Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
LANGUAGE
In Barcelona, Catalan (Català) has more or less taken over from Castilian (Castellano)
Spanish as the language on street signs, maps, official buildings and notices, and so on.
Onpaper,itlookslikeacrossbetweenFrenchandSpanishandisgenerallyeasytoread
if youknow those two.Spoken Catalan is harder tocome togrips with, asthe language
itself is not phonetic, and accents vary from region to region.
Few visitors realize how important Catalan is to those who speak it: never commit the error
ofcallingitadialect.However,despitethepreponderanceoftheCatalanlanguage,you'llget
by perfectly well in Spanish, as long as you can learn to understand Catalan in timetables, on
menus, and the like. You'll find some basic pronunciation rules below, for both Spanish and
Catalan,andaselectionofwordsandphrasesinbothlanguages.Spanishiscertainlyeasierto
pronounce, but don't be afraid to try Catalan, especially in the more out-of-the-way places -
you'll generally get a good reception if you at least try communicating in the local language.
Numerous
Spanish phrasebooks
are available, not least the
SpanishRoughGuidePhrase-
book
, laid out dictionary-style for instant access, and featuring 24 typical travel scenarios
which can also be downloaded for free as audio files. In Barcelona,
Parla Català
(Pia)
is the only readily available English-Catalan phrasebook, though there are more extensive
Catalan-English dictionaries and teach-yourself Catalan guides available online.
TALKING THE TALK
Catalan
(Català) is a Romance language, stemming directly from Latin, and closely re-
sembling the language of Occitan, spoken in southern France. Catalan is spoken by over
ten million people in total, in Barcelona and Catalunya, part of Aragón, much of Valen-
cia, the Balearic islands, Andorra and parts of the French Pyrenees - and its use is thus
much more widespread than Danish, Finnish and Norwegian. Other Spaniards tend to be-
little it by saying that to get a Catalan word you just cut a Castilian one in half but, in fact,
the grammar is more complicated and it has eight vowel sounds compared with Castilian's
five. During Franco's time in power, Catalan was banned from the radio, TV, daily press
and schools, which is why many older people cannot read or write it (even if they speak it
all the time) - the region's bestselling Catalan-language newspaper sells far fewer copies
than the most popular Castilian-language daily paper. Virtually every Catalan is bilingual,
but most regard Catalan as their mother tongue and it's estimated that it is the dominant
language in over half of Catalunya's households - a figure that's likely to grow given the
amazing revival of the language in recent times.
