EL CATALÀ! The Catalan Language is Fascinating
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2018
- This video is all about the Catalan language! Special thanks to Pablo Pankun Román for his feedback and audio samples. Check out his excellent Spanish-learning channel called “Dreaming Spanish”: / @dreamingspanish
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Music:
Intro: “Foundation” by Vibe Tracks.
Main: “Time Illusionist” by Asher Fulero.
Outro music: "Rocka" by Text Me Records / Bobby Renz.
Hi everyone! I hope you like the new video! Check out Pablo's channel "Dreaming Spanish", he deserves more subs! th-cam.com/channels/ouyFdE9-Lrjo3M_2idKq1A.html (He's the guy saying the Catalan sentences in the video). Also:
►Learn a language with native teachers online using italki: go.italki.com/1Ojye8x --► My favorite way to practices languages!
Great job!
His voice is melts like butter. So smooth
I'm sorry to point this out, but as a native Catalan speaker, the sentence "M'ha donat els diners aquest matí" does not mean the same as "M'ho ha donat aquest matí". The correct substitution would be "M'els ha donat aquest matí", since "els diners" is a definite masculine object.
Oh yes, and also would be cool to quenya/sindarin video :)
Of course, I like it as usual 😊😊
"Warning! Abandon topic Abandon topic!"
Yoo nice profile picture man
Deez
Lies again? Ezlink Card Euro Currency
@@NazriB what
i'm catalan and honestly i'm so surprised by the accuracy of this video. really great job !
This guy is well studied when he speaks about any language.
He forgets Catalan spoken in Pepignan, France.
Hi Laia, are you interested in exchanging language with Indonesian?
No you’re not!
@@erwinedditya9854 hi, i'm actually not learning indonesian but i would still love to help you with your catalan !!
I am half German half Italian, and I speak French and learned Latin. I find Catalan in some ways very similar to Italian, and I once conversed with a Catalan in Italian while he answered me in Catalan. That worked well and was very fun!
Sure !
In the Alger a Island of Italy continue speaking catalan, due to the expansion of Corona d’Aragó that happend on the XV century by Alfons V el Magnànim.
Yes! It's easy for catalan speakers to understand italian people (each one in its own language).
Italian has a dialect called Tarantino that is brutally similar to catalan.
According to ethnologue Italian is the most similar major Romance language to Catalan in terms of shared vocabulary. Probably the maritime connections across the western Mediterranean mutually influencing word usage
As a Catalan speaker, it’s great how easy it is for us to learn French or Italian for us compared to other people, even Spaniards. It’s crazy how much closer it is
As a French speaker, Catalan seems more gentle than Italian and more intelligible than Spanish.
When I first watched Merlí, I thought "It's Portuguese, no, it's Italian, no, it's Spanish. But I don't understand what they say! Why???". I'm a Brazilian Portuguese native speaker and I understand very well Italian and Spanish. Catalan is an amazing and beautiful language. Great job, Paul.
Estou assistindo Merlí tbm
Same when I first watch Merlí I kept asking asking myself why wasn’t I understanding 😅😂
it has a little of all romance languages in it. so thats why people would be confused.
Lola, but you are Spanish.
@@juandiegovalverde1982 or from andorra, or perpignan, or from alguero you don't know.
I'm a native speaker of portuguese and I can understand 100% of written catalan but 0% of spoken catalan
hahaha I am catalan and the samee with portuguese
Hahaha this is so accurate
Specially with the accents😅
AS a Native speaker of south Catalan (Valenciano) I could not understand the very first months of Catalan TV back when it started broadcasting here in Valencia (Valencia and Cataluña are different regions). There's a town 4 km south of mine where they pronunciate some letters in some words weirdly for us
That’s because people speak very fast, but you can read it as slow as you want to understand it
Since Andorra is an independent country, Catalan can be considered an official language at the national level.
Yes, it is.
Andorra also speaks French unofficially. Technically you can consider Catalan an official language at the national level but it's a micronation with 77 thousand inhabitants, so it barely counts for anything.
@@ARCPolus French is not unofficial in Andorra. Both, Catalan and French are official and Catalan is also a national language in Catalonia, part of France and Alghero in Sardinia.
@@Abanico751 Catalan is the only official language in Andorra. It is also the historical and traditional language of the country used by government, television, radio, and other national media and is the main language of all the people living in the territory of Andorran nationality, who constitute 33% of the total population. Spanish is the second most spoken language due to Spanish immigrants going to live in the principality.
Meanwhile only 7% of the population is French and most speak Catalan.
@@ARCPolus Oh, my God! That's not true at all. Official languages in Andorra are French and Catalan. That's because State Government is divided between la Seu bishop and France President. Numbre of speaking people is just another question but school is bilingual in both languages. Please, visit the country and inform yourself.
As a portuguese speaker 🇵🇹, that lived in Catalonia for 15 months i have to say that when it comes to pronunciation and phonology Catalan feels like it's closer to Portuguese than to Spanish. When i heard people speaking Catalan from the distance, it literally felt like they were speaking Portuguese
Estou a viver em Barcelona já há alguns meses, e pelo menos a mim parece me tudo menos parecido ao Português, exceto no típico "bon dia" que aí é praticamente igual, mas de resto acho-a uma lingua muito particular e muito diferente das outras, o mais parecido ainda me parece o Italiano mas mesmo assim existe uma diferença bem grande.
@@Rafael36967 Se achas o catalão mais proximo em som do italiano que do português, só posso concluir que tás bêbado.
@@jeanlundi2141 Poderia ser o caso, mas após 4 meses do meu comentário e de conviver diariamente com catalães há já praticamente um ano, continuo a achar o mesmo 😂 E pelo menos os Catalães com quem já falei sobre isto também não acham que Português-Catalão sejam linguas parecidas.
@@Rafael36967 Em termos de escrita e algumas expressões têm algumas parecenças com o francês e italiano, por razões óbvias. Mas fonéticamente, em termos de como a lingua soa falada, a parecença com o português PT é bem notória. Se calhar os teus amigos também tão bêbados ;)
Are you from Portugal? To me Catalan sounds more like Spanish than Portuguese (especially European Portuguese). Catalan has much less complicated phonology than Portuguese and has a more similar vowel inventory to Spanish. However, it could be that the Catalan I'm used to hearing (i.e. from young people) has been"corrupted" by Spanish. More "pure" Catalan (for example, when spoken by my partner's dad, who's in his 70s) sounds like a hybrid between Spanish and French.
Surprisingly good natured comment section. No political flame wars here that i can see. Just language enthusiasts!
Topic was not abandoned and dealt with like adults. That's the kind of TH-cam commenters they are. Kudos.
Escreveu pouco e "disse" tudo! Greetings from Brazil!
I'm Catalan. I love any language. My pitty it's not to have enough lifetime to learn all of them. Just a language enthusiasts. Thanks a lot.
I had to laugh at his social warnings. It is true, don’t fall for the Valencian trap. I did get an Andorran passport stamp and teased my Catalan friends that I was the only one of us with Catalan in my passport.
Giusto ci penso io...Espanya merda sempre visca Catalunya lliure 🎗☺️
Great video, but I have only a little thing to add: I'm from Alghero and here we don't exactly speak Catalan, but what we could call a Catalan dialect, the Algherese (what a surprise). In fact, our dialect is basically the Catalan language of the 14th-15th century, so we can say that it is the "arcaic" version of modern Catalan, mixed a little bit with Sardinian and Italian, so some words are not the same; because of that, we can have an almost perfect conversation with Catalans.
I just wanted to add this little information :)
Realment l'Alguerés és molt paregut al meu dialecte del català. Jo soc del d'una zona on també diem "lo pare" i "los hòmens" :)
Wow *-* so if i talk to you in Catalan (I'm from Barcelona) you would understand me?
és bo saber-ho :)
@@sissi9367 Yes, more or less. When I was a child I went to Barcelona with my school and my teacher always talked with the receptionist of the hotel in dialect with total underatanding between them 😁
Visca els germans algueresos!
I'm catalan (central dialect, but not the barceloní) and I think that Occitan and the northern Italian languages are the closest to the catalan, and by pronunciation I think the Portuguese is very close to us too. Greetings from the Penedès region
I'm from Barcelona and I've grown to hate my own dialect because of how dry it feels, bro. The cool thing is that having lived in Zaragoza for a couple of years and then moving to Lleida for a decade, now nobody can guess where I'm from but everybody knows I'm not from around.
I often thought it sounds kind of Portuguese when I heard an interview in catalan. Interesting that a native agrees with that.
I'm portuguese and I'm currently living in Barcelona. I don't think that both languages are similar, except the pronunciation of the "Bom dia" that its almost the same thing ahaha
Sou português e de facto a pronúncia catalã tem uma forte semelhança com a nossa língua.
Simply not true for Italian. I'm Catalan
It's literally every Romance language combined.
I'm a born and raised catalonian from Barcelona; you're absolutely right. The standard dialect is a little bit dryer than the others, but if you analyse those from Lleida or Girona, you'll literally feel like you're looking at an arbitrary mix of Italian, French and Spanish or (how my teacher used to put it) "you get five parts of Spanish and start subtracting the Arab influence until you're left with just four tenths of a language, then call France and Italy and have them duke it out to see who gets to fill in the remaining gaps".
@@Annnto Alright, good points were made, but there's a lot to unpack here:
1.- There was a fair degree of hyperbole in my teacher's meme-worthy claim, which was made in a very tongue-in-cheek tone, even though...
2.- Yes, Catalonia's education system is very heavily politicised and biased in favor of nationalism. It's a tragedy.
3.- The whole discussion about the degree to which languages influence each other is very unscientific and very politically biased.
One blatant example of this is precisely the degree of Arabic influence in modern Spanish: On one hand, you can track down the volume of vocabulary that's rooted in Arabic, and you'll come up with a very dry and scientific claim entirely based on data, and that is JUST FINE, but rarely useful.
On the other I've never seen anyone aside from that one teacher (who, by the way, was a Spanish teacher from Valladolid which is where the standard Spanish dialect is supposed to be spoken) speak about influence in terms of negative space. Just think about how much Spanish DIDN'T change under the caliphate's rule. The consolidation of a bunch of the language can be atributed to Arabic influence, which is exactly what my teacher meant with his high tier mememancery. Every change in proto-Catalan rooted in Provençal/Occitan lexic that didn't happen in the then proto-Spanish would then be considered Arabic influence, which becomes an even more reasonable claim when you consider the fact that the early muslim occupation put some serious effort into peaceful coexistence and the conservation of local culture.
That entire topic needs a serious cathegorical revamp in order to get rid of the politisation. "Influence" doesn't just mean "volume of vocabulary rooted in X's lexical forms".
Cheers
De hecho pienso lo mismo. Ellos incluso tienen una buena universidad para los traductores. Aunque no recuerdo el nombre, pero definitivamente creo que su idioma es una buena base para aprender otros fácilmente y pues la mayoría de ellos son bilingües.
@@_Executor_ Crecer hablando castellano y catalán a nivel nativo aporta ciertas ventajas a la hora de aprender otras lenguas romances. El castellano de por si ya tiene al menos un par de sonidos consonánticos casi exclusivos (como la jota o la erre), mientras que el catalán tiene otros tres o cuatro más además de las inflexiones vocálicas o la vocal neutra. Si uno quiere aprender francés, italiano o rumano habiendo crecido en Cataluña, el esfuerzo a llevar a cabo es trivial. Dicho esto, lenguas germánicas como el alemán, holandés, o el inglés no se ven tan afectadas, ya que a penas comparten raíces léxicas no importadas, además de tener su propia sintaxis casi totalmente aislada del latín.
Edit: me olvidé de la vocal neutra xD
@@KirillTheBeast Seguisc sense comprendre per què has dit que el català és un put-purri de llengües barrejades, però bé. Podríem dir el mateix del portugués, compartix r franceses i tal, però és un destrellat. Cada llengua que deriva del llatí és normal que tinga connexions amb certes llengües romàniques. Parlar de 'si açò i allò' és una barreja de tal llengua és infravalorar-la. Cap persona parla del portugués com una barreja de cap llengua, per què ho fem de la nostra?
I am a Catalan native speaker and I took a course of Occitan while I was living in Montpellier.
My experience was that Occitan was ridiculously close and easy to learn. The teacher even told me that I should not try to mimic her pronunciation because her family, like most Occitan speakers, skipped a generation and she had a thick French accent with stress on the last vowels, gutural rolling r's and all; instead, she said I should just use my own Catalan pronounciation with some Mistralian extra rules (like the A's at end of feminines pronounced O's, which was hard to pull out, especially because Aranese Occitan speakers in Catalonia don't do it).
All in all, it was like learning a different dialect more than a new language. Very similar to going to Mallorca, where a combination of thick, different accent (weak vowels in stressed syllables, for instance, is natural to a Balearic speaker but counter inutuitive to a central Catalan speaker) and new vocabulary makes for very confusing "I though we spoke the same language!" moments.
By the way, kudos for the way you lampshaded the quagmire of politics embroiled in the language discussion ;)
Amazing to see some strangers learning occitan :) And yes Catalan is like a sibling language for us occitans :)
@Macuahuitl the french are usually horribly bad with their accent... They do no effort. That's the same when a french person start speaking in English...
Do you want some bonus irony for the accent recomendations from the Occitan teacher?
The traditional variety of Occitan spoken in and around Montpelhièr maintains the final -a. It did not shift to -o as in most other varieties.
Well, it's the same with the Breton language taught in Diwan schools : teachers aren't native speakers and it sound weird compared to elder's speaking.
I don't know if it's a French particularity but we suck in language learning/teaching :D
I had an English teacher with Ch'ti accent and another with Congolese accent… my German teachers were better.
thanks Sylvana but I guess speaking English is most challenging for native speakers of Roman languages than writing it. ;)
In France particularly, our language courses are more based on reading, writing and listening than oral expression and we're generally not very flexible and tolerant in comprehension : average Frenchs don't understand Québec dialects or even their own regional language, and creoles are often gibberish even if some of those overseas' places are still parts of France. Since the third Republic, French medias and institutions tends to crush language diversity and in the meantime are very conservative regarding English language (almost all movies/series are dubbed). Even if it gets a bit better now with internet and regionalism, Metropolitan Frenchs are still bad at languages.
English: To Whisper
Spanish: Susurrar
Catalan: Xiuxiuejar 😂
in French : chuchoter
@@abba07150 really similar to catalan. occitan mother lenguage
Olivier Dardalhon c'est pas plutôt susurrer
în română : șușoti@@abba07150
So do you want to speak spanish, italian or french?
Cataluña: yes
No funciona así crack
So do you want speak spanish, italian or french?
Catalonia: NOPE
Now its ok
Best sentences to get a Catalan speaker very mad at you:
1- "Catalan is a dialect of Spanish"
2- "Catalan is a mix of Spanish, Italian and French".
@@BrianDeParma obvio no es un derivado de estos idiomas pero tiene características de cada uno, no pq ellos se las pasaron si no porque así se desarrolló el catalan, independiente de otras lenguas romances. Tampoco se enojen capos
@@nike_trap8716 el catalan tiene cosas parecidas a otras lenguas latinas, como pasa con todas, pero nadie dice que el castellano sea una mezcla de portugués y catalan. Es igual de absurdo que decir que el catalan es mezcla de castellano y francés. Ninguna de las lenguas romances es mezcla de las otras, cada una evolucionó del latín a su manera.
I grew up in Sweden so my native language is Swedish. Then in school we’re taught English early in life. Then I started studying Icelandic at age 10 (bc my mom is from Iceland). When I turned 15 my family moved from Göteborg to Jokkmokk where I made a Sámi friend. And I wanted to learn Northern Sámi after that. Then when I turned 19 I moved to Vaasa in Finland. So I started learning Finnish. Now I live in Iceland. And after watching this video I want to learn Català. Thank you 🙏
you'll make it! força :)
@@bledanevada4799 thank you! 🙏 😊
Don't do it!!!! Do you find you can remember each language just fine? :)
9:34 pronoms febles, the nightmare of all teens that study Catalan in school
Els temuts durant molts anys..... Pronoms febles....
Aquests que tothom possa sense saber perquè
Estic d'acord amb tu amic meu
Però per què tan complicats? L'euskera té 13 declinacions i el polonès, una de les llengües més difícils que hi ha, a part de 30 declinacions té conjugacions i les saben utilitzar, sabent com d'enrevessat és el sistema de declinacions, què passa? No tenim prou inteligència aquí com per poder parlar bé la nostra llengua o què? Els pronoms febles són quatre parauletes auxiliars, no sabeu el que és utilitzar 30 declinacions o el sistema xinès de caracters.
@@alexeiderperezhernandez461 Són facils d'utilitzar, però quan la profe et posa dos o tres junts i et pregunta que fa cadascun t'ha fotut.
I love the way how you decipher languages Paul. Keep up the good work 😉
CANADA HAS GIVEN A GENIUS IN LANGUAGES AND IS PAUL OF
LANG FOCUS.
Paul, you do a great job explaining the mechanics of languages to the masses! Having studied Latin in secondary school, I am intrigued by your videos!
Te olvidas del Aranes , idioma también oficial en Catalunya
I’m russian and I can speak catalan a little.
As for me it’s the most interesting Romance language. I can speak also Italian and Spanish but Catalan definitely is my favorite
As a romance speaker, Spanish is my first language, I also find interesting Catalan. Although it's not the most interesting for me.
I bet you’d have an easy time with Romanian
Wow! És bonic llegir això
why ? I wanna know why Catalan is the most interesting Romance language for you, Please .
@@homoshomos4566 First of all because it’s not mainstream, you know 🙂 then I just adore Catalan phonetics. In Russian we have a lot of similar sounds but some Catalan words is such a struggle for a non native Catalan speaker. I remember when my classmates tried to conjugate the verb “llegir”, like «llegeixo”, “llegeixes” etc. l think I’ve never laughed so hard in my life😅 but I do like the way Catalan sounds. For me it sounds like Spanish, French, Portuguese, Latin and a bit of Italian combined...or like Spanish spoken in reverse 🙂 oh, and of course els pronoms febles - still have no idea how this stuff works 🤯 In short, I like Catalan cause it’s very unique.
Btw I also like Catalan literature and “algo muere cada día” by Susana March is one of my favorite books ever 🙂
I'm from Valencia, and my native language is catalan. Some people insist catalan and valencian are two different languages, they are not, valencian is only the name we have here for our common language.
Si,es como el Rumano y el Moldavo,son la misma lengua,pero por razones políticas de proclaman lenguas separadas.
they are not different languages, but VALENCIAN was born before catalan, so catalan would be a dialect of valencian.
@@xellosxellos4457 exactly, thats the point
@@xellosxellos4457 THANKS, that’s exactly the thing, the catalan didn’t existed until 1600
El valenciano es un dialecto del castellano
As native Catalan speaker, I feel Occitan is the closest to our language, I also can understand some Italian and French, we share a lot of words, sometimes more than we do with Spanish.
Visca el català i l'occità!
they are part of the same family tree and used to be a part of catalonia so
I'm a native speaker of Portuguese, and I didn't have lots of complications learning Catalan, I'm not a native in Catalan, but I started to understand better Italian, Occitan and a little French. I'm just in love for Catalan, and I recommend to learn because Catalan is a very beautiful language!
Eso que dices es justo lo que me pasa a mí, hablo español y catalán y debido a ello entender el occitano y el italiano me resulta fácil tanto si es hablado como escrito, pero con el francés sólo lo entiendo bien cuando es escrito.
Por cierto, el portugués de Portugal nunca lo he estudiado pero lo entiendo bien tanto si es hablado como escrito. En cambio le portugués de Brasil sólo lo entiendo si es escrito. ¿A qué crees que se puede deber eso?.
Saludos desde España :-)
@@josemaj.5ona989 No soy lingüista pero creo que el parecido que todos notamos entre Portugués, Catalán, Occità, Italiano y Español y ya no tanto con el Francès es porque el francés tuvo mucha influencia de los francos (el nombre mismo viene de ellos) y franco era el famoso Carlomagno de l'imperio germano con capital en Aachen (niederdeutsch). Bueno más o menos. Me disculpo por posibles generalizaciones.
@@aplicacionsaranya4241 , yo tampoco soy lingüista, y de este tema hablo por hablar, que quede claro :) , pero si se piensa bien, germanos como eran los francos, también eran los visigodos, que se asentaron por casi toda la Península Ibérica, así como los suevos, que crearon el primer reino independiente en lo que ahora es Galicia y parte de Portugal, tras la caída del Imperio Romano de Occidente, o los ostrogodos, que se asentaron por casi toda la Península Itálica. No sé, yo he oído teorías, para explicar el porqué de esa pronunciación del francés tan peculiar, que van desde que en Francia se mantuvo la manera de pronunciar que tenían los celtas, pese a haber sido romanizados por Julio César, a que esa manera de pronunciar se debe a que los francos tenían un acento germano muy cerrado. Supongo que nunca quedará claro el porqué de esa manera tan peculiar de pronunciar que tienen los franceses, porque en el caso de los rumanos se sabe a ciencia cierta que pese a venir del latín tb su idioma, éste ha sido muy influido por las lenguas eslavas que tiene alrededor. El caso de la pronunciación del francés es un misterio.
@@josemaj.5ona989 Ostres m'has fet sentir altre cop com gaudia amb tots aquests grups de pobles que has esmentat. Això del misteri. Hipòtesi personal no per solucionar-ho però poder sí , poder acostar-nos més. Actualment som humans aquí amb els nostre ordinadors, .... No crec que per això tinguem més CI o les nostres mans funcionin millor, ... No vull dir que ens fem vestits de l'època i agafem un cavall però ja que tenim força informació, posar-nos en el seu lloc, fer proves amb les possibles evolucions. No sé, segurament una bestiesa. T'agraeixo els mots que has compartit amb mi.
When I first visited Catalonia, the only romance language I spoke was Spanish. I could understand a good deal of what was written in newspapers, but I could understand almost nothing of what was said. Now I also speak Italian fluently, and I am semi-fluent in French. With my Italian and French knowledge added to my Spanish, Catalan is so incredibly easy for me to read now. I can read it almost as easily as I read English. But still, when they speak it’s really hard, easier, but still for me to understand. It seems like they eat half of their words.
Spanish speaker, I couldn’t understand a thing for 2-3yr until I studied the phonetic rules. 1-2 hours and the puzzle was clear
Yep, as Juan said, it has some quirky rules for pronunciation. One is that consonant clusters, a sequence of two or more consonants, are often reduced word-finally. So for example "molt" is pronounced "mol", but "moltes" is pronounced "moltes". Another thing is vowel reduction, which happens especially in Central Catalan, which has seven vowels in stressed positions: u, ó, ò, a, i, é, è, but in unstressed positions these are reduced to only three. É and è merges with a, ó and ò merges with u, and i remains unmerged. What makes it even harder is that the diacritics over the o and e are not written out very often, unless, of course, the stress would mandate it, like in Spanish. In Spanish this is fine, but in Catalan this means you kinda just have to know which vowel the word has. Molt, for example, is pronounced mólt, but it's not written like that, so you kinda just have to know it. I'm sure there's other things that might make it a bit hard to understand in speech, but really, I don't know too much about Catalan and this is just soke observations I have made while casually learning it.
@@Aurora-oe2qp to be fair, Catalan is one of the easiest languages a Spanish speaker can learn. Many other languages, like Portuguese, French or English have quirky, or not trivial phonetics. Italian has trivial phonetics, but catalan is one of the easiest once you relax constraints on basicality
@@Aurora-oe2qp mmmm i'll make your brain explode :P MOLT is pronounced mÓlt in "much", but it's pronounced mÒlt if reffered to "grind" (verb "moldre" - to grind and i almost assure that the last 't' is somehow pronounced in "mòlt", maybe comes from "moldre"? I dunno ) :P anyway, all depend in the dialects, the Central (Barcelona's) one is the crappiest jejejeje
As a Catalan native I feel that, even though we all can speak Spanish since we are bilingual, the closest Romance languages to Catalan are Romanian and Italian. Especially with Romanian, it is incredible the amount of exact coincidences in vocabulary and in pronunciation or accent.
The closest language to Catalan is Occitan.
You should try galacian
as bilingual valencian, I feel despite catalan looks way more to
French and Italian, is way easy to learn Spanish, and RN is the language I always use
@@alvaroberenguerberenguer6101 valencian is catalan
I'm catalan from Perpignan yeaaah!
Salut de Prades !
Perpinyà* If there's no translation to English then use the original one.
Perpinyà*
@@Valdoy Jean Castex lol
Perpinyà*! que em ploren els ulls TT
I'm from a city in the center of Italy is very similar to Catalan and when I went Barcelona I spoke my dialect and we understood each other
Are you from La Gàrdia?
What you speak is not a dialect, is a language.
Di dove sei
Vaig estar a Roma . I allí feien una campanya per a recollir la merda dels gossos. Al cartell deia RECULLA-LI-LA. Així és com ho diria un valencià. Roma té influència dels Borja.
Yes, im from the north coast of Girona(gerunda)In L'empordà (emporio) and we speak a dialect thats really similar to the Italian spoken in Rome. I understand more Roman italian than the Oficial. When i was living there i learned Roman dialect cause was reallt similar and if i speak in catalan was easy to understand each other, and more if i use some antic catalan words. Lenguage is a Joy
I was a Spanish major in college and can remember having to study the writing of Christopher Columbus for my Spanish and Latin American history classes. As Spanish is not my main language, I was surprised how hard some parts were to understand. I later learned much of his work was written in Catalán.
In Portuguese, when someone knows a person well, in the sense of intimacy, the definitive article is used before a given name: "O José é um bom professor".
In the north and northeast of Brazil, definite articles are never used before proper names.
Also in Italy, in the Lombardia region, but I think also someplace else, they use the article before a given name.
@@valeriacao510 Bom dia, Valeria. De fato falamos formas diferentes de latim. Saudações do Brasil!
@@Augusto.Siciliani bom dia! Sou do Rio e o uso do artigo é um indicativo bastante comum do grau de proximidade.
@@fabiolimadasilva3398 Saluti dalla Sardegna!
Sóc l'única catalana que ha vist el vídeo per curiositat? Hahaha, no he pogut trobar a ningú als comentaris provinent de Catalunya. Em sembla una llengua molt tendre i bonica. Visca el català i visca la terra!
No, yo soc catala
Visca el catala i la terra
Una llengua molt tendra.
Jo soc de Castelló i també ho he vist per curiositat.
No pas, hi ha prous catalans per aquí xD
Like when you're actually catalan but watch this video anyways
zafi tan identificat jajaj
Iguals jajaj me fa gracia que ells canvien tots els noms Jaume es Jameees jajajaj no puc
What’s Catalonia like? I imagine it’s very calm & it’s actually filled with chill people
@@shaide5483 *laughs hysterically* im sorry bud but rn it feels like a war in Barcelona, a literal one.
I thought Catalonia was its independent state from Spain
For me, I am Italian (Sardinian not from the Alghero area), Catalan sounds like an ancient version of Spanish/French. Documents redacted here in Sardinia during the Aragona reign are written in ancient Catalan, even in the south of Sardinia. I really enjoyed watching an entire series I found on Netflix in Catalan, with the help of subtitles. In time I got used to the pronunciation and it became easier for me to understand without reading them. Great video, thank you!
Disculpa Valeria, em podries comentar quines sèries has vist al netflix en català?
@@peremartin6043 It was probably "Welcome to the Family", which was the first Catalan-language series Netflix aired, beginning in 2018. In March the website ePrimeFeed reported that 70 series and/or movies in Catalan are coming to Netflix soon. So far I can see a few more now: "Merlí: Sapere Aude", "The Hockey Girls", "If I Hadn't Met You", and "The Next Skin".
I spoke with a guy from Valencia and he was very offended when I said Valencian and Catalan are different names for the same language.
But then again, same happens in Croatia when you tell them that Croatian and Serbian are the same language based on the same Stokavian dialect.
And why is Norwegian Bokmal different language from Danish exactly?
It’s always fun when languages are politicised.
el catalan es un idioma que viene del latin
i'm from Valencia, and yes, they are the same language, people here are not pissed off by that fact, but because politicians and media imposed on public opinion and even in the education system here that Valencian comes from Catalan and it's just a dialect, fomenting fake histories and saying Valencian autors are from Catalunya etc... The reality is that Valencian was the first one to be written and had a "golden century", meanwhile, catalan did not.
You shouldn't have done this. I have a shower to take. Now I have to watch this video. Keep up with the good work btw :)
Showers can wait. Languages can't.
I put my phone on window panel when I shower so far no drown accident happened yet
I use a waterproof bluetooth speaker. I have been known to listen to LangFocus vids in the shower with it.
You can't hear him in the shower.
The first Romance language I studied was Spanish, followed by French, then Portuguese and now Catalan. I have known about Catalan since I studied Spanish ten years ago, but hadn't begun studying the actual language until very recently. What strikes me are the similarities to French in terms of vocabulary (matí-matin, gaire-guère, finestra-fenêtre, semblar-sembler, netejar-nettoyer), but the pronunciation is very much similar to Spanish or Italian with the trilled r, or Portuguese with the open and closed vowels. Actually, one of the features that stand out to me as unique wasn't mentioned in this video--the "eix" infix when conjugating -ir verbs (llegeixo, tradueixes, existeix, protegeixen). A phonological feature that stands out to me is the prominence of "ll" and "ny" in final positions (lluny, Llull, any, pertany, vall) since Spanish never has "ll" or "ñ" at the end of words.
El català em sembla una llengua molt bonica! Bona feina, Paul!
Hiii I can help you with the catalan I you want :D
Qué maco veure gent que vol aprendre el català! Moltes gràcies!
Cuyler Otsuka catalan is like spanish, italian, french and portuguese in one
Això es deu a que els catalans històricament som més propers al francès que al castellà.
Estudiar catala es una perduda de temps,tots els catalans/valencians/mallorquins parlem espanyol.Millor estudia un altre llenguatge que et siga util de veritat
I am a native Dutch speaker that learned in school French as a second language and on holiday in Barcelona I found the Catalan information text more easy to read then the Spanish, the Catalan is more recognisable in vocabulary most of all, quite much like Italian that is in written form often a simular word of the French word. Spanish words are harder to recognize.
Catalan is so beautiful
Portuguese is my mother language. I find Catalan an intriguing and interesting language.
Just returned from vacationing on the island of Menorca; 11 days were not enough. I was in paradise.
I've been watching MERLI, on Netflix, and I'm in love with the language.
But it's a very hard language to understand, despite the common sounds and word order.
Diogo Rodrigues
Agree. But in “love” with it, nonetheless. 😎
I'm Portuguese too and catalan is more similar to in speaking than the galego.
@@euricofonseca8514 Acho que estás errado, pois o galego que tu ouves é "mascarado".
@@diogorodrigues747 Estou a falar da pronúncia em exclusivo, que se assemelha imenso ao português de Portugal. De resto, o galego é bem mais semelhante como óbvio, no entanto o galego tem uma pronúncia semelhante ao espanhol.
There is a small mistake about the weak pronouns around minute 11:55
If I were to elide "els diners" in the sentence "M'ha donat els diners aquest matí" I would say "Me'ls ha donat", never "M'ho ha donat". Thats because you know the given thing is a plural masculine noun. If the noun was a singular masculine one, then it would be "Me l'ha donat". It would only be "M'ho ha donat" if the object given was undefined, e.g. "alló" (that thing).
"Me'l ha donat" or "Me l'ha donat" ?
The latter, "me l'ha donat". The appostrophe always goes to the most right position available :)
@@borisnot Sure, my bad, it is now fixed
Putus pronoms febles de merda😂
xD
as a brazilian french student who speaks spanish and is familiar with italian my mind just blew up when I first heard this language. I’ve got amazed and definitly wanna learn it in a close future. Thx for the amazing content! ✨
I'm from Catalonia and I find this type of video fascinating, thx! 🔥
It’s my pleasure, and I’m happy to hear that! 👍🏻
I am mexican, and as such, a native mexican-spanish speaker. Catalan sounds for us (mexicans) something half way between french and iberian spanish. Some sentences can be pretty understandable, but other ones are not so. In fact, sometimes i can say that even italian may be more understandable. Great video as always, regards to you and the catalan speaking people!
At some point it was said that Visigoths though of Catalans as Franks and Franks thought about Catalans as Visigoths. Bonus item. Catalan and Castilian mean the same thing: castle dweller.
Well, Ancient Catalans were Visigoths, actually. They just were under Frank administration.
@@Kongorlobo The end result was that the visigoths thought of them as franks, and the franks thought of them as visigoths. Which is what is going to happen with anybody at the divide of two clearly differentiated groups....
@@Nacho2002b Yeah, I guess that would lead to that kind of situation. Anyway, they were always more Visigoth than anything, it seems there always was a clear differentiation between the frankish rulers and the native counts. Something that probably lead to their independence.
@@Kongorlobo Oh, yes. Toulouse in France was originally a visigothic city. Catalans were more Gothic than Frankish. But, as we seem to agree, there is all this Frankisher than thou, Visigothiker than thou mentality with the people inbetween. In the end they went south, and James the First of Aragon actually boasted that his was the best kingdom in the Spains. Because in the middle ages the people in Spain had the perception that there were many Spains. Shame the notion was lost.
I'm a Catalan speaker, and I've just been to Italy (Milan). It was surprisingly so easy to understand, even spoken. As for written, I'd say French is very similar to Catalan in loads of expressions and ways to say things. As a fun fact, I speak the Balear dialect, and the pronounciation is pretty different in a lot of cases. Just to show an example of how different the dialects are:
"The dog is looking for its toy"
Western Catalan "El gos està buscant la seva joguina"
Balearic Catalan "Es ca cerca sa seva jogueta"
Great vid!
És que realment s'assemblen bastant. Nosaltres vam estar per tota Itàlia fa un any i parlàvem en català sense problemes! :)
I'm from Lombardy too (Como), do you know that the Lombard, the lenguage of the Lombard people is very similar to catàlan, I can understand Catàlan because I speak Lombard very well
Tens rao
A les illes balears parlen com nosaltres pero amb ainonims de paraules que a catalunya no sutilitzen per exempla ca es correcte amb catala i cerca tambe pero nosaltres no utilitzem mai aquestes paraules
I was in Valencia and saw street signs in local language . Something closely related to Catalan and the islands languages .
My family immigrated to Guatemala from Barcelona and still speak Spanish with a heavy Calatan accent 400 years later. Until we dove into our family history we had no idea that we were still using loan-words from Catalan sounding more Portuguese or Italian than Central American Spanish speakers. It's so cool and also made Catalan easier to pick up than say Mexican-Spanish. Learning Latin in school also helps with a lot of the tenses as well as grammatical structure.
What kind of loan-words? That´s very interesting
Como que tu familia emigró a Guatemala hace 400 años , pa eso di que tus ancestros emigraron porque madre mía 😂
My family had the same but colonized Puerto Rico and Florida, but kept the accent and loan words.
They did. We have the records. Bless your heart summer child. @@martinapinazo4489
I remember I was once in Barcelona and an old guy in a bus was saying "tanqueu la porta, tanqueu la porta" (or something similar). And in my brain I was just thinking like "What kind of weird Spanish accent is this?" (I'm a native Mexican speaker). Then it finally dawned on me that he was speaking Catalan, and it all made sense.
ahah , Si vas por Girona escucharias ''Tanca sa porta cullons!''
Significa "cerrad la puerta"
that's funny since Mexican spanish sounds like a really wierd accent to Puerto Ricans....
Mexicans find that Puerto Ricans do not pronounce the ends of their words, and talk to fast.
@@deadoralive923 a mallorca diriem " tanca sa puta porta" jajajajaja
I had no idea Catalan was so similar to other romance languages, I'm amazed. I'm from Cape Verde and Portuguese is our official language, so I noticed the similarities between these two languages. I have to learn more about Catalan 😊
Valenciano no es catalán, fascistas
No os cansareis de hacer el ridículo nunca.
@@jlaf1969 , En todo el mundo el catalán es enseñado en docenas de universidades (excepto en Españistan) me puedes decir en cuantas universidades es enseñado el valenciano?, es que mas tontos i no naceis.
@@mickybcn7453 en las mismas que no se enseñaba islandes hasta que se independizo de Groenlandia, en las mismas que decían que los negros eran subhumanos, etc, etc, etc. Las univerisdades e basan en la autoridad no en la inteligencia. Por cierto el "padre", Pompeu Fabra,· del catalán era filólogo??? Creo que no, amor
@@mickybcn7453 mas que tu si, dado que tengo capacidad critica cosa que tu no. Yo se quienes son mis padres y de donde vengo, y tu? Supongo que prefieres ser un esclavo complaciente, os quejáis de lo "español" pero bien que le laméis el culo a los pankatalanistas. Por cierto cuando se acabe el dinero a quien vais a robar con las subvenciones?
I am Valencian and the reason they want to call it Valencian instead of Catalan is because they don't want to have something to do with the independence. I am a lingust so I call it Catalan, my mother tongue
Oh, thats why? The only reason?
Valencian and Catalan proper can be compared to Brazilian and European Portuguese in my point of view.
Denominació científica català, denominació geogràfica valencià, però que tens raó és el mateix i és català
A vegades penso que la gent catalanoparlant a València és més conscient a València que a Catalunya.
“Visca la terreta”!
Sorry but you are wrong. This differentiation is made just in order to break any common identity between catalonia, valencia and Balears, the regions of the former crown of Aragon. Com bé sabràs, una llengua és un element identitari potent, i l'únic objectiu d'espanya és fer aquestes identitas prou petites com per absorbir-les una a una. A valència ho ha aconseguit el PP tants anys, i ja vas veure el discurs de l'amic Casado l'altre dia dient que no parlen català a balears, que parlen mallorquí, eivissenc, formenterè... Però després a Mèxic i argentina es parla espanyol oi? doncs això. No té res a veure amb la independència, ser catalano parlant no implica voler la independència, simplement volen evitar tenir una identitat diferent a la castellana prou forta dins el seu país. Salut!
I am from Valencia and I agree with the video almost in its entirety. Good job.
I used to live in Venice, and was very surprised when I visited Barcelona that I had very little trouble understanding the people. They sounded like they were speaking a strange form of Venetian!
Hey, as a Catalan myself, it’s a great surprise to see this video! I enjoy this channel a lot, thanks!
Same here!
Força! 😊💪🏽
I speak Catalan but I’m not a native speaker (I learned it). I can understand Occitan very well in written form but not spoken. I can perfectly understand Aranes and of course Valencian. I can also understand a lot of Italian (without learning it) both spoken and written. I am native slavic speaker.
Records a tots els Catalans aqui, m’agraden molt Català i cultura catalana! ❤️
How long did it take you to learn Catalan ?
Aranese is not Catalan.
Good job mate!
El catalán es una lengua indoeuropea descendiente del latín que forma parte de la familia de las lenguas románicas occidentales como el francés, el occitano, el retorrománico, el castellano, el gallego o el portugués. Como lengua románica occidental, el catalán ocupa un lugar intermedio entre el grupo galorrománico (francés, occitano) y el iberorrománico (castellano, gallego y portuguès).
@@angelinabetty El catalán es una lengua indoeuropea descendiente del latín que forma parte de la familia de las lenguas románicas occidentales como el francés, el occitano, el retorrománico, el castellano, el gallego o el portugués. Como lengua románica occidental, el catalán ocupa un lugar intermedio entre el grupo galorrománico (francés, occitano) y el iberorrománico (castellano, gallego y portugués).
Wow I speak French and I noticed that Catalan will be more easy to learn then Spanish!!
makes sense considering where it is located. In watching this channel and others like it, it seems like language is more of a layering of dialects where folks on extreme ends cannot understand each other but the closer to the middle you get the more understandable it is.
I'm Icelandic and in my opinion French is the most difficult language in the world 😆
@@ulfurkarlsson5885 Try Cambodian (Khmer) for the pronunciation, Hungarian for grammar and Japanese for writing.
Definitely! You can learn it faster than anyone
but way less usefull, since you can speak spanish in the whole Spain, including at catalunya, but catalan its not so extended
From a native catalan speaker:
I find catalan very similar to portuguese and italian.
I am really amazed how you explained how this language works. I'm native and I realized how complicated, complex but also beautifoul our language is.
I wish catalan was known around the world so if you like this video share it, us, the catalan speakers, would aprecciate it.
(sorry for any gramatical errors, I try to do my best when I have to talk or speak in english)
El catalán es una lengua románica de la rama occidental. Presenta dos variedades dialectales fundamentales: la oriental y la occidental, que contienen diferencias léxicas, fonéticas y gramaticales.
I recently started to study Catalan (languages are my hobby) and it is indeed a fascinating and beautiful language. I live in Australia, so wish granted, all the way from the southern hemisphere.
Hi!
As a ROMANIAN speaker, CATALAN seems to me more easy to learn and close to me than the SPANISH.
Best regards!
I speake both and Catalan is harder :D
trust me, catalan is a lot harder than spain, it has more strange things and signs
I also speak both, and I'm Romanian. We have 3000 common words with Catalán (joc, foc, ou, nou, bou, un moment, tot, adaptat, ocupat, etc) But the grammar is tricky, knowing both Spanish and French previously helped a good deal.
I've been to Jamaica - Ocho Ríos, when working on cruise ships. Very nice people, good food and amazing nature. Best of luck!
Some Catalan varieties (mostly those spoken in the Balearic islands) have a different set of articles known as 'salty articles' (Cat: articles salats) which has "es" and "sa" rather than "el" and "la". These articles are interesting because they are descended from Latin ipse and ipsa rather than from Latin ille and illa as in nearly all other Romance languages. The only other Romance language with articles derived from ipse is Sardinian, the traditional language of Sardinia, in Italy.
There might also be some Occitan varieties with the same feature but they are either extinct or nearly extinct.
I think Paul should prepare a video about Sardinian (and maybe another one about the definite articles in the Balearic Islands!
Salty articles comes originally from the coast of Girona, so the video should begin there and not in Baleares (I'm from Mallorca btw).
miotony1 jo tambe
@@miotony1 I thought they were from the Balearic Islands and they just moved to Girona from speakers of Catalan from the Balearic Islands.
I'm brazilian and I remember watching Merli and actually learning quite some words!
Born in Africa but grow up in Catalunya, thanks very much for this video.
I am catalan and my girlfriend speaks valencian and we have never used a translator to talk each other, good news by the way
U r talking the same language after all
Es q son dialectos, yo vivo en Valencia y hablo con mis amigos catalanes, sin problema
@@ferrrawr537 y yo hablo sin problemas con mis amigos portugueses e italianos,
@@jlaf1969 no entiendo tu comentario me lo podrías explicármelo
@@ferrrawr537 todas son lenguas romances, con un tronco básico en el latín. Si hasta entiendo el francés y el rumano ( este último cuesta un poco más). Las lenguas no son definidas lingüísticamente, sino políticamente, mira el caso islandés que no fue reconocido hasta los años 30 del S. XX o el noruego con dos grafías distintas y nadie se rompe las vestiduras. El problema del catalán es que no es catalán es un idioma probeta creado en el S. XIX por la burguesía catalana a partir del barceloni con una visión imperialista y racista. Solo tienes que leer los informes del IEC, que busca la homogeneización de la gran lengua catalana y la creación del gran Imperi Catala, llamado "Paissos Catalans" porque lo de Imperi a los nazionalsocialistas les chirría. Sufrí en la Universidad el adoctrinamiento ideológico y racista de los autoproclamados portadores de la verdad, ante los que cualquier crítica su respuesta era "feixista", una palabra que carece de una base etimológica real; en el resto de lenguas romances la base etimológica de fascitas proviene de fascies, pero feixista proviene de feixa o haza que es un bancal. Y podía seguir. No te fíes de la Wikipedia ni de las Universidades españolas (sic) en general, que están controladas Pol el politburo del pensamiento homogéneo
The Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula are super fascinating to me, thanks for covering this one!
But Catalan descends from Provençal, a Romance language from Gaul.
True. He should probably have treated Catalan and Occitan as a single unit, because Catalan is only the most widespread dialect of Occitan.
On the other hand, who says Iberia ends in the Pyrenees and not maybe as far North as the Loire. Ethnolinguistically the Pyrenees are not a border, at least not historically.
Catalan doesn't descend from Provençal. It's the native language of Catalonia, it's the direct evolution of Latin language in the territory.
It's similar with Occitan and part of the same branch mainly because they are neighours, but it wasn't brought by immigrants from Provence or anything like that.
This is the main rule regarding Romance languages in the former Western Roman Empire.
5:50 I said adieu to someone in France once, he was shocked. He said they use it as a final goodbye when someone dies.
Interesting, that's the same in Brazilian Portuguese with "Adeus"
I will always remember the first words I have ever read in Catalan: “Més que un club”. I’m Brazilian and Catalan sounds like a very beautiful language for me, sweet and misterious. It’s hard to understand spoken Catalan, but I understand, let’s say, 90% of a newspaper like El Periòdico. Studying Catalan is definitelly a plan...
Let me guess. Barca fan?
@@ahmadjaber1719 let me guess. U r so smart?
Same here bro, same here
@Mar. L no. U r probably not catalan and not prepared to talk about that. Catalonia is more than football. Fighting again the repression of Spain to be independent it’s one of our objectives. It’s just a matter of time. Yes, is not average, Spain is a fascist state, and we do what we can do.
@Mar. L Hahaha u r so funny
There is a mistake in the example "M'ha donat els diners aquest matí" in the minute 11:30. The verb "donat" doesn't stands for "donado" in Spanish (which means donated), it stands for the verb "dado" (which means given)
I wanted to give the cognate word, even though the meaning is slightly different in Spanish. That was in order to focus on the phonological difference between the two.
This isn't a mistake. "Donar" in Spanish also means "to give" so, "me ha donado el dinero" would be correct.
I think it is meant to be a cognate like Adéu and French Adieu. Adieu is not used in the same context as adéu but it fits better as an example here
Thank you for this explanation. As as a student of Spanish, I was a bit confused since I think of "dar" and "donar" differently. But I can see how donar could be used in this instance.
Eduardo Moreno But in spoken Spanish nobody says that.
As a French speaker from Quebec, Catalan sounds a bit like a mix of French and Spanish to my ears. What was the most surprising and funny when I visited a friend in Girona is that sometimes I mistook what the Catalans were saying for some French with a strong Quebec accent. Example: the sentence "What is that?", which is "Què és això?" in Catalan, sounds just like "Qu'essé ço?" which is "Qu'est-ce que cela?" in colloquial Quebec French! :P
my head hurts
That's amazing!
Native speaker here, i've always thought that same thing :D. Also, i think "Qu'essé ço?" Would sound exactly like "Que es eso?"
"Qu'essé ço" sounds more like "què és açò", which is a dialectal variation of "què és això"
The accent of at least this speaker reminds me of a French from Quebec accent . From what I’ve heard 🤔
I like hearing them speak Castillan with their accent and Catalán is one of my favorite languages.
i'm catalan and i thin portuguese french and italian are easy to understand for catalans, italian even more than french :) thanks for the video , you explained catalan history pretty well :)
Paul, my friend from Romania, who speaks several languages, recently traveled to Barcelona. He discovered that he could understand and speak Catalan quite well. He opined that Catalan is nearly identical to classical Romanian from the early 1800s. What are your thoughts?
Gary Bickford Well, that is, to put it mildly, a wild exaggeration. I’m a Romanian, living in Valencia for 3 years. There are a few very similar words and expressions, but it definitely isn’t anything like Classical Romanian overall. It’s rather a weird mix of French and Spanish.
I speak romanian and I found a lot of similarities
@@fasca100 I'm Catalan, and I find romanian really close to catalan sometimes, we have more than 2,000 identic words in common, and you can find texts like for example the national anthems of both nations and you'll be able to understand some of their meanings. Brother nations🥰. És un lucre molt bo cercar similituds entre les nostres llengües, car aquestes similituds fan donar compte que al final som tots germans.
They say that catalan and romanian both have a lot of vocabulary in common.
am romanian for me catalan it s sound like a weird spanish and a little bit of french in it 😆😆🤷🏻♂️
As a Spanish speaker (eastern Andalusia dialect) the most striking thing about Catalan is the emphasis on M and L sounds and the way words tend to end with consonant so often.
Waiting eagerly for a video covering Galician :)
The "M" sound? What do you mean? I can understand that you say the "L" sound, which is different from the Spanish one, but the "M" sound?
@@catvideos777 IDK if it's particular to a specific dialect, but the people I know from there (mostly from Girona) use M with emphasis.
@@catvideos777 mashing les boutons is right. We catalans are very conscious of that focus on L and M so in our jokes about ourselves we pronounce the L or the M exaggerating them even though a lot more than in normal speaking. Thank you.
@@aplicacionsaranya4241 That's total nonsense... The Catalan "M" is pronounced exactly the same than the Spanish "M", so I honestly doubt you are really a Catalan if you agree with such nonsense.
@@catvideos777 Sóc catalana del nord. No és cap collonada o ovariada. Cap lletra no es pronuncia exactament que en espanyol basicament perquè tota l'articulació catalana és velar o fins i tot més endarrerida i en canvi l'espanyola es gairebé a tocar de les dents. Aquesta articulació velar és nota més en les consonants que per elles mateixes ja són més cap a velars com ara la L i la M.
Great job to explain the catalán similarities and differences with other romance languages, specially spanish, french and italian. I lived in Barcelona from 1996 to 2000. And during that time I studied catalán. I reached a fluency of about 80%. I am mexican and my native language is spanish (castilian). I also speak English with a 95% fluency. I also studied french when younger and reached a fluency of 80%. As I returned to my native Mexico in 2002, it's difficult for me to practice both french and catalán, so my fluency in both has decreased unfortunarely because of lack of practice. I must say that another important aspect that makes catalán different to other similar romance languages áre its sayings and slangs. Cheers!
When a romanian inmigrant learns and speaks Catalan, is almost impossible to know that it's not a native speaker.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Why are Spaniards speaking Romanian? I actually went to Barcelona two years ago, but I only knew Latin American Spanish. I’m going to Romania this summer. I should have started studying Romanian back then.
In Spain, six official languages co-exist: Castilian, Catalan, Valencian, Galician, Basque and Aranese (which only has 2800 native speakers). The most predominant language in Spain is Spanish, which, according to the latest data from the INE, is spoken by 98.9% of the total population as a first or second language.
As an Italian I must say that I find it a bit difficult to hear, the pronunciation is somewhat in the middle between italian and spanish but the accent sounds to me like a strange variety of Sardinian. It's definitely much easier to understand in written form, since it shares an incredible amount of vocabulary with Italian, especially if you know southern dialects like Neapolitan or Sicilian which had Catalan influence in the past. Very informative video as always, thanks for sharing!
Im sorry but sardinian is a variant of catalán because the kingom of aragon rule it for 280 years.
+Joan Salas emm...sorry dude but it's don't true....
@@Jormunn Emm... Sorry study a little bit of history
@Joan Salas Man...I'm sardinian...belive me what you say isn't in heaven or on earth....
@Joan Salas And don't be so arrogant about giving me this shit for true ಠ_ಠ
I am a Catalan and Spanish speaker and since I have gone to Italy many times I noticed that it was easier for me to communicate with italians in catalan rather than Spanish.
I speak the Valencian dialect and I have noticed that the Valencian doesn't have a strong accent and it sounds mor soft just like italian, that's why I think that the valencian is the closest catalan dialect to italian.
Jo sóc català i també crec que el valencià s'hi assembla més, no només en pronunciació. Eixir/uscire, per exemple.
Saying Catalan has a stronger accent than Valencian makes no sense. The accent is different. As a catalan speaker your accent sounds stronger to me. It's a matter of what are you used to.
Yes, Valencian is closer to Italian because it's old Roman language, not Catalan. The same language that Roman settlers brought from Rome 2157 years ago when they founded Valentia. Why else would it be more similar to Italian if, as bribed linguists say, the Catalans tought us how to speak (yes, those illiterate soldiers and peasants did, can you believe it?).
@@PedroUR what u say makes sense, but Valencian and Catalan are essentially the same language just two different regional dialects to speak the catalan language.
@@juanfernandoechavarneramon1838 same language yes, but the discussion is about the name. Llemosí was a french dialect that people named both Catalan and Valencian for distinguishing themselves from the arabs.
13:28 I have a story about this (although I don't speak Catalan so I might get something wrong).
There's a song by Miki Núñez called "Escriurem", which is in Catalan. There is a line that says "escriurem que tot no va ser fàcil" (We'll write that everything wasn't easy). It was only yesterday where I realized that "tot no va ser fàcil" means "Everything wasn't easy" and not "everything won't be easy".
The Romance languages might be similar but they sometimes mess me up.
Hi Paul! Thanks to you I've been learning Spanish for the last year, because at the end of the video you sent me to Dreaming Spanish!
Hey! A catalan guy here!
Really appreciated this video. We're a small territory, not a big language. I find it cool people actually know what catalan is lol
Great video :b
Visca Catalunya!
I'm English and want to learn Catalan, seems like a cool language :)
Y viva españa
People know what it is because you, m'da fuckers cry so loud that everyone in the left thinks that Spain is a facist state.
@@iwanttoliveinsoutheastasia2952 I bet you're not from some occupied territory right asswipe?
I want to live in Southeast Asia hahah
The first time I listened to Catalan was watching Merlí. My mind blew! My native language is Portuguese and I’m from the state of São Paulo, Brazil. To me Catalan sounded like a mix of European Portuguese and French. I think it happens because of the several words ending in consonants.
To me it sounded like a mix between French and Spanish
Gabriel, é exatamente como nós percebemos o catalão. A semelhança com o português de Portugal tem a ver com as vogais, enquanto as consoantes finais lembram o francês.
@@ericgonzalez3641 Sounds português and French
Molt bon vídeo! Gràcies per difondre la nostra identitat/història a gent de tot el món :)
Ani peheja tokañy kataluñañe’ẽ, ipu porãiterei. Maitei Paraguay guive 🇵🇾✌🏻
Catalan is the most beautiful language, period. (i am a native Castellano Speaker) it sounds just too beautiful and also written is nice :)
I té les paraules més boniques del món, com "xiuxiuejar", "nogensmenys" i els pronoms possessius febles, en especial "llur/llurs"
@@janriopedre you are like a little kids thinking their father are the best man in the world, naive, proud, ignorant, you are a classic. Like italians saying everything from Italy is the best, or americans saying america is the best country in the world.
vasque language from el Pais Vasco is way more beautifull, speacial and older language
@@oscarmeneurubio3330 Literally you've said just the same thing for which you criticized me for😂😂 So your comment doesn't make sense, have a good day and let people have their own opinion ;)
El catalán es una lengua romance de la rama occidental. Presenta dos variedades dialectales fundamentales: la oriental y la occidental, que contienen diferencias léxicas, fonéticas y gramaticales.
As a Valencian I was waiting for this video some time ago. You never disappoint, Paul. The video is GREAT.
Ja som dos :)
Tres!!! 😂
Quatre :v
Cinc O_O
Sis
I live in the south of Portugal and for years I have been very interested in Catalan. We have a phenomenon in the Algarve region of Portugal where we usually drop the last vowel of masculine words or words ending in 'e'. So it gets even closer to Catalan: examples :Friends: Amig/Amigs, bombêr/bombêrs,gat/gats and in Catalan these are Amic/s, Bomber/s, gat and many more. Regarding that phrase 'fa dos anys' here would be "faz dôs ans". This phenomeon is slowly getting lost here as young people want to speak 'proper' portuguese and not be seen as unlearned, poor or rustic. Thank you for the video it is very interesting, keep up the good job Paul.
Olá! Des de Catalunha, para-bens por querer aprender o catalão!
Eu aprendi o português numa escola de idiomas durante um mes antes de morar dois meses em Lisboa, gostem muito da experiença. Portugal e um bonito país. 😊👏🏽
I moved to Barcelona and tried to learn both spanish and catalan at the same time, without yet speaking any other romanic language. That was a big mistake as I confused the often just slightly different words with each other. So I focused on spanish, which is much easier to pronounce from reading. Catalan seemed in a way a bit like french to me, the words are pronounced not necessarily as they look like. Anyway, now after being relatively ok with spanish, I start to take on catalan as well
Good choice. Spanish is an international language, and catalan is only a Provencal dialect. Plus, all catalans speak Spanish, so with Spanish, you can communicate there.
@@user-kb6hg7xk5i hi A. Catalán is not a dialect :). sometimes it's just 1 or 2 persons for which you might want to learn a language... which is why I still gonna learn it eventually.
@@rf1890 1 or 2 persons for which you might want to learn a language does not mean it is not a dialect. So yes, it's a dialect from Provencal.
@@user-kb6hg7xk5i no it's not. Please look it up... anywhere credible
@@user-kb6hg7xk5i actually quite ironic that you are saying this in a video called: the catalán LANGUAGE.
Great job with this video!! Thank you for sharing this content and teaching this wonderful language. I'm catalan and I'm very greatful. 🙌🏼
Catalan, to my Italian ears, simply sounds like one of the dialect of Northern Italy. The first example sentence in an Italian dialect would be 'El Giuse l'è 'n bon profesoro'. Basically, the same 😮
I'm italian too, same for me! My catalan collegue sometimes says something I recognise 100% as my dialect (north marche).
Yeah, we all speakers of Romance languages really are a big family 😋
From a broad perspective, all Romance languages are just different forms of the same language (latin).
I'm catalan, but I do speak italian. And speaking both catalan and spanish plus english helped me learn italian. Examples of that are: Finestra means window in both catalan and italian and computer in italian is exactly the same as it is in english. Oh! And speaking about romanic languages, italian was helpful as well when I learnt portuguese, for instance I can (it: Io posso, pt: Eu posso) dog (it: cane, pt: cão)...
I've just learnt portuguese recently and still it's a bit tough for me to speak in italian without saying anything in portuguese, but I'm getting better with time, and one day I'll be able to speak italian perfectly again, or at least that's what I hope😅
By the way, I just made a comment in this video with a lot of catalan muisc from different regions, maybe you'll find it interesting, cause it's a nice way to appreciate the different catalan dialects through music.
I am a Ukrainian who now lives in Andorra. I currently study Spanish which everyone speaks perfectly here. The situation here with Catalan and Spanish is almost identical to what we have with Ukrainian and Russian respectively in Kyiv. So I got used very quickly. I have plans to study Catalan right after mastering Spanish. So far I am simultaneously picking some Catalan as well. Lots of stuff come automatically because of the similarity with Spanish, some other stuff I just memorized because I encounter it frequently. What I noticed is that Catalan is much more difficult than Spanish first of all because of the orthography and pronunciation.
Phonology in catalan is more similar to french, while phonology in spanish is sometimes different to another romance languages and close to basque, an aglutinant, very antique and non indoeuropean language.
Why did you learn Spanish first? I mean. I do not support Euromaidan but I mean if I went to Ukraine I would learn Ukrainian first, not Russian.
@@carlosmpsenyorcapitacollon6977 Well, I took example from Russians who live in Ukraine! They are like: "Why the hell I should learn Ukrainian if everyone speaks Russian here?" And here they are, living for decades in the country not able to speak or write the official language properly) In fact, I new some Spanish before I came to Andorra so I've decided to finish it first. It seemed more logic as learning two related languages simultaneously is not the best idea. As I said I will definitely proceed with learning Catalan after I succeed with Spanish. And hey, what's wrong with Euromaidan?
@@carlosmpsenyorcapitacollon6977 Probably because he's not a separatist douchebag and just choose the most useful language.
@@robertovalverde9573 Depende del dialecto, Roberto. El dialecto de Andorra es del bloque occidental i la fonología tiende más hacia el español o el italiano.
Curiosity: In Brazil there is a city called "Catalão" (Catalan), and another one called "Pirenópolis" because of the similarity with the Pireneu Mountains. Many immigrants from Catalunya came to Brazil.
Thank you for spreading the knowledge of Catalan language! Moltes gràcies :)
Before I clicked I thought, oh oh the comment section will explode. You handled it well!
WARNING WARNING
ABANDON TOPIC
You handled it very sensitively. I'm Spanish, so I appreciated very much your approach. It's very difficult doing videos about quite local topics without hipergeneralising or giving inaccurate information. Congrats!
I'm totally agree. As catalan it was good for one day not to hear about politics and just concentrate in linguistics.
As a native Portuguese and french speaker Catalan is VERY understandable!
I visited Valencia and Barcelona six months ago and they were my favorite cities from my entire trip! Everyone was so nice ❤️❤️
Eu assisti uma série maravilhosa em catalão, que língua linda, muito diferente, quero aprender! Beijos do Brasil, irmãos catalões!!
No es una lengua tan diferente del castellano. Cualquier persona en España si pone un poco de interés lo entiende en poco tiempo. En España llamamos castellano al español porque hay otros idiomas como el Gallego , Euskera o Catalán -valenciano-
Mallorquín que también son españoles.
Si você quer aprender catalão é só retirar a ultima consonante do idioma espanhol e ja esta falando catalão.
@@elmorohernandez Por su parte, el catalán también es una lengua románica de la rama occidental, que presenta las variedades dialectales oriental y occidental. Estas contienen diferencias léxicas, fonéticas y gramaticales.
@@sell4473 Por su parte, el catalán también es una lengua románica de la rama occidental, que presenta las variedades dialectales oriental y occidental. Estas contienen diferencias léxicas, fonéticas y gramaticales.
Qual é a série que voce assistiu? Tenho curiosidade
Man thank you for talking about the Catalan-Valencian topic in a civil and academic approach despite risking criticism. It's political nonsense basically. My favorite instance of this was when using the train ticket machines in Spain where you could choose all the different languages that are official: Spanish, Basque, Galician, Catalan AND Valencian. Yeah, they put a Valencian option separate from Catalan DESPITE the fact that every damn word used was the same (yeah I bothered trying both options). I just found hilarious howfar you can go pretending that it's not the same language, despite how obvious it is
If this rule of 3 is followed, Andalusian or American dialects should not be considered as Spanish either, but as a different language. The Balearic dialect should also be a language like Valencian. Unfortunately, and for a long time, there has been a great hatred in Valencia towards everything Catalan, so they cannot bear that there is a part of their population that speaks the same language.
@@ferranmateo4803 Exactly. In fact, neither Catalan, Valencian, Andalusian or American would be languages either, since they have different smaller dialects on their own region. It wouldn't make any sense
@@ferranmateo4803 valencians hate catalans because catalunya went on its spread of denying other cultures in the "" paisos catalanes""
los valencianos no quieren denominar su lengua catalan porque no son catalanes, los catalanes tienen que denominar su lengua valenciano, pero nunca van a hacerlo. La misma situación es en Balcanes - el croato, el serbo, el bosniano y el montenegrino son la misma lengua
@@servusdei2332 Y los americanos hablan inglés. Y los austriacos alemán. Y los argentinos español. A mí me da igual lo que se sientan ellos. Pero por favor que no hagan el ridículo con niñadas de ese estilo. Decir que no hablan catalán es un insulto a la inteligencia. Los Balcanes no me parecen un gran ejemplo de convivencia nacional por cierto.
Molt be! As a French speaker I can understand the majority of written Catalan, but not spoken.
Catalan speaker here, it's the same for me with French!
@@joanllurba8749 For me too
Try to understand catalan insults
Sameee as a catalan speaker 😂
I'm Flemish (Belgian), and sorta speak French as a second language. I have been living in Girona, Catalunya for more than 4 months and I must say: I am very happy that I learned French!
Although I never followed Catalan lessons, it was quite easy for me to understand basic written Català. Thanks to being exposed to another roman language since the age of 10.
Wow, very nice video! I am surprised how accurate you got! As a Catalan that has lived abroad in different countries for a while, I shared it with my friends!
I speak Portuguese as a native speaker, and I just love what Catalan sounds like. It sounds even more pleasant and familiar than Spanish itself.
Ey the fact that Catalonian is the official language in Andorra should already exclude it from the category "Non-state languages". It's the state language of Andorra.
Very good video, just like everything you make :D
Andorra is not in the European union, maybe he ment that?
@@karibui494 Also consider that the vast majority of Catalan speakers live outside Andorra
Guitarristandgoats #1 catalonian lol
#2 so it's a state language outside the country it comes from... Never realized it.
@Ignasi Planas Villalba I feel like "Catalonian" should be an accepted English name for the language, since it means the same thing as "Catalan" originally.
First of all, as Catalan native speaker: the video is great; perfect; fantastic. You avoided political quastions in a very elegant way (you talk about linguistics, not politics so, well avoided). While I was watching the video, I was thinking: "let's see if Paul will talk about the (for me) main curiosity about catalan..." And yes: you explained very well the "weak pronouns". Unfortunately, the spanish presence on media is making young people using uncorrectly these pronouns (I'm always correcting my son... he's gonna hate me!). So, again, congratulations! It was fun after having seen all of your videos and how you analyse languages, to watch this being done to my language!
Força desde Portugal :)
Definitely, at the Batxillerat I learnt how to use the “pronoms febles” correctly, we speak it very bad and schools do teach in catalan but forget to teach catalan on a propper way... (t’ho escric en anglès per si algú ho llegeix que ho pugui entendre😂)
Roger Fernàndez Escudé Why would you put an article before names?
Why? I really don't know. But it helps also to define formality. You don't put the article to historical or famous people. For example, I would say "Quim Torra ha dit....." (Quim Torra has said....) and I don't put the article because he is the Catalan Prime Minister. Or I would say "Lluís Companys va morir..." (Lluís Companys died...) because he is an historical personage. Instead, I would say "En Pere ja vingut" (Pere has come) because he is a friend or somebody that I know. It's a slight difference, but sometimes is hard for foreign catalan speakers
@@rogerfernandezescude3431 una amiga tuvo la fortuna de ganarse una beca a Barcelona, en México es muy mal visto que pongas un articulo definido antes de un nombre propio, por ejemplo "La Frida irá conmigo al concierto" pero es muy común entre comunidades indígenas (y pequeñas cosas como esta se transfieren al dialecto o acento local). Por lo tanto es mal visto porque se considera que nunca tuviste la educación de "hablar bien". Pero por lo que me contó mi amiga fue que es muy común entre catalanes mientras hablan español utilizar el artículo definido antes de un nombre.
Mi duda es, ¿allá también es mal visto o simplemente no lo notan?
Hey, great channel, and thanks for the tip about Dreaming Spanish, I’m absorbing as much of that as I can to help my learning.
Hi, im from Barcelona and i speak catalan with my friends and my family so my first language is catalan and I don't know if it's just only me that the languages that i understand the most without studing them are portuguese and italian, but i understand better portuguese because a part of my family is from Galicia and gallego (the language they speak in Galicia) is very similar to portuguese, but i think the language that have the most similarities is french (if you don't count spanish because i speak it to).
Great video!!
I'm Catalan and I find it easier to communicate with Italian people more than French or Occitane
Most Spanish people would find it easier to communicate with Italians than with French indeed.
As a Sardinian and, of course, Italian speaker, I find Catalan quite simple to understand in writing and even when I listen to someone who's speaking Catalan, it's not as hard as French or Portuguese, and I think it is even easier than Spanish, but with the latter we have more passive exposure.
I haven't had any contact with catalan until I began watch the TV series "Merlí" and I got surprised with how easy it was for me to understand it, me being a Brazilian-Portuguese speaker. The phonology sounds closer to Portuguese than Spanish and I got so familiar with that language that I almost didn't need to read the subtitles.
As a native Catalan speaker I have no major issues understanding Brazilian Portuguese speakers, I've hard conversations in which I spoke Catalan and the other person spoke Brazilian Portuguese and we wouldn't have too many issues :)
Catalan is pretty close to a 'midway' language for the Romance family, I think. It is just about midway between all of them, so very familiar to speakers of any of the others. :) Maybe Occitan is even more.
You should check the TV series "polseres vermelles", they made some remakes in countries like the US but the original catalan version of the show is the best and it's great.
As a native Catalan speaker, I can confirm that I can easily communicate orally with Italian speakers, and I can understand written French. The romance language I'm having the hardest time to learn or understand is Romanian.
Fun fact: in my region, the Balearic Islands, there is also people who disagree with the fact that we speak Catalan, they believe that we speak "mallorquí, menorquí, eivissenc i formenterenc", depending on the island. We call this people "gonelles", similarly to the "blavers" from València.
Really accurate and interesting video.