# The gulf between Spanish and Catalan



## killerbee256

I've been doing some reading about romance languages, it seems like many writers make a point of the distance between Spanish and Catalan. So much so you would think they were talking about Spanish and Romanian. I know part of this is simply politics, but yet logic says at some point there were transitional dialects/languages between the two, as there are between Spanish and Portuguese/Galician. So do these still exist?


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## miguel89

There is the Aragonese dialect, which is halfway between Catalan and Spanish. It's usually divided into many subdialects. Given that these dialects lack the prestige that Spanish or Catalan have, when spoken it's normally with heavy influence from either of the two big neighbors. The amount of speakers is dwindling, but surely there are efforts underway to keep it alive.


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## Peano

I think Valencian might be seen as a transitional dialect. Unlike Central Catalan (Barcelona's variety), the vowel system of Valencian is mainly the same as in Spanish: a, e, i, o, u. [/ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are not relevant in my opinion]. Valencian has no schwa [ə], which is an essential feature of Catalan. Moreover, in Valencian all final consonants will sound (except the infinitive _r _in some areas), while Central Catalan inherits the Occitan tendency (Languedocien) to silent final consonants. All this makes Central Catalan somewhat harder than Valencian to Spanish-speaking people.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Yes, Valencian (along with the other Western dialects of Catalan) is more conservative in some aspects of phonology than the Eastern dialects... on the other hand, especially older Catalan also has a lot in common with Italian.


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## Favara

Peano said:


> [/ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are not relevant in my opinion]


Why not? They certainly are for us. The only difference is that we don't reduce unstressed vowels (or most of us don't).
Also, Spanish speakers usually find it extremely hard to pronounce/distinguish endings with multiple vowels (-nt, -st, -rts...) and the sound /v/, and there's plenty of both in Valencian phonetics.

The transition dialects are *benasquès* (with Aragonese) and *capcinès* (with Occitan).


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## Peano

Favara said:


> Why not? They certainly are for us.


I think /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are not essential phonemes in Catalan. The problematic pairs like ós (Lat. urs-) and òs (Lat. os), etc. are few, and they may be understood by the context, just like the numerous polysemic words in the language.
In my experience as a Catalan-speaker of the Barcelona area, I have the impression that people can successfully speak Catalan even if they neglect /ɛ/ and /ɔ/. Of course, it's a subjective impression.



Favara said:


> Spanish speakers usually find it extremely hard to pronounce/distinguish endings with multiple vowels (-nt, -st, -rts...) and the sound /v/


That's interesting.


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## ryba

Hi,





miguel89 said:


> There is the Aragonese dialect, which is halfway between Catalan and Spanish.




I like to think of Aragonese as a language (1) halfway between Catalan, Gascon Occitan, and Castillian. I venture to say that, not only lexically, but also morphosyntactically, most dialects of Aragonese are closer to Gascon and Catalan than they are to standard Castillian. Give this text a try. It's worth it. 

(1) (yes, a language; "dialect" could imply it's a dialect of Castillian, and that is not the way I like to think of it )


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## Angelo di fuoco

It's just to think of Aragonese as a language or, alike to Castilian, as a historical dialect of Latin. That it was eclipsed by both Catalan and Castilian and didn't produce an equally significant literature of its own is a rather sad fact, but it's a fact nevertheless.


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## killerbee256

ryba said:


> most dialects of Aragonese are closer to Gascon and Catalan than they are to standard Castillian


I would guess that those closer to standard Castilian were assimilated in to it.


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## merquiades

Personally I do not believe there is a gulf between Spanish and Catalan.  Yes, there are differences but the massive amount of things in common between the two languages be they vocabulary, grammar, even phonetics far outnumber the differences.  In colloquial speech they approach one another even more so.  This is the reason why speakers of one language learn the other so quickly.  That's how I did anyway.

As for swing dialects, yes there is a natural switch from one language to another as you move eastwards/ westwards (La franja, West Catalonia, Valencia, etc)


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## Angelo di fuoco

It's more or less easy to learn the basics of Catalan if you know Spanish, but if you want to speak/write good Catalan, it takes a great amount of time. There are many tricky things about standard Catalan orthography and grammar like the unstressed e-a, o-u and the (in-)famous prepositions "a" and "en"... I've been studying Catalan for about a year and a half (after learning, French, Spanish and Italian), but I still don't feel very sure about Catalan. I understand basic vocabulary and some words I can deduce from either Spanish, French or sometimes even Italian, but there's a lot of vocabulary that is proper only to Catala which I until now fail to relate to vocabulary in other Romance languages, and reading literature (e. g. Mercè Rodoreda) is tough.
Catalan also has many common features with French (and, probably, even more with Occitan, but I haven't try to learn Occitan yet... in the future, maybe), and many linguists state that historically it was nearer to French than to Spanish (the modern concept of Catalan is that of "llengua pont" - "bridge language"), so... should we also speak of a gulf between Catalan and French?


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## ryba

Angelo di fuoco said:


> It's more or less easy to learn the  basics of Catalan if you know Spanish, but if you want to speak/write  good Catalan, it takes a great amount of time. There are many tricky  things about standard Catalan orthography and grammar like the  unstressed e-a, o-u and the (in-)famous prepositions "a" and "en"...  I've been studying Catalan for about a year and a half (after learning,  French, Spanish and Italian), but I still don't feel very sure about  Catalan. I understand basic vocabulary and some words I can deduce from  either Spanish, French or sometimes even Italian, but there's a lot of  vocabulary that is proper only to Catala which I until now fail to  relate to vocabulary in other Romance languages, and reading literature  (e. g. Mercè Rodoreda) is tough.
> Catalan also has many common features with French (and, probably, even  more with Occitan, but I haven't try to learn Occitan yet... in the  future, maybe), and many linguists state that historically it was nearer  to French than to Spanish (the modern concept of Catalan is that of  "llengua pont" - "bridge language"), so... should we also speak of a  gulf between Catalan and French?


As long as Occitan, Arpitan (= Franco-Provençal, Romand), and  southern Oïl dialects are alive, there is a dialect continuum between  Catalan and French. Just like there is between Catalan and Castillian.  This is funny, though. When I first heard of Catalan (and Occitan), I  was told it was "something between Spanish and French", and I must  confess I had a hard time imagining what it might sound like. The two  languages (or the two standards) just seemed sooo far away from each  other in so many respects. I guess that's exactly what makes learning  any Occitano-Romance language or dialect so fun. The  eureka-kind-of-feeling never leaves you, as you keep finding missing  links every minute.


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## Peano

Angelo di fuoco said:


> There are many tricky things about standard Catalan orthography and grammar like the unstressed e-a, o-u



You're not wrong. Catalan grammar is a bit tricky. For example, the plural _-es_ from Latin _-as _is notorious. While in theory we must pronounce it -/əs/, we pronounce it rather -/as/ in the area of Barcelona. Actually we were writing _-as_ like in Latin (_rosas_) for centuries, until reformer Fabra turned plural _-as_ into _-es _few years after 1900 (arguing that some dialectal areas pronounced -/es/). Note that many Catalan surnames retain the _-as_ ending, like Casas.

To simplify the pronunciation of Catalan to foreigners I would advice to pronounce the vowels like western Catalan dialects do, that is: just like if it was Italian or Spanish. But you should remember to pronounce the plural /as/ if its corresponding singular is /a/, for example the article itself: la mare, les mares > /la mare/, /*las mares/ (= Sp. la madre, las madres). I bet most Catalans would be pleased to hear a foreigner speaking our language in such a bold manner.


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## Angelo di fuoco

When the teacher is a native speaker (until now I've had two teachers, one of whom was directly from Barcelona - I think so - and the other from neighbouring Badalona and studied at Barcelona) it's easier to imitate his or her pronunciation than to artificially construct a pronunciation for oneself. If I had had a teacher from Valencia or from the Franja de Ponent I'd probably do as you recommend, but I've only had two teachers who speak the most prestigious (and most difficult phonetically and orthographically) variant of Catalan. I'll go to Barcelona in three weeks and I'll probably stick to the variant I've learned.
I've watched the complete "Porca Misèria" series on TV3 (or, rather, in internet) and only after some time I became aware that at least two minor characters - Cristina and Dr. Grimau - who spoke western dialects (because at first I was busy just getting the general information from the dialogues). So it's rather difficult to imitate that pronunciation if one isn't used to hearing it. But the problem isn't the plural (once you know it it's easy to remember), it's rather the e-a or o-u distinction in the other syllables: the verb escoltar comes from Latin auscultare. Portuguese has escutar (and auscultar, with two more specifical meanings), Spanish escuchar (and auscultar, in medicine), French écouter and ausculter, but Italian, which also has auscultare as a specific verb, has ascoltare as the common verb.


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## Peano

Oh yes, it's a pity that the Catalan tv speaks usually the dialect of Barcelona. There was a good comedy show mainly spoken in western Catalan, almost as good as Porca Miseria: Lo Cartanya.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Cada cop que faig la busca de Lo Cartanya els resultats dispareixen uns pocs segons més tard.


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## Peano

You may try "Lo Cartanya" at YouTube. Anyway, I'm realizing that not all the characters speak in the western Catalan dialect.

As an alternative, you may get accustomed to visit Valencian tv, for example watch the news (a brief 2 minutes report is at the right, "El dia en 2 minuts").


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## Favara

I'd reccomend Autoindefinits for that. Or Socarrats, I think they're the same people.
The guy from Lo Cartanyà actually speaks Eastern Catalan and just made an imitation for the program, if I recall correctly.


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## Peano

Favara said:


> I'd reccomend Autoindefinits for that. Or Socarrats, I think they're the same people.


Thanks for let us know about those shows. Anyway, TV news have the advantage that the speakers must pronounce slowly and clearly.


Favara said:


> The guy from Lo Cartanyà actually speaks Eastern Catalan and just made an imitation for the program, if I recall correctly.


Not correct. In this TV3 video the actor Xavier Bertran himself ("Lo Cartanyà") explains [in minute 2:30] that his mother tongue was western Catalan, but he also speaks fluently standard Catalan (in the video itself) since he grew up in the eastern area, in Terrassa.


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## Penyafort

The transitional language in the Romance continuum between Spanish (Castilian) and Catalan is, as pointed out by some, Aragonese. Which is not a dialect, but a language in its own right. Obviously, because of the influence of its powerful neighbours, Spanish has influenced Western Aragonese and so has Catalan with Eastern Aragonese, which is why Central Upper Aragonese retained the most genuine traits of the language, at least until the 20th century.
_
English: I didn't make you any cake because you aren't much sweet-toothed._
Spanish (Castilian): *No os hice ninguna torta porque no sois muy golosos.*
West Aragonese: *No vos facié dinguna coca porque no sotz guaire laminers.*
East Aragonese: *No tos voi fer garra coca perque no sotz guaire laminers/llaminers.*
Catalan: *No us vaig fer cap coca perquè no sou gaire llaminers.*


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## Ronin81

There is still an evident "gulf" between Castilian and Aragonese. The groups are more or less clear, with Portuguese-Galician, Astur-Leones and Castilian on one side, Aragonese and Catalan being on the other.

The cause is the Basque wedge, that separated both areas for centuries, heavilly influencing Castilian during the process.


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## Hulalessar

Castillian and Catalan developed in distinct areas with a good distance between them. Go back far enough and if you travelled from one area to another you would have encountered intermediate varieties. Over the centuries Castillian and Catalan spread until they met in the process and in most places squeezing out the intermediate varieties. That is why today there are virtually no varieties which can be described as intermediate between Castillian and Catalan. If, for example, you travel along the coast from Málaga to Gerona you will first encounter a continuum of Castillian varieties and then a continuum of Catalan varieties, but no varieties which are a continuum between Castillian and Catalan.

I should stress that "intermediate" and "continuum" are both necessarily a question of degree and depend on how large the picture is that you are looking at. The point is though that there is almost everywhere, if not everywhere, a sharp distinction between Castillian and Catalan.


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## merquiades

Hulalessar said:


> Castillian and Catalan developed in distinct areas with a good distance between them. Go back far enough and if you travelled from one area to another you would have encountered intermediate varieties. Over the centuries Castillian and Catalan spread until they met in the process and in most places squeezing out the intermediate varieties. That is why today there are virtually no varieties which can be described as intermediate between Castillian and Catalan. If, for example, you travel along the coast from Málaga to Gerona you will first encounter a continuum of Castillian varieties and then a continuum of Catalan varieties, but no varieties which are a continuum between Castillian and Catalan.
> 
> I should stress that "intermediate" and "continuum" are both necessarily a question of degree and depend on how large the picture is that you are looking at. The point is though that there is almost everywhere, if not everywhere, a sharp distinction between Castillian and Catalan.


There are varieties of Western Catalan that appear to have quite a few more words and expressions in common with Castilian, grammar too, and are also phonetically parallel to Castilian more than to eastern Catalan, so that might account for a continuum.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> There are varieties of Western Catalan that appear to have quite a few more words and expressions in common with Castilian, grammar too, and are also *phonetically parallel* to Castilian more than to eastern Catalan, so that might account for a continuum.



There is a gulf, phonetically speaking, also with these varieties, because Castillan mantained all final unstressed vowels (except "e" after _l, r, n_) while Western Catalan, like other Gallo-Romance, Gallo-Italian and Occitan languages, dropped all final vowels but "a".
Others features in common are the diphthongization of /ɛ, ɔ/ before a palatal consonant and /ct/ consonant cluster, like in lɛcto > ljɛi̯t > llit and nɔcte > nwɔi̯t > nui̯t/nit (Cat) > nɥi (Fr).


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## Penyafort

merquiades said:


> There are varieties of Western Catalan that appear to have quite a few more words and expressions in common with Castilian, grammar too, and are also phonetically parallel to Castilian more than to eastern Catalan, so that might account for a continuum.



No, there is no continuum. Much of the Castilian influence attributed to Western Catalan, specially to South-Western, is actually due to long contact with Aragonese. Catalan only shows real transitional dialects into Aragonese and Languedocian.

It is quite obvious that Spanish/Castilian formed a cluster with Asturian and Galician/Portuguese in the North-West, far from Catalan, but Aragonese did actually meet with Castilian -and Basque- in La Rioja. The eastern area of La Rioja and southern Navarre were early speakers of what we might call 'Western Navarro-Aragonese' if it hadn't been so early Castilianized. Lexical works on rural Spanish spoken in Navarre and Rioja still reveal much of that Navarro-Aragonese substrate. Hard to know, though, if there ever was a really transitional Riojan dialect, in the way Benasquese is for Aragonese, Catalan and even Gascon, or Ribagorzan in general for both Aragonese and Catalan. Early works regarded as part of Spanish literature, like that of the first known author, Gonzalo de Berceo, actually show a bit of that transition between Castilian and Navarrese-Aragonese in many forms.


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## Penyafort

An example of how high the gulf in the lexicon might get at some point:

Catalan
_El nebot duia sovint maduixes que l'oncle menjava per sopar. La dona feia bullir el brou i rostia quelcom que s'ensumava de ben lluny. Els cosins badallaven de l'ensopiment i cercaven el gos ensinistrat que es trobava capcot sota la taula. El fillol no parlava mai, guaitava el sostre, per si hi clissava res de semblant a un ratpenat. Prop del mas, un ruc pudent panteixava malalt, amb por dels llampecs. La tardor s'acostava sense que ens n'adonéssim gaire._

Spanish
_El sobrino traía a menudo fresas que el tío comía para cenar. La mujer ponía a hervir el caldo y asaba algo que se olía de muy lejos. Los primos bostezaban del aburrimiento y buscaban el perro amaestrado que se hallaba cabizbajo bajo la mesa. El ahijado no hablaba nunca, observaba el techo por si daba en ver algo parecido a un murciélago. Cerca del caserío, un burro maloliente jadeaba enfermo, con miedo a los relámpagos. El otoño se acercaba sin que nos diéramos mucha cuenta de ello._

English
_The nephew would often bring strawberries that his uncle ate for supper. The woman boiled the broth and roasted something that could be smelt from afar. The cousins yawned out of boredom and sought the tamed dog that was lying crestfallen under the table. The godson never spoke, he watched the ceiling in case he glimpsed something similar to a bat. Near the country house, a stinky sick donkey was panting, afraid of the lightnings. Autumn was coming without us noticing that much._​


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## Olaszinhok

Penyafort said:


> Catalan
> _El nebot duia sovint maduixes que l'oncle menjava per sopar. La dona feia bullir el brou i rostia quelcom que s'ensumava de ben lluny. Els cosins badallaven de l'ensopiment i cercaven el gos ensinistrat que es trobava capcot sota la taula. El fillol no parlava mai, guaitava el sostre, per si hi clissava res de semblant a un ratpenat. Prop del mas, un ruc pudent panteixava malalt, amb por dels llampecs. La tardor s'acostava sense que ens n'adonéssim gaire._
> 
> Spanish
> _El sobrino traía a menudo fresas que el tío comía para cenar. La mujer ponía a hervir el caldo y asaba algo que se olía de muy lejos. Los primos bostezaban del aburrimiento y buscaban el perro amaestrado que se hallaba cabizbajo bajo la mesa. El ahijado no hablaba nunca, observaba el techo por si daba en ver algo parecido a un murciélago. Cerca del caserío, un burro maloliente jadeaba enfermo, con miedo a los relámpagos. El otoño se acercaba sin que nos diéramos mucha cuenta de ello._
> 
> English
> _The nephew would often bring strawberries that his uncle ate for supper. The woman boiled the broth and roasted something that could be smelt from afar. The cousins yawned out of boredom and sought the tamed dog that was lying crestfallen under the table. The godson never spoke, he watched the ceiling in case he glimpsed something similar to a bat. Near the country house, a stinky sick donkey was panting, afraid of the lightnings. Autumn was coming without us noticing that much._



It is no surprising that, according to the above Catalan passage, Italian seems to be more akin to Catalan than Spanish. 

Il nipote spesso/sovente portava delle fragole che lo zio mangiava per cena. La moglie faceva bollire il brodo e arrostiva qualcosa, il cui odore si sentiva da molto lontano. I cugini sbadigliavano per la noia e cercavano il cane addomesticato, che stava (si trovava) avvilito sotto al tavolo. Il figlioccio non parlava mai, osservava il soffitto per vedere se riusciva a scorgere qualcosa di simile ad un pipistrello. Accanto alla cascina, un asino maleodorante/puzzolente ansimava malato, spaventato dai lampi. L'autunno s'avvicinava senza che ce ne accorgessimo.


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## Dymn

Penyafort said:


> An example of how high the gulf in the lexicon might get at some point:


Well, if you specifically look for differents words then yes... I'm sure you could also do the opposite.


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## merquiades

It seems to me that passage is a deliberate attempt to find different words and use them together in sentences. But it's a good exercise to review many common words that are different.
I have chosen and copied the first paragraph of today's front page article in El Periodico's Spanish Edition and Catalan Edition without looking at them to compare how deep is the gulf.



> La propuesta de la Comisión Europea de mantener indefinidamente el horario de verano que tenemos actualmente y eliminar el de invierno empezaría a notarse el 28 de octubre, día oficial del cambio horario y en el que ya no se tendrían que retrasar las manecillas del reloj ni tampoco tendríamos una hora más para dormir. No obstante, es muy probable que este próximo otoño aún debamos seguir haciendo el tradicional cambio de hora, ya que la propuesta de Bruselas aún debe ser aprobada por el Parlamento Europeo y posteriormente ratificada por los respectivos países miembros, por lo que el margen de tiempo para implementar este cambio sería muy escaso.





> La proposta de la Comissió Europea de mantenir indefindament l'horari d'estiu que tenim actualment i eliminar el d’hivern començaria a notar-se el 28 d’octubre, dia oficial del canvi horari i en el qual ja no s’haurien d’endarrerir les busques del rellotge ni tampoc tindríem una hora més per dormir. No obstant, és molt probable que aquesta pròxima tardor encara hàgim de continuar fent el tradicional canvi d’hora, ja que la proposta de Brussel·les encara ha de ser aprovada pel Parlament Europeu i posteriorment ratificada pels respectius països membres, per la qual cosa el marge de temps per implementar aquest canvi seria molt escàs.


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## Penyafort

Olaszinhok said:


> It is no surprising that, according to the above Catalan passage, Italian seems to be more akin to Catalan than Spanish.



Indeed! In terms of lexicon at least, Italian is closer to Catalan than to Spanish for sure.



Dymn said:


> Well, if you specifically look for differents words then yes... I'm sure you could also do the opposite.



There is a poem -I can't remember the author- with exactly identical words in Catalan and Spanish, so that the only difference is in how you read it. So yes, you can do the opposite too. Being in a central position allows you to do that, I guess.

My only point was that, when you analyse the real core of the language, very few genuine Catalan words that are not pan-Romance are shared with Spanish and Portuguese. Mantega and callar would be two clear examples.



merquiades said:


> It seems to me that passage is a deliberate attempt to find different words and use them together in sentences. But it's a good exercise to review many common words that are different.
> I have chosen and copied the first paragraph of today's front page article in El Periodico's Spanish Edition and Catalan Edition without looking at them to compare how deep is the gulf.



The passage was totally deliberate, of course! That's why I said "might get at some point". And the more literary it is, the least understandable.

But taking an excerpt from a newspaper is also deceitful and can also be a wrong decision for several reasons too, at least from a linguistic point of view.

Let me quickly analyse the fragment you took:

- In that fragment, there are 14 nouns, not counting Brussels. Out of those 14 nouns, 8 are totally useless, because they are totally pan-Romance (I'm comparing the 6 major languages only). Out of the remaining 6, three can also be considered pan-Romance (reloj, cambio and otoño) because reloj is montre but also horloge in French, only Portuguese prefers mudança or troca instead of câmbio, and in the cause of autumn, all but Catalan use AUTUMNUS (autumne exists in Catalan but only in poetry, if at all). So that leaves us eventually with three useful words: *verano*, *día *and *manecillas*. What happens with Catalan in these three words? It coincides with Spanish and Portuguese in one of them, dia, because Catalan *jorn *is not used any more except in poetry. But it uses *estiu *for the summer (Spanish and Portuguese estío/estio is literary) and *busca *(Germanic origin) for the clock hands. 

- Regarding verbs, almost all are pan-Romance. The most clear differential lexicon is in the use of to have, in which Catalan does certainly align with Spanish and Portuguese. Yet in those cases in which Spanish has particularities (empezar, tener que, seguir + gerund), Catalan differs (començar, haver de, continuar + gerund). There is even one particularity of Catalan in the verb *endarrerir *(although retardar also exists).

- Adjectives are useless here, as all of them are pan-Romance.

Let me add that, even if it must be machine translation, I guess a human looks it over too. I only found one clear mistake: No obstante as No obstant. In Catalan, _això _must be added, either at the end or the beginning, so it should be _No obstant això_ or _Això no obstant_. But aside from that, the problem with machine translation between close languages is that it takes for granted that the syntax is always the same. So while you understand it completely, sometimes you can notice it's a translation because of something a bit undetectable in the structrure. But that would lead us to a much deeper non-lexical analysis.


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## Hulalessar

merquiades said:


> It seems to me that passage is a deliberate attempt to find different words and use them together in sentences. But it's a good exercise to review many common words that are different.
> I have chosen and copied the first paragraph of today's front page article in El Periodico's Spanish Edition and Catalan Edition without looking at them to compare how deep is the gulf.



The degree to which two texts approach each other is going to depend not only on the register and subject matter, but also on whether one is translated from the other. When I look at the two texts you quote the question I ask myself is whether the words chosen by the translator for the target language have been selected simply because they are suggested by the source language and fit. If the translator had had the luxury of not being under a publishing deadline, might he on careful consideration have chosen different words? Whilst a translation may not be wrong, it may not be quite what a native speaker would have written if he were producing an original text.


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## Hulalessar

Penyafort said:


> So while you understand it completely, sometimes you can notice it's a translation because of something a bit undetectable in the structrure. But that would lead us to a much deeper non-lexical analysis.



The point I hoped to make in post 31, which I wrote without seeing your post. Sometimes I buy _El Pais _and halfway through an article I say to myself: "Too many passives. Translated from English."

I read recently that some Catalans are complaining that Catalan is being diluted by Castillian because non-native Catalan speakers are creating calques. You hear the same complaint about "Dublin" Irish being made by native speakers in the Gaeltacht. In both cases it is, I fear, a natural consequence of language policy.


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## merquiades

Thanks for the analysis Penyafort. 


In a bilingual newspaper it's obvious people are working in their primary language and one of the two is translated.  But seriously I hope that a reputable newspaper is not going to just run the article through an online translator and think that that's good enough.  It's true also that translators working on a deadline may choose the easiest translation to gain time.  However, since I saw that easy calques were avoided:   like començar-comenzar, or continuar-continuar, retardar-retardar, which would have been easy matches, and that there didn't seem to be an effort to overstate or understate the difference in vocabulary, I thought it was a good selection.  It leaves me with the impression I already had, they're different but similar anyway.  So I wouldn't use the word "gulf". I think the pan-Romance vocabulary should also count.  Even though it works to bridge the gap between all the Romance languages (and often even English), it also functions to bring Spanish and Catalan together.  Is leaving _això_ out of _No obstant això_ a major error?

If someone wants to read the full articles of the previous paragraphs.  Here are the Spanish and Catalan versions.


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## Sardokan1.0

Penyafort said:


> An example of how high the gulf in the lexicon might get at some point:
> 
> Catalan
> _El nebot duia sovint maduixes que l'oncle menjava per sopar. La dona feia bullir el brou i rostia quelcom que s'ensumava de ben lluny. Els cosins badallaven de l'ensopiment i cercaven el gos ensinistrat que es trobava capcot sota la taula. El fillol no parlava mai, guaitava el sostre, per si hi clissava res de semblant a un ratpenat. Prop del mas, un ruc pudent panteixava malalt, amb por dels llampecs. La tardor s'acostava sense que ens n'adonéssim gaire._
> 
> Spanish
> _El sobrino traía a menudo fresas que el tío comía para cenar. La mujer ponía a hervir el caldo y asaba algo que se olía de muy lejos. Los primos bostezaban del aburrimiento y buscaban el perro amaestrado que se hallaba cabizbajo bajo la mesa. El ahijado no hablaba nunca, observaba el techo por si daba en ver algo parecido a un murciélago. Cerca del caserío, un burro maloliente jadeaba enfermo, con miedo a los relámpagos. El otoño se acercaba sin que nos diéramos mucha cuenta de ello._
> 
> English
> _The nephew would often bring strawberries that his uncle ate for supper. The woman boiled the broth and roasted something that could be smelt from afar. The cousins yawned out of boredom and sought the tamed dog that was lying crestfallen under the table. The godson never spoke, he watched the ceiling in case he glimpsed something similar to a bat. Near the country house, a stinky sick donkey was panting, afraid of the lightnings. Autumn was coming without us noticing that much._​






Olaszinhok said:


> It is no surprising that, according to the above Catalan passage, Italian seems to be more akin to Catalan than Spanish.
> 
> Il nipote spesso/sovente portava delle fragole che lo zio mangiava per cena. La moglie faceva bollire il brodo e arrostiva qualcosa, il cui odore si sentiva da molto lontano. I cugini sbadigliavano per la noia e cercavano il cane addomesticato, che stava (si trovava) avvilito sotto al tavolo. Il figlioccio non parlava mai, osservava il soffitto per vedere se riusciva a scorgere qualcosa di simile ad un pipistrello. Accanto alla cascina, un asino maleodorante/puzzolente ansimava malato, spaventato dai lampi. L'autunno s'avvicinava senza che ce ne accorgessimo.




Added Sardinian (Logudorese) for comparison, under some aspects can be similar sometimes to Spanish or sometimes to Catalan :

Sardinian
_Su nepode boltas medas battìat fràgulas qui su tiu mandigaìat a chena. Sa muzére ponìat a buddire su brou e arrustìat / assaìat calchi cosa, e su fiagu s'intendìat dae a tesu meda. Sos fradìles cascaìan pro s'isvilimentu e chircaìan su cane ammaestradu, qui fit a sutta de sa banca ammuzzighiladu. Su fizòlu no faeddaìat mai, abbaidaìat sa bòvera a bìdere si resessìat ad alluzzare calchi cosa qui parìat unu cincirriòlu. Affaca a su masu / a sa casina, un'àinu pùdidu fit in alènu e malàidu, assucconadu dae sos rajos. S'attunzu si che fit accurziende sene qui nos 'nde esserémus abbizados._


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## Dymn

Penyafort said:


> My only point was that, when you analyse the real core of the language, very few genuine Catalan words that are not pan-Romance are shared with Spanish and Portuguese. Mantega and callar would be two clear examples.


These are shared with Spanish, but not with French and Italian: _*algú *_"somebody", _*cara *_"face", _*cap *_"head", _*dia *_"day", _*esperar *_"to wait", _*germà/germana *_"brother/sister", _*matar *_"to kill", _*on *_"where", _*però *_"but", _*també *_"also", _*tampoc *_"not either", _*tenir *_"to have", etc.

Sometimes another word exists which is cognate of French and Italian, but is less common.


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> These are shared with Spanish, but not with French and Italian: _*algú *_"somebody", _*cara *_"face", _*cap *_"head", _*dia *_"day", _*esperar *_"to wait", _*germà/germana *_"brother/sister", _*matar *_"to kill", _*on *_"where", _*però *_"but", _*també *_"also", _*tampoc *_"not either", _*tenir *_"to have", etc.



Some words are shared with Italian:
algù - alcuno
cap - capo (head)
però - very very common in Italian
dia - dì - you can also say - buondì / buongiorno
matar - ammazzare ( to kill) ok, this is a bit different
tenir ( tenere) different meaning (to hold) but it is extremely easy to understand, essentially because in most dialects of Southern Italy _tenere_ has the same meaning as in Spanish/Catalan

* Sorry, I hadn't read your last sentence.


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## miasam

Dymn said:


> These are shared with Spanish, but not with French and Italian: _*algú *_"somebody" (...)
> Sometimes another word exists which is cognate of French and Italian, but is less common.


I believe the French aucun is a cognate of algún: aucun - Wiktionary
I hope this is not too much out of the topic but I think you might be interested to hear that there have been some doubts expressed by certain academics that Latin was actually not the mother of Romance languages.


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## Olaszinhok

miasam said:


> Latin was actually not the mother of Romance languages.


What do you mean by that? Could you please elaborate? Vulgar Latin was the ancestor of the Romance languages for sure. In other words, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, etc. are today's Latin, that is to say how Latin has evolved up to now.


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## miasam

Olaszinhok said:


> What do you mean, could you please elaborate? Vulgar latin was the ancestor of the Romance languages for sure. In other words, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, etc. are today's Latin, that is to say how that language has evolved up to now.


I mean that I once watched an interview with a Spanish linguist who theorised that Romance languages were actually descendants of local native languages of peoples who were part of the Roman empire and that Latin, being the official language of the empire acted as a superstrate (although probably genetically related), rather than as a common ancestor. I don't know if I remember correctly, though.


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## Sardokan1.0

Dymn said:


> These are shared with Spanish, but not with French and Italian: _*algú *_"somebody", _*cara *_"face", _*cap *_"head", _*dia *_"day", _*esperar *_"to wait", _*germà/germana *_"brother/sister", _*matar *_"to kill", _*on *_"where", _*però *_"but", _*també *_"also", _*tampoc *_"not either", _*tenir *_"to have", etc.
> 
> Sometimes another word exists which is cognate of French and Italian, but is less common.




Most of these are also shared with Sardinian :

_*algú *- calicúnu (someone), calchi (somebody)
*cara *- cara (face)
*cap *- cabu (head)
*dia *- die (day)
*matar *(to kill) - mazare (to slaughter/butcher, to beat to blood) - cognate also of "matziare" (from vulgar latin "matiare" = to hit with a mace), same of Italian "ammazzare" (ad matiare) - while the Sardinian verb for "to kill" is : occhìre or occhìdere.
*germà/germana *("brother/sister")* - *hermane primarzu / primarza (first cousin)
*on *_(where) - aundi (where, in southern Sardinian, from vulgar latin "ad unde->ad undi->aundi"; possible evolution of the Catalan counterpart : aundi->ondi->on)
_*però *- però (but)
*tenir *(to have) - tènnere (northern Sardinian) tènniri (southern Sardinian) - all Sardinian languages use this verb as synonymous of "to have" and obviously as "to hold"_


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## Dymn

Olaszinhok said:


> What do you mean by that? Could you please elaborate?





miasam said:


> I mean that I once watched an interview with a Spanish linguist



They probably mean this, once again an unfamous Catalan pseudoscientist 



Sardokan1.0 said:


> Most of these are also shared with Sardinian :



I think these kinds of lexical comparisons should be properly carried out and probably this thread is not the best way to do it. Anyway as I said I was pointing out vocabulary which is the most common and with a specific meaning, otherwise Catalan also has _qualcú _(dialectal), _faç _(poetic), _testa _(dialectal), _jorn _(dated),_ occir _(dated/archaic),_ frare _(different meaning),_ mes_ (dated/dialectal),_ haver _(archaic in the sense of possession).


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## Hulalessar

Romance languages did not evolve directly from Classical Latin, though at various times it has influenced their development. The areas where Romance languages are spoken were conquered at different times and, unlike Classical Latin which was essentially the same over something like four of five centuries, Vulgar Latin must have changed so that what was introduced into one place at one time was not necessarily the same as what was introduced into another at another time. Further, and this may be what the Spanish linguist has in mind, Roman legionaries were not all native Latin speakers. Whilst at first legionaries were recruited from around Rome, where the languages spoken would have been Latin or a closely related dialect, they were later recruited from other parts of Italy where non-Latin Italic, not to mention non-Italic, languages were spoken. Later still they were recruited from the provinces. It can be imagined that in any given place people speaking different varieties of Latin with varying degrees of competence would eventually develop a koine which would in due course become a Romance language.

There is necessarily a lot of speculation as there is very little direct evidence of Vulgar Latin. Once writing had become established among the Romans there would have been a situation of diglossia. This continued with the gap between speech and writing widening. It got to the stage where people considered they spoke Latin even though what they were speaking is not anything which a schoolboy today would recognise as Latin. Eventually people started to write the way they spoke and what they wrote is classified as a Romance language. The Romance languages are probably the best attested group of languages in the world, but there is still a gap which has to be filled by guesswork.


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## Hulalessar

When you ask what the distance is between two languages you have to ask what you are measuring, how you measure it and what weight you give to each element you measure. Any result you get may go against what people generally feel to be the case.


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## merquiades

@Hulalessar This reminds me of a conversation I once had with a Latin American who really thought there was a big gulf.  The reason... ever tiny little difference in a word or letter being different, dropped or pronounced differently was of great importance to her.  I remember her saying, _pollastre_ is not _pollo_, there is no way I can understand that.  I told her for _carrer_ think of _carrera_ or _carretera_ and she answered ok, but it's just not _calle_.  _Xavier_ doesn't sound like _Javier_.  Whereas for me, it has to be as different as _almanida_ for _lechuga_ or _fromatge_ for _queso_ for it to really count.


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## Penyafort

Hulalessar said:


> I read recently that some Catalans are complaining that Catalan is being diluted by Castillian because non-native Catalan speakers are creating calques. You hear the same complaint about "Dublin" Irish being made by native speakers in the Gaeltacht. In both cases it is, I fear, a natural consequence of language policy.



I'm one of these complainers, I guess. But I'd never complain about calques made by "non-native" speakers -a stateless language with more L2 than L1 speakers is something unparalleled, almost a miracle I'd say, so no complaints about it. The problem for me is when "natives" start to calque, even at a supposedly professional level, and specially when those calques are not caused by temporary influence, but by gradual unawareness of the genuine structures, so that distinctive elements of the language go from being common to be perceived as literary.



merquiades said:


> So I wouldn't use the word "gulf".


Well, I wouldn't use the word "gulf" either, not only between Spanish and Catalan, but between any pair of Romance languages (except for, perhaps, Romanian).



merquiades said:


> I think the pan-Romance vocabulary should also count.


Much of it is formed by cultisms perfectly understandable, specially in the written language, so I don't really see the point.



merquiades said:


> Is leaving _això_ out of _No obstant això_ a major error?


For a majority of the population, I bet it is not. To me, it sounds as if you didn't write _pas _in _Je ne comprends_.



Sardokan1.0 said:


> _Affaca a su masu / a sa casina, _


Interesting. Are Sardinian masus like Catalan masos? 



Dymn said:


> These are shared with Spanish, but not with French and Italian: _*algú *_"somebody", _*cara *_"face", _*cap *_"head", _*dia *_"day", _*esperar *_"to wait", _*germà/germana *_"brother/sister", _*matar *_"to kill", _*on *_"where", _*però *_"but", _*també *_"also", _*tampoc *_"not either", _*tenir *_"to have", etc.
> 
> Sometimes another word exists which is cognate of French and Italian, but is less common.


The comments I read above already point to my answer, but let me add this.

_Algú, cap, dia, esperar, germà, on,_ and _tenir _do have cognates in both French and Italian. _Cap _(<CAPU), in fact, aligns more with chef and capo than with cabeça/cabeza (<*CAPITIA).

_Matar _and _però _don't seem to have cognates in French, but they do in Italian. Nevertheless, I'd join them with _cara, també_ and _tampoc _in those words that are 'from the South-West', not just from Spanish and Portuguese, because they are also used in Occitan. (Sometimes it's just logical that French didn't inherit some words. An equivalent for cara would have coincided with chair 'flesh', chaire 'chair' and chère 'expensive', too much homophony!)

Notice how in Catalan the literary/dated/dialectal _qualcú, faç _and _visatge, jorn, frare _and _sor, ociure, mes, haver/heure_, are words that were part of the language already in the beginning, and that have become dated in most cases because of an Iberianization of the language that left aside one word of the doublets, not the other way round.



merquiades said:


> I remember her saying, _pollastre_ is not _pollo_, there is no way I can understand that.  I told her for _carrer_ think of _carrera_ or _carretera_ and she answered ok, but it's just not _calle_.  _Xavier_ doesn't sound like _Javier_.  Whereas for me, it has to be as different as *almanida *for _lechuga_ or *fromatge *for _queso_ for it to really count.



Amanida, formatge.

I agree with you. That's why I focus on non-cognates. Although in the spoken language, a simple suffix can certainly make a big difference for your ordinary guy. Notice how, between ['pojo] and [pu'ʎastrə], the first p is the only phoneme that remains in common.

Not to mention that usually Spanish speakers expect the Catalan word to be the same but with no final -o, yet a _poll _in Catalan is a louse.


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## Olaszinhok

Penyafort said:


> [pu'ʎastrə


Hello.
What about the phoneme *ʎ* in contemporary Standard Catalan? Is it on the verge of being replaced by* ʝ* like in Spanish? Dymn wrote something like that the other day and I was greatly puzzled to learn about that change. Apparently, another influence of Castilian on Catalan...


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## Sardokan1.0

Penyafort said:


> Interesting. Are Sardinian masus like Catalan masos?



The name "masu" is mostly used in southern Sardinia, where the Catalan influence in Sardinian language was stronger; it's simply the name of a little farmhouse. There is also a village which still has the Spanish or Catalan name : Elmas (El Mas), while the Sardinian name of the village is "Su Masu".

Other derivates of the Latin "Mansio" in Sardinian language can be found as :


*Massaju *(farmer) - Latin "Mansiarius / Mansionarius" (that who works in a Mansio)
*Masone *(flock of sheeps) - Perhaps in origin the term indicated the quantity of sheeps that could be contained in the stable of a Mansio, and with centuries has become a synonymous of "flock of sheeps"
The same process that happened to the Italian *"Mandria"* (herd of animals), that in Latin (Mandra) was the pen where the animals were closed in. While in Sardinian the term "Mandra" still retains the original meaning of animal pen.


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## Dymn

Penyafort said:


> The comments I read above already point to my answer, but let me add this.


Yeah, I agree. There is some vocabulary shared with Spanish and not with French, but which also appears Occitan, _nosaltres _for example. I certainly wouldn't classify Catalan as an Ibero-Romance language unless this were just a geographic label.


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## Dymn

Olaszinhok said:


> What about the phoneme *ʎ* in contemporary Standard Catalan? Is it on the verge of being replaced by* ʝ* like in Spanish? Dymn wrote something like that the other day and I was greatly puzzled to learn about that change. Apparently, another influence of Castilian on Catalan...


I wanted to leave this for Penyafort to answer but since he doesn't appear I'll comment. No, it's not *on the verge *of anything. It's becoming increasingly common among youth from the region of Barcelona, so it is still limited age- and geography-wise.


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> I wanted to leave this for Penyafort to answer but since he doesn't appear I'll comment. No, it's not *on the verge *of anything. It's becoming increasingly common among youth from the region of Barcelona, so it is still limited age- and geography-wise.


Thank you. However,  I cannot do without saying that those urban teens will be the adult speakers of tomorrow and probably this tendence will be more widespread in the future. Besides, the Language of Barcelona has a great influence on the Catalan Language on the whole, just one example: I've got a couple of textbooks of Catalan and they are based upon the Language of Barcelona, from a morphological, syntactical, lexical and phonetic point of view.


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## Dymn

Olaszinhok said:


> Thank you. However, I cannot do without saying that those urban teens will be the adult speakers of tomorrow and probably this tendence will be more widespread in the future.


Yes, this is what will happen, it's just that "on the verge" seemed excessive to me and I didn't want to leave your question unanswered


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## Penyafort

Olaszinhok said:


> Thank you. However,  I cannot do without saying that those urban teens will be the adult speakers of tomorrow and probably this tendence will be more widespread in the future. Besides, the Language of Barcelona has a great influence on the Catalan Language on the whole, just one example: *I've got a couple of textbooks of Catalan and they are based upon the Language of Barcelona, from a morphological, syntactical, lexical and phonetic point of view.*



Most languages base their standard variety on the educated speech of the national capital. I am quite sure that those textbooks you mention are not based upon "the language of Barcelona", but on Central Catalan, as the local differences between the educated speech of Barcelona, Tarragona, Girona or Manresa are minimal, and it is by far the most spoken variety (about 60% of the 10 million speakers, or 85% if you take into account that Valencians have a parastandard).

I say this because, in theory, dephonologization of correct Catalan pronunciation is not expected in textbooks or in the professional media. One can also hear some young people pronounce the Catalan l as if it was a Spanish l, so that words like _sal _are said exactly the same way in both languages by them, but that is not what is expected by a majority. As Dymn said, I also think -or hope- that it is just a reduced phenomenon, as it hurts my ears more than I could have imagined.


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## merquiades

@Penyafort Just to be crystal clear, with these pronunciation shifts (lluna as yuna or sal as SaL) we are talking about native Spanish speakers in the Barcelona area who have learned to speak Catalan as a second language, right?  We are not dealing so much with native mother tongue Catalan speakers...
I also believe that the language methods are based on educated central/eastern Catalan speakers, but not on urban Barcelona speakers who have developed non-standard traits, beyond those discussed here.


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## Penyafort

merquiades said:


> @Penyafort Just to be crystal clear, with these pronunciation shifts (lluna as yuna or sal as SaL) we are talking about native Spanish speakers in the Barcelona area who have learned to speak Catalan as a second language, right?  We are not dealing so much with native mother tongue Catalan speakers...



Mostly. And if those Spanish speakers are from Latin America, you can even add other slight differences like the way the s is pronounced, which also varies from the Castilian one. But I usually refer to native Catalan speakers. I've even heard some Catalan teens speak to friends a quite different Catalan than the one they used when speaking to their parents (I'm referring to phonology and grammar, not just vocabulary), probably because of social reasons in that specific context. So this is why I think that it is a reduced phenomenon, not a widespread thing. Not yet at least.


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## Dymn

merquiades said:


> @Penyafort Just to be crystal clear, with these pronunciation shifts (lluna as yuna or sal as SaL) we are talking about native Spanish speakers in the Barcelona area who have learned to speak Catalan as a second language, right? We are not dealing so much with native mother tongue Catalan speakers...


In my comments, I am referring to *a specific sector of* *native *Catalan speakers. Young Catalan native speakers in the Barcelona region in my experience exhibit traits such as opening their schwas to /a/ (not totally, but significantly), and merging _ll_ and _i_. Spanish native speakers there usually have a much more extensive Castilian "influence", such as merging open and closed e/o, merging _ll, i, _and _g/j_ into /ʝ/, and devoicing /z/ and /dz/.

This of course is relative to the linguistic situation in each territory, young Spanish native speakers in my town sound totally native when speaking Catalan in every possible aspect.


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