01:07, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It is nonsense to insist on "original spelling" because orthography was not consistent in practice. Spellings are usually normalised anyway in such cases, and that is actually current practice in Romance and Latin linguistics. "Original spelling" orthodoxy would mean that macrons could not be used, either, because they are completely alien to Latin orthographic practice, whether ancient, medieval or modern. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:09, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  V in Classical Latin 

message: Hi, I think the choices in that section are a bit arbitrary. I mean, why do we include this and not that? Since it's not sourced, I'm going to rewrite it from my Enciclopèdia Catalana article. I'm sure the choices will be more represenative. If somebody is interested in all the grammar aspects, he can check the Catalan Grammar article.
I'm including the original text before my changes:
The first descriptive and normative grammar book of modern Catalan was written by Pompeu Fabra in 1918. In 1995, a new grammar by Antoni Maria Badia i Margarit was published, which also documents the Valencian and Balearic varieties.
The grammar of Catalan follows the general pattern of Western Romance languages. The primary word order is SVO (subject–verb–object).
Substantives and adjectives are not declined by case, as in Classical Latin. There are two grammatical genders—masculine and feminine.
Grammatical articles developed from Latin demonstratives. The form of the article depends on the gender and the number of the subject 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: en Joan meaning 'John', na Maria meaning 'Mary' (note clitic en has also other lexical meanings). One of the common usages of this article is in the word can, a combination of la casa shortened to ca ('house', as French chez) and en, which here means 'the'. For example la casa d'en Sergi becomes can Sergi meaning 'the house of Sergi', 'Sergi's house'. Note here, other definite articles (el, la, els, les) can also be used with personal names like in Portuguese, as la Maria ('Mary', Portuguese a Maria).
Verbs are conjugated according to tense and mood similarly to other Western Romance languages. Present, imperfect and simple preterite are based on classical Latin present, imperfect and perfect respectively, future and conditional are formed from the infinitive followed by the present and imperfect form of the auxiliary verb haver (written together and not considered periphrastic). Periphrastic tenses are formed from the conjugated auxiliary verbs haver ('to have') and ésser ('to be') followed by the past participle. A unique tense in Catalan is the "periphrastic simple preterite," which is formed of vaig, vas (or vares), va, vam (or vàrem), vau (or vàreu) and van (there is the usual wrong idea these forms are the conjugated forms of anar, which means '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 subject 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; see Weak pronouns in Catalan.
* The definite articles el, la, els, les derive from Latin demonstratives , . The older forms lo (m. s.) and los (m. pl.) are still common nowadays in some western dialects and in Algherese. Several varieties of the Catalan language (Balearic Islands, Costa Brava, and Tàrbena) have maintained an article called salat (< Latin ,  →  es, sa), probably formed before the variants of  developed. Singular articles are elided before vowel-initial words, in speech and writing: el + home > l'home 'the man', la + hora > l'hora 'the time'.
* Possessive adjectives are formed with the definite article (el meu gos 'my dog') like in Italian (il mio cane), Portuguese (o meu cão) and in many Occitan dialects (Languedocien and Pyrenean Gascon). Weak forms of possessive adjectives (mon, ma, mos, mes, etc.) are fossilized for certain usages, as close familiar relatives or in order to express a high degree of affection (for instance: mon pare 'my dad', ma mare 'my mum'; in Valencian ma casa 'my home', ma vida 'my life'). Also note the postposition of the possessive to express particular nuances, e.g. casa meva ('my home', literally 'a house of mine') as different from la meva casa ('my house').
*Plurals are formed in a number of ways:
** -a becomes -es  (e.g. casa 'house' > cases).
**Most consonant- and vowel-final words (except -a) add -s: noi 'boy' > nois, detall 'detail' > detalls
**Words ending in sibilants (-s, -ç, -x, -ig) form plurals with -os: gos 'dog' > gossos, peix 'fish' > peixos. Some plural words with -ig may alternate forming plural by adding -os or a silent -s: raig 'ray' > rajos/raigs.
**Words ending in sibilant clusters (-sc, -st, -xt) may form plurals by adding -os or -s: bosc 'forest' > boscos/boscs, aquest 'this' > aquestos/aquests.
**Words ending in a stressed vowel often take -ns: pi 'pine' > pins, cinturó 'belt' > cinturons (but esquí 'ski' > esquís, tabú 'taboo' > tabús). In Western Catalan dialects, some particular words ending in unstressed vowels may also form plural by adding -ns: home 'man' > hòmens (from Latin  > ).
* Partitive: While Catalan patterns with Ibero-Romance in the lack of a partitive article (e.g. vull pa 'I want some bread', cf. Spanish quiero pan but French je veux du pain), it does have a partitive pronoun, like in Gallo-Romance languages: jo en tinc tres 'I have three of them' (Spanish tengo tres but French j'en ai trois).
* The construction used to express punctual/perfective aspect in the past tense is one of the most distinctive features of Catalan. It is a periphrasis formed with a special conjugation of anar ('to go'), that comes from the Latin verb , plus the infinitive form of the main verb. For example: jo vaig dir ('I said'). This construction has almost completely replaced the historical simple past form (jo diguí), which corresponds to the Spanish preterit or French passé simple or Italian passato remoto.}}
Thanks--Fauban 12:10, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewriting the "Grammar" rection 

message: So I restored Spain instead of "Iberian Peninsula". In the same sentence, France is cited as comprising some catalan-speaking areas; it is really confusing not even name here Spain when it´s actually the nation in which almost all historical catalan-speaking territories are.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.39.6.32 (talk) 20:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  At the beginning of the article, it´s not so clear whether the Autonomous Community of Catalonia is a part of Spain or not.  

message: I propose "cama" ("leg" in Catalan; "bed" in Spanish). I'm not doing it myself because I don't know the Latin word.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.43.206.58 (talk) 16:06, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not known for sure if they're cognates. Catalan cama clearly comes from Latin gamba, but the origins of Spanish cama are more obscure.--Fauban 10:03, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  New "Catalan and Spanish cognates with different meanings" proposal 

message: In the section Vocabulary:Lexical Comparison two table overlap and make understanding difficult.
Is anyone in a position to fix this?
41.241.41.23 (talk) 06:58, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm using Firefox and they don't overlap. What are you using?--Fauban 12:43, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any overlapping either, with MS IE 8. Incidentally, the 2 tables and the whole section look like a clear case of Cherry picking, and they blatantly try to prove how much more similar Catalan is to French and Italian than to Spanish. Jotamar (talk) 17:05, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Cherry picking? blatantly? I still haven't seen a WP:RS saying the opposite.--Fauban 09:59, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you saying that you have not read any source stating that the Wikipedia page on Catalan contains cherry-picking ??? Jotamar (talk) 16:54, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Overlapping tables?