Catalonia

:This article is about the Spanish autonomous community. There is also an article on its government, the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Language

Catalonia constitutes the original heartland, and remains the most important and largest territory, where Catalan is spoken.

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Catalan is one of the two official languages of Catalonia, as laid down in the Catalan Statute of Autonomy http://www10.gencat.net/gencat/AppJava/cat/generalitat/estatut/index.jsp: the other is Castilian (Spanish), which is the majority language throughout Spain (its official status confirmed by the 1978 Spanish Constitution). Catalonia has regulated its institutions and their various competences within the framework provided by the Spanish constitution in the "Sau Statute."

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The similarity of Spanish and Catalan eases bilingualism, but they are certainly not dialects of a single language. Catalan is regarded by most linguists as being an Ibero-Romance language (the group that includes Spanish), but it has many features of Gallo-Romance languages such as French.

Related Topics:
Bilingualism - Linguists - Ibero-Romance - Gallo-Romance languages

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Occitan, in its Aranese variety (a dialect of Gascon) is official and subject to special protection in the Val d'Aran (Aran Valley), which is notable, as this small region of 7,000 is the only place where Occitan (spoken mainly in France and some Italian valleys) has full official status.

Related Topics:
Occitan - Val d'Aran

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The following information refers only to the Autonomous Region of Catalonia, and generally cannot be extrapolated to other Catalan-speaking territories.

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Literacy

According to the 2001 Linguistic Census http://www6.gencat.net/llengcat/socio/docs/censling2001.pdf, about 5,900,000 people in Catalonia, nearly 95% of residents, understand the Catalan language. The percentage of people aged two and older who can speak, read and write Catalan is as follows:

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Over the last 20 years, knowledge of Catalan has advanced significantly in all these areas, with the ability to write it having experienced the most pronounced increase, from 31.6% of the population in 1986 to 49.8% in 2001.

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By age groups, those between 10 and 29 have the higher level of Catalan-language literacy (e.g., 98.2% aged 10–14 understand it, and 85.2% can write it); this is attributed to these individuals having received their full education in Catalan.

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Geographically, Catalan is most understood in northeast Catalonia (Alt Pirineu, Val d'Aran), at 97.4%, followed by south and western Catalonia, whereas Barcelona's metropolitan area sees the lowest knowledge, at 93.8%. The situation is analogous for written-language skills, with central Catalonia scoring the highest percentages (61.4%), and Barcelona the lowest (46.4%).

Related Topics:
Alt Pirineu - Val d'Aran - Barcelona

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Barcelona is one of the centers of Spanish book industry in Spanish and the main one for Catalan.

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Social Use

According to a study carried out in 2003 by the Generalitat de Catalunya http://www6.gencat.net/llengcat/socio/docs/usos2003.pdf, Catalan is used by 50.1% of the population in everyday situations.

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Significantly, over 55% of respondents use Spanish to address their parents (versus 42% who choose Catalan). This is attributed to massive immigration from southern Spain from the second half of the 20th century until the 1980s, as a consequence of which many Catalans have one or both parents from outside Catalonia. However, a majority (52.6%) use Catalan with their children (42.3% Spanish). This can be attributed to some Spanish-speaking citizens shifting from their mother tongue to Catalan at home.

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Outside the family, 48.6% of the population indicate that they address strangers exclusively or preferentially in Catalan, while the proportion of those who use Spanish is 41.7%. 8.6% claim to use both equally.

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See Catalan language for further information.

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Aranese

According to the 2001 Aranese Linguistic Census http://www6.gencat.net/llengcat/aran/docs/a_aran_cens.pdf, knowledge of Aranese in the Occitan-speaking territory of Aran is as follows:

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Comparing to previous data from 1996, the number of those able to understand Aranese has declined slightly (90.5% in 1996), while at the same time there has been a marginal increase in the number of those able to write it (24.97% in 1996).

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By age groups, the largest percentage of those with knowledge of Aranese is in the 15-19 and 65-69 groups (both above 96%), while those aged 30-34 score lowest (just over 80%). Literacy is higher in the 10-19 group with over 88% declaring themselves able to read, and 76% able to write Aranese. Those over 80 are the least literate, with only about 1.5% of them being able to write the language.

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According to their place of origin, it is significant to note that in the Val d'Aran those born outside Spain outnumber Spaniards born outside Aran and Catalonia in the active use of Aranese (17% of non-Spaniards can write Aranese, while the percentage for Spaniards excluding Catalans is 10%).

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