Talk:Catalan language

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 August 2021 and 10 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tedrickja (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Rdow, Rodristeph, Warddrew, Simpson Hannah, Zerocarey, MerodioJJ.

Not a language but a dialect

IP clearly only here to expound on his personal views and not to improve the article

I'm shocked to see that the english wikipedia is so biased to consider catalan a language and not what it is, a dialect of spanish. You can ask it to anyone in the world and will tell you the same, only catalan separatists will say its a language. Therefore i ask for the wikipedia to redo this article or at least put on the banner of lack of neutrality, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.247.136.48 (talk) 10:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC) Romance linguists have long regarded Catalan as a language quite distinct from Spanish. The only disagreement is about whether the language is part of the Ibero-Romance subgroup or should be regarded as part either of the Gallo-Romance subgroup or of a separate subgroup, which would also contain Occitan. LynwoodF (talk) 11:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC) Most people in the world know nothing of either language and therefore couldn't possibly have an opinion on the matter. I am a person in the world (with no family heritage from anywhere in Western Europe, so certainly not having a personal stake in the status of Catalonia) who is familiar with both languages and I won't tell you Spanish and Catalan are dialects of the same language. Therefore, when you say "You can ask it to anyone in the world and will tell you the same", you establish yourself right off the bat as a person guided by misconceptions. Out of curiosity: Do you know Catalan? Largoplazo (talk) 13:26, 18 November 2020 (UTC) Well said, Largoplazo. LynwoodF (talk) 13:52, 18 November 2020 (UTC) Largoplazo I don't know if the IP speaks catalan or not, but i do. And I can tell you it's a dialect BaronVerdad (talk) 21:35, 18 November 2020 (UTC) I'd meant to find out whether the IP user didn't know Catalan because in that case they'd really be talking from a complete lack of knowledge. However, while familiarity with Catalan and Spanish is a necessary condition for making one's own judgement about the matter, it isn't a sufficient condition, since it also depends on the distinction one makes between languages and dialects. Wikipedia articles base their judgement as to such things on preponderance of reliable sources. My own opinion isn't relevant to the purpose at hand, but the differences, for me, are sufficient to justify treatment of Catalan as a separate language. Too many vocabulary differences even for the most common words; a much more involved object pronoun system, including "hom", "hi", and "en" that have counterparts in French ("on", "y", "en") but not Spanish; entirely different ways of handling certain verbal periphrastic constructions. I don't have metrics but subjectively it seems to me as different from Spanish as Portuguese is. Largoplazo (talk) 21:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC) I'm amused by what you removed: "Si no em creus t'ho puc dir en català sense cap problema eh, com vulguis." I would have said you'd helped make my point, with em/me, ho/lo, puc/puedo, dir/decir, sense/sin, cap/ningún, vulguis/quieras. It's almost as though you realized that yourself and thought better of it. Largoplazo (talk) 22:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC) Reliable sources say Catalan's a language, which is what matters for the article. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 01:38, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Good-faith attempts by others to explain to IP are appreciated, but mostly just give them and others a forum to expound their blather and stir up trouble. Collapsed per WP:NOTFORUM. Mathglot (talk) 18:44, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Borrowings into English

@Jotamar:, about the table of loanwords from Catalan into English: While I don't have Webster's Third International in front of me, Merriam-Webster online doesn't include Catalan in the lineage of either "cucumber" of "cul-de-sac", nor do the Oxford English Dictionary or Etymonline.com. In addition "cul de sac" is literally three unaltered French words meaning "bottom of a bag" (and the French TLFi doesn't derive it from Catalan). Can you share what Webster's Third International says about these? Largoplazo (talk) 00:44, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

@Largoplazo:, I have no idea about whether the borrowings are correct or not, I just reverted the deletion of the list because Mathglot was deceived by a previous edition into thinking that it was a false friends list. --Jotamar (talk) 00:53, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Largoplazo (talk) 02:19, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jotamar:, thanks for correcting the section title. Based on that, I checked sources, and removed: cucumber, cul-de-sac, baracoon, and surge. Although all of these reference Gove (1993), none of these are from Catalan, according to multiple standard reliable sources. Imho we have to consider Gove as unreliable for sourcing information about Catalan etymology. If there's disagreement, please take this up at WP:Reliable sources noticeboard. No one disputes paella. That leaves only barracks to discuss, and there is disagreement about it, with most sources hedging their bets, saying "unknown", or using words like "perhaps", such as American Heritage (p. 108): <Fr <It <Sp < perhaps Catalan; NOAD says "unknown", and Websters 2nd Unabridged says <F <It <Sp <perhaps LL [Late Latin] barra. Mathglot (talk) 02:27, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Definite articles in front of people's names

Is there any detail provided on this page on the use in Catalan of definite articles before peoples' names? Tedrickja (talk) 18:16, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Tedrickja. First off, when you start a new topic on a talk page, please give it a heading, as I've now done above. For more guidance about using talk pages, see Help:Talk pages. In this context, the section there that you can reach directly through the link WP:TPNEW is informative.

Next: I saw that you added this observation about the definite article to the article, but I removed it for two reasons:

• You placed it in a section about the dialects of Catalan, where an observation about how Catalan differs from other languages is off-topic.
• Even if it's true in Catalan (I'm unfamiliar with this feature in Catalan), your assertion that this distinguishes Catalan from other Romance languages was untrue as the same occurs in Portuguese. Largoplazo (talk) 23:24, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I guess definite articles before given names is quite common in the Romance languages, except that it tends to be associated with colloquial styles. Catalan might be the only Romance language in which this feature is acceptable in formal styles. --Jotamar (talk) 15:34, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

In Valencian, at least, the use of the el or la pronoun before a name. This feature is common in colloquial Spanish, but in Valencian it is a formality. For example, if you want to say Juan won't come this evening, in Spanish you would say "Juan no vendrá esta tarde", but in Valencian you would say "El Juan no vindrà aquesta vesprada".

Catalan under the Francoist regime:

Added more detail regarding the treatment of Catalan under Franco's regime. Tedrickja (talk) 19:02, 10 December 2021 (UTC)