# Catalan unintelligibility with Spanish?



## JGreco

I've heard many mainland Spaniards that I have talked to in my local area speak of the lack of intelligibility between Spanish and Catalan. When I've asked similar questions to American Spanish speakers, they say they understand quite a bit of Spoken Catalan. I've watched a lot of Youtube in Catalan and am of the opinion of the American Spanish speakers. I find a familiarity with spoken Catalan and can understand quite a bit of it. Why such the disconnect with the Spaniard? Is it different depending on the region of Spain about particular feelings of spoken Catalan?


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## Hulalessar

My initial thought was that if South American Spanish speakers think they can understand spoken Catalan it can only be because they have never heard it! There is though a difference between "understanding quite a bit" and making sense of what you hear. I speak Spanish quite well. As an experiment I spent five minutes listening to the news in Catalan on RTVE Ràdio 4. I "understood quite a bit" but only in the sense that I could pick out quite a few words and phrases. It was just about enough to get an idea of what they were talking about, but nowhere near enough to know what they were saying about what they were talking about. As a "control" I listened to the news in Italian on RAI and found I understood quite a lot more to the extent of being able to make out whole sentences.

That I can understand more Italian than Catalan would seem odd given that Catalan is supposedly closer to Spanish than Italian. I think the answer may lie in the way the two languages are articulated. Italian comes across as "crisper" and "cleaner"  - please note no value judgements are to be implied by that.

The fact that you can understand Catalan may have something to do with your being  able to speak Portuguese or that having watched a lot of YouTube your ear is getting attuned to Catalan.


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## anamsc

I think it depends on what you classify as "understanding".  I think most Spanish speakers, if they were spoken to slowly and clearly in Catalan, wouldn't have a problem understanding.  And certainly, if you speak Spanish, you can pick up Catalan through immersion without too much effort, in my opinion.  On the other hand, the first time you hear Catalan, if you hear it in a conversation among Catalans, you probably could understand a few words but not the whole thing.

Another reason Spaniards claim to not understand Catalan and South Americans claim to understand it is probably social.  People from other parts of Spain often resent (for lack of a better word) Catalan and how many people prefer it in Catalonia.  I have heard complaints from people from Madrid, who are frustrated when they go to Barcelona and people talk to them in Catalan, for example.  On the other hand, South American immigrants in Catalonia often see that to be hired in many jobs, they need to speak Catalan, so they're more likely to say they understand it, even if it's a very tenuous understanding.  This is just my impression as neither a Spaniard nor a South American, please correct me if I'm wrong!


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## Sepia

I can imagine that if the only Romance langue you know well is Castellano it can be pretty difficult if not impossible to make any sense of spoken or written Catalan. If, however, you also know French and maybe even Italian, reading it turns out a lot easier. And once you get used to the pronounciation and can recognize the most important verb endings it is really not so difficult. 

It is similar to the "game" up in my end of the world: I you only speak High German or Danish you'll have huge problems understanding Low German (Platt). If you know both it becomes a lot easier understanding the third language of the same group as well.


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## panjabigator

Most Spaniards I met said they could understand it _más o menos_.  I've spoken with people from Madrid, Extremadura, Asturias, and Andalusia, and the topic of intelligibility always arose when I explained that I lived in Catalonia.  These particular speakers said they could get the gist of a Catalan conversation, which seems to be (at least for me) a general feeling towards Catalan.

You all could probably develop or refute this more, but my understanding is that the concept of Catalan nation and identity is ubiquitous in Spain; people know that there is a separate culture and robust language, and that it is _not_ synonymous or coterminous with Spanish culture.  When I speak to Hispanophones from outside Spain (who may not be so informed about Spanish cultural and linguisitic demographics), I have encountered some dismissive "yeah I understand it" responses.  But I haven't thoroughly investigated it yet.  Simply my musings from a bus that has WiFi 

Perhaps some disconnect arises with the Spanish speakers who have a poorer opinion of the Catalan identity and language.  Can we classify negativity as a impediment to intelligibility?

I apologize if this comes off as a generalization.  Not my intention.


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## JGreco

I've always have wondered whether it was pronunciation of Catalan that might give south Americans a better opinion of it. I've always noticed interesting pronunciation phenomenon that South American Spanish may share with Catalan that could be part of the decision of the psyche of the Castillian American speaker. For instance the pronunciation of "Jo" (I in Catalan) is similar to the way many in South America (particularly those who speak with either Rio Platense or Caribbean Spanish accents) pronounce it also. I know most evidence suggests that those two language developments formed separately but there is a familiarity with that pronunciation. I know there is more examples but I do not have tome right now. i would like to here feedback from either more Spaniards or Catalan speakers about their opinions. I hope nothing I said offends anybody.


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## effeundici

Only for (useful?) info : 22% of Alghero (Sardinia) inhabitants speak Catalan as their mothertongue


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## MarX

JGreco said:


> I've always have wondered whether it was pronunciation of Catalan that might give south Americans a better opinion of it. I've always noticed interesting pronunciation phenomenon that South American Spanish may share with Catalan that could be part of the decision of the psyche of the Castillian American speaker. For instance the pronunciation of "Jo" (I in Catalan) is similar to the way many in South America (particularly those who speak with either Rio Platense or Caribbean Spanish accents) pronounce it also. I know most evidence suggests that those two language developments formed separately but there is a familiarity with that pronunciation. I know there is more examples but I do not have tome right now. i would like to here feedback from either more Spaniards or Catalan speakers about their opinions. I hope nothing I said offends anybody.


Let's not forget the way C is pronounced as S before E and I. Something that Catalan shares with Latin American Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French,


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## JGreco

MarX said:


> Let's not forget the way C is pronounced as S before E and I. Something that Catalan shares with Latin American Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French,


 

I've wondered if there has been a study about that. There has to be something that talks about other the similarities between Catalan and Latin American Spanish. I no Galician has greatly influenced Caribbean Spanish through the Canary Islands migration.


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## panjabigator

JGreco said:


> I've wondered if there has been a study about that. There has to be something that talks about other the similarities between Catalan and Latin American Spanish. I no Galician has greatly influenced Caribbean Spanish through the Canary Islands migration.



I believe Canary Spanish and Andalusian Spanish have a much greater role in Latin American Spanish than does Catalan.


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## ManPaisa

IMO, Catalan is for the most part incomprehensible to Spanish speakers on either side of the Atlantic. 

The main barrier is phonological. Catalan has sounds that don't exist in Spanish and that Spanish speakers cannot decodify. The same happens with Portuguese.

Italian, on the other hand, is closer phonologically to Spanish.  This similarity makes it fairly comprehensible to Spanish speakers.


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## MarX

ManPaisa said:


> IMO, Catalan is for the most part incomprehensible to Spanish speakers on either side of the Atlantic.
> 
> The main barrier is phonological. Catalan has sounds that don't exist in Spanish and that Spanish speakers cannot decodify. The same happens with Portuguese.
> 
> Italian, on the other hand, is closer phonologically to Spanish. This similarity makes it fairly comprehensible to Spanish speakers.


I agree. Not only does Catalan have grammatical features which are pretty different from Spanish (pronouns, verbs), but its pronunciation makes it even harder for Spanish speakers to understand.


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## JGreco

I unfortunately have to disagree with both of you on. First, just because a language is phonologically similar does not mean you can understand it. There are a lot of features of Italian that don't relate at all to Spanish many in terms of different word usage. I myself feel that there is a familiarity with Italian but I still have lots of trouble understanding it because many words used are very different from Spanish, but are shared with French. Greek has very similar phonology with European Spanish but I know Greek is very different from Spanish. I've always felt that the simplification of the pronunciation in Spanish limited the speakers from learning other languages. That is one of the reasons I felt they always claimed Portuguese and Catalan unintelligible. It happens in my family like that and maybe a phenomenon that occurs a lot in Latin America. As a trilingual I've always why they had such trouble, but I guess if your a monolingual, you have a different set of circumstances.


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## MarX

I wasn't just talking about the different phonological set between Spanish and Catalan, but also about how differently the letters are pronounced.
Spanish speakers probably find it easier to understand Italian because like Spanish, Italian has a relatively high correspondence between the written words and the pronunciation. When you say a word in Italian or Spanish, the probability you write it wrong is pretty low; whereas in Catalan (and Portuguese) there's a different set of rules which makes it harder for a Spanish speaker to understand the spoken words.
I think this is what Hulalessar also tried to say in his post.





Hulalessar said:


> That I can understand more Italian than Catalan would seem odd given that Catalan is supposedly closer to Spanish than Italian. I think the answer may lie in the way the two languages are articulated. Italian comes across as "crisper" and "cleaner"


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## Haizuki

I'm from Spain, more precisely from Galicia and my mother tongues are Spanish and Galician. I can understand Catalonian almost perfectly as most of the people that I know. Now I'm studying the language and I find it dead easy compared with other Romanic languages such as French. As someone said in this post, the great difference between Spanish and Catalonian lays on the phonological side, but aside from this fact (which by the way, is not really daunting if you want to learn the language) they are very similar. Catalonian's phonological rules are quite simple for the average Spanish-speaker and are nearer to Spanish than to French, for instance. 

PS: I know you are going to say that I can understand catalonian now because I'm studying the language but I used to listen to Catalonian musicians and I also watched TV shows without any problem. Catalonian is rather easy for any person who has Spanish as his/her mother tongue.


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## Hulalessar

Haizuki said:


> I'm from Spain, more precisely from Galicia and my mother tongues are Spanish and Galician. I can understand Catalonian almost perfectly as most of the people that I know. Now I'm studying the language and I find it dead easy compared with other Romanic languages such as French. As someone said in this post, the great difference between Spanish and Catalonian lays on the phonological side, but aside from this fact (which by the way, is not really daunting if you want to learn the language) they are very similar. Catalonian's phonological rules are quite simple for the average Spanish-speaker and are nearer to Spanish than to French, for instance.
> 
> PS: I know you are going to say that I can understand catalonian now because I'm studying the language but I used to listen to Catalonian musicians and I also watched TV shows without any problem. Catalonian is rather easy for any person who has Spanish as his/her mother tongue.


 
That is interesting. It may be significant that you speak Galician. The OP  who says he has no problem understanding Catalan speaks Portuguese, and Galician and Portuguese are nearer to each other than either is to any other Romance language. I am though having some difficulty in working out why, if it is the case, that knowing Portuguese or Galician should help in understanding Catalan more than knowing Spanish since, despite what you say, I am not convinced that speakers of Spanish who have not been exposed to Catalan can understand it easily. Knowing Portuguese or Galician may not of course have anything to do with it and it may simply be that you and the OP have a particularly keen ear.


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## Haizuki

I don't particularly think that Galician played a significant role regarding my relative easiness in understanding Catalonian. Galician and Catalonian aren't closer than Spanish and Catalonian are themselves although I've found some similarities in some terms that don't exist in Spanish (such as cadeira (Gal) - cadira (Cat) - silla (Sp), fiestra (Gal) - finestra (Cat)  - ventana (Sp)) but what I read while I was studying Catalonian is that during the formation of the language, Catalonian had a more dynamic nature than Spanish or Portuguese (and therefore, Galician) for it was directly linked with the language of Rome by the Legion retirees (who spoke a vulgar latin and founded several agricultural colonies across what is nowadays Catalonia's Coast)  whereas in what is now Castille, Portugal or Galicia the Latin spoken was more archaic, spread by the indigenous higher classes which at the same time learned it from Rome's educated civil servants. And this is the reason given for the differences of lexicon we come across with in Spanish and Catalonian in some words.


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## DigitalepurpureA

JGreco said:


> I've heard many mainland Spaniards that I have talked to in my local area speak of the lack of intelligibility between Spanish and Catalan. When I've asked similar questions to American Spanish speakers, they say they understand quite a bit of Spoken Catalan. I've watched a lot of Youtube in Catalan and am of the opinion of the American Spanish speakers. I find a familiarity with spoken Catalan and can understand quite a bit of it. Why such the disconnect with the Spaniard? Is it different depending on the region of Spain about particular feelings of spoken Catalan?


I'm Italian, and I know both French and Spanish.
When I went to Barcelona I could clearly read un understand Catalan.
This is because Catalan is a language that's has  a lot of similirities with French.
I don't think that a Spaniard cannot understand Catalan, especially if he/her has knowlegdes of French...


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## mcc7x

Hello all!

I wanted to offer my humble opinion regarding Spanish/Catalan intelligibility by offering my own story: I am a native speaker of English and spoke near-native-level Spanish when I moved to Barcelona in April 2001. At the time I spoke no Portuguese or French, though I could fumble my way through written texts in both those languages.

*In all honesty it took me at least about 8 months before I could understand a news broadcast in Catalan* (keeping in mind that I wasn't formally studying the language at the time), and news broadcasts are probably the easiest thing for a beginner to pick up on. After about 12 or 13 months, I could essentially understand most conversations in Catalan, but that came only after I had started working in an overwhelmingly Catalan-speaking environment (as a translator). And even then, I still had difficulty understanding friends from the western part of Tarragona who spoke a breathlessly fast _català occidental_ that was a transitional dialect between _tarragoní _and _lleidatà_.

What was the difficulty, you might ask? First and foremost, *els prenoms febles* and the tricky conjugations thereof (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_pronouns_in_Catalan); these are extremely dissimilar to Spanish (though they have parallels in Italian and French). Second, the extremely common *passat perifràstic* essentially means the opposite of what a speaker of Spanish or English (or even more so speakers of French or Portuguese) would intuitively think it would. Essentially, to form the _perifràstic, _the present tense of the verb *anar *(meaning "to go") is joined to an infinitive of another verb to mark a *past* tense. Literally, _"*Ell va fer*"_, (which, broken down into component words, translates as _He_ + _goes _+ _to do_), means _"He did"_. So really, it is _*grammatical aspects*_, much more than the phonology, are what make understanding Catalan *syntax *difficult for those who haven't been exposed for it for a long time or haven't been able to study it.

EXAMPLE:
*Se lo dije* = *L'hi vaig dir* // [*se lo 'ðixe*] vs. [*li βatʃ **'**di*]
Soundwise, if you are a monolingual Spanish-speaker unaware of Catalan grammar, the odds you will understand this basic combination of _prenoms febles _and _perifràstic_ are about nil. And for speakers of French, Italian or Portuguese who might have an easier time with the pronouns, the _perifràstic_ still means the opposite of what the exact cognate construction means in those languages.

EXAMPLE:
*Vaig cantar* does _*not *_mean _vais chanter_, _canterò__ ("vado cantare")_, or _vou cantar__._ Instead, it means (using the habitual perfect tenses in French and Italian) _j'ai chanté_, _cantai/ho cantato_, and _cantei_ in Portugese. While speakers of Catalan in Barcelona occasionally make use of a parallel *vaig a cantar* to indicate a future tense, my understanding is that this is viewed as a _"castellanisme"_ and that in careful speech one should endeavor to make use of the simple future, *cantaré*.

And of course, the phonology remains tricky for those who aren't familiar with other Romance languages. I remember even having trouble with the numbers at first! I kept thinking that *setze *("sixteen") meant "seventeen", because of the sound _"*set*"_ (which, by itself, means "seven"). And then there are tricky words, which, due to Catalan sound evolution, have phonetically merged with others that remain quite different in Spanish.

EXAMPLES:
*deu *= _debe _and _diez_; _*Déu *_= _Dios _... here the sound difference between *deu *and *Déu *is (to my ear) much less marked than the corresponding difference between closed and open vowels in Portuguese or Italian. Of course, this may also be the "bad" Barcelona pronunciation I am familiar with.
_*veu *_= _voz _and _ve _(from _"ver"_ meaning he/she/Usted "sees")
*seu *= _su,_ _suyo, sede _and _siéntate_ (from the verb *"seure"*)
_*pau *_= _Pablo _and _paz_

So, long story short, Catalans --logically-- encourage immigrants to Catalunya to speak their language, and thus tend to overemphasize the similarity between it and Spanish to learners. And, as other posters have rightfully mentioned, it is generally easy to pick out words in Catalan, especially if one speaks another Romance language besides Spanish. But... if you ask a monolingual Spanish speaker (from outside Catalunya) if he or she understands the _*full syntax*_ of a dialogue in Catalan, the honest answer will probably be that he or she does not. Put them to the test!! Of course, Catalan is a *language *and *not a dialect* of Spanish; it is absolutely logical that this should be the case. Eight years on, (five of which I spent in Catalunya), I am still occasionally stumped by Catalan if I don't pay full attention to what is being said.

I hope this helps!!
* Salutacions a tothom* 
mcc7x


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## mcc7x

Hulalessar said:


> My initial thought was that if South American Spanish speakers think they can understand spoken Catalan it can only be because they have never heard it! There is though a difference between "understanding quite a bit" and making sense of what you hear. I speak Spanish quite well. As an experiment I spent five minutes listening to the news in Catalan on RTVE Ràdio 4. I "understood quite a bit" but only in the sense that I could pick out quite a few words and phrases. It was just about enough to get an idea of what they were talking about, but nowhere near enough to know what they were saying about what they were talking about. As a "control" I listened to the news in Italian on RAI and found I understood quite a lot more to the extent of being able to make out whole sentences.
> 
> That I can understand more Italian than Catalan would seem odd given that Catalan is supposedly closer to Spanish than Italian. I think the answer may lie in the way the two languages are articulated. Italian comes across as "crisper" and "cleaner"  - please note no value judgements are to be implied by that.
> 
> The fact that you can understand Catalan may have something to do with your being  able to speak Portuguese or that having watched a lot of YouTube your ear is getting attuned to Catalan.



Back with more personal observations...

I, too, found Italian much easier to pick up on my one and only visit to Rome back in 2005. Granted, by that time I already spoke Catalan, which no doubt facilitated the task, but in comparison to my earlier post on this thread, the great similarity between Spanish and Italian phonology and verb forms also plays a great role in helping me to understand. And certainly my first brush with spoken Italian was much easier than my first experience with spoken Brazilian Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro... now that was extremely difficult, despite the amazing syntactic similarities between Portuguese and Spanish. A sample Spanish-Italian sentence to illustrate my point:

_Italian / Spanish_*
Come si dice 'vino' in italiano?* = *¿Cómo se dice 'vino' en italiano?*
['kome si 'ditʃe 'vino in itali'ano] = ['komo se 'diθe 'βino en ital'jano] = 13/12 syllables;
_
versus Catalan:_
*Com es diu 'vi' en italià?*
[kɔm əz diw βi ən itəl'ja] = 8 syllables, which tend to run together as follows: ['kɔməzdiw 'βi ənitəl'ja] _(note that in Catalan, the spelling "iu" usually represents a falling diphthong.__)_ 

Here, even though the syntax between the three languages is preserved word for word, one can see that Catalan prosody is widely divergent from that of Tuscan Italian and Castilian Spanish, which share a very similar sound structure and rhythm. The main result is that it is much easier to 'pick out sounds' from Spanish to Italian and vice versa. This then entails being able to distinguish where one words starts and another begins... which eventually leads to language comprehension. By the way, Wikipedia has a great page on this last topic: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_phonology).


Best,
mcc7x


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## ManPaisa

JGreco said:


> I unfortunately have to disagree with both of you on. First, just because a language is phonologically similar does not mean you can understand it.


Phonologically and otherwise similar.


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## MarX

mcc7x said:


> Back with more personal observations...
> 
> I, too, found Italian much easier to pick up on my one and only visit to Rome back in 2005. Granted, by that time I already spoke Catalan, which no doubt facilitated the task, but in comparison to my earlier post on this thread, the great similarity between Spanish and Italian phonology and verb forms also plays a great role in helping me to understand. And certainly my first brush with spoken Italian was much easier than my first experience with spoken Brazilian Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro... now that was extremely difficult, despite the amazing syntactic similarities between Portuguese and Spanish. A sample Spanish-Italian sentence to illustrate my point:
> 
> _Italian / Spanish_
> *Come si dice 'vino' in italiano?* = *¿Cómo se dice 'vino' en italiano?*
> ['kome si 'ditʃe 'vino in itali'ano] = ['komo se 'diθe 'βino en ital'jano] = 13/12 syllables;
> 
> _versus Catalan:_
> *Com es diu 'vi' en italià?*
> [kɔm əs diu βi ən itəl'ja] = 8 syllables, which tend to run together as follows: ['kɔməsdiu 'βi ənitəl'ja]
> 
> Here, even though the syntax between the three languages is preserved word for word, one can see that Catalan prosody is widely divergent from that of Tuscan Italian and Castilian Spanish, which share a very similar sound structure and rhythm. The main result is that it is much easier to 'pick out sounds' from Spanish to Italian and vice versa. This then entails being able to distinguish where one words starts and another begins... which leads eventually to language comprehension.
> 
> 
> Best,
> mcc7x


Another thing that makes Catalan hard to understand, at least the accent spoken in Barcelona, is the fact that unstressed E ends up sounding like A.
E.g. *Com es diu 'vi' en italià? *sound like [kòmazdiw ßi anitalià]
Also words like *veure* ends up soundling like bewra, *perdre* => perdra, *riure* => riura, *especial* => aspasyał which sound very unusual even for those who have some knowledge in French or Italian.

Salutacions


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## jaxavi

I am Uruguayan and lived in Barcelona for about a year. I had no problem understanding written Catalan. I had very little problems understanding spoken Catalan in the metro, gym, and news programs. However, if my Catalan friends spoke among themselves in Catalan, it was much more difficult to understand (I suppose for colloquial and informal phrases, and also the speed of speaking). To me, it is kind of like Portuguese. If you get used to hearing it and try not to understand everyword but rather the entire idea, I think a Spanish speaker can understand it.

Just my thoughts


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## Hajt

I totally agree with jaxavi. I've lived nearly all my life in Madrid, I don't watch TV or films in Catalan, I don't speak Italian or Portuguese, and only a tiny wee bit of French, but I can read Catalan (except for a few words) and I can understand conversations in Catalan provided they are not too colloquial or uttered too fast. I'm afraid some Spanish people just prefer to consider Catalan unintelligible than to _stoop_ themselves to making the effort to understand it. I've even heard people from Valencia say they don't understand Catalan ... which is hardly believable since Valencian is a dialect of Catalan (or a very similar language, if you ask a Valencian).


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## mcc7x

jaxavi said:


> I am Uruguayan and lived in Barcelona for about a year. I had no problem understanding written Catalan. I had very little problems understanding spoken Catalan in the metro, gym, and news programs. However, if my Catalan friends spoke among themselves in Catalan, it was much more difficult to understand (I suppose for colloquial and informal phrases, and also the speed of speaking). To me, it is kind of like Portuguese. If you get used to hearing it and try not to understand everyword but rather the entire idea, I think a Spanish speaker can understand it.
> 
> Just my thoughts



Hello jaxavi!!

I would agree with you on your point that the written language is not exceedingly difficult for a Spanish speaker to understand, although Portuguese was easier for me to read than Catalan was, when I was first exposed to both. In fact, eight months in to my stay in Catalunya I began to translate written _Catalan_ into English as well as Spanish into English. The only real hang-ups for me were the pronouns and some verbal conjugations. However... the register of the language I was translating was formal, and non-fiction to boot.

As you mention, it is much easier to understand the written/formal language than the colloquial language. For instance:


*El Govern ha decidit traslladar les instal.lacions a Manresa* =
_*El Gobierno ha decidido trasladar las instalaciones a Manresa*_.
Here, the text (in plain, literary style) is pretty simple, and reflects the sort of spoken/written register you usually get in news sources. This is what you can find in newspapers such as Avui or El Periódico (in Catalan), and I would guess that most Spanish speakers probably _would_ understand some or most of it. However, a simple conversation can be much more difficult to follow, if not only for the (predictable) sound changes:


*Els-hi van amagar allà, damunt de tot, sense que ningú s'en adonés. *[əlzi βan əmə'ga ə'ʎa, də'mun də tot, sensə kə niŋ'gu sənadu'nes]
* Se lo escondieron allá, arriba de todo, sin que nadie se enterara.*
Here, neither "van amagar" nor the conjugated form of "adonar-se'n" would make sense to the uninitiated ear.


* No m'ho puc creure! Va ser la meva neboda que ho va fer! *['nɔmu puc 'crewrə! βa'se lə 'meβə nə'βodə ku βa'fe!]
* ¡No me lo puedo creer! ¡Fue mi sobrina que/quien lo hizo! *
 The last 3 or 4 words of the second two sentences give a prime example of why conversational Catalan is hard to decipher for Spanish speakers: [*ku**βa'fe*] sounds very little (or even nothing) like [*kelo'iθo*] or Latin American/Andalusian [*kelo'iso*]. In fact, the _seseante _Spanish-speaking ear would most likely break down the sounds into words as follows:


*Va ser la meva neboda que ho va fer!  *>> "*va Cela *mébana *boda Cuba fe!*"
The result? A meaningless jumble of Spanish words, plus a nonsense word "mébana" in the middle. The ear automatically tries to break sounds down into words, but in this case, as the basic sound units are unlike their Spanish counterparts, first-time listeners are left stunned... they can read the newspaper, but speaking with friends it seems like they understand nothing at all!

This is exactly what makes the _conversational register_ in Catalan _much _more difficult to understand than more formal texts or forms of speech. Especially when you don't have a written transcription of what is being said, you can imagine that you get the 'gist' of an informal conversation, while you may in fact be missing quite a lot. I even misunderstood the first words spoken to me in Catalan upon my arrival, and took them as a rude proposition in broken English! What were they? "*Tens foc*!" But of course, I don't (and didn't) smoke. And my stunned look caused them to repeat the question in _castellano _.

*CONCLUSION*:


*Written Catalan (newspapers, etc) & most news broadcasts*: _intelligible_ to most all Spanish speakers, if they pay close attention
 

*Informal conversational Catalan*: _not intelligible_ if one is not at all familiar with the language, somewhat more intelligible for Spanish speakers who also speak some Italian, Gallego, Portuguese or French
 
Cheers,
mcc7x


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## merquiades

Hello everybody.  I'll give you my impressions of Catalan, speaking Spanish and French...  When I went to Barcelona on my first long term visit.  Immediately I could understand about half of all written texts but nothing orally.  After a period of about a month, my understanding of the language became easier and easier.  Almost everyday, without studying it, I worked out the code and got used to pronunciation...  J is usually Spanish Y pronounced Argentina-style, Z is S, L is LL but LL is often Spanish J, and the ever common X is actually Spanish J pronounced SH like in old Spanish, E is often A, and O is U, besides that endings like N, O and E are chopped off when comparing to Spanish, Italian, Portuguese.. Soon, I could understand TV, radio, annoncements and read literature, but conversation amongst natives, not... This was all that was needed since people will readily speak to you in Spanish and prefer using that language with foreigners.  I guess I think Catalan is about half Spanish and a quarter French...  After and on later visits I did study Catalan seriously which enhanced greatly my understanding of the language and reading and writing ability (the typical anar + infinitive past, conjugations, the pronoun ho etc can only be learned through study)... but I still don't understand Catalan when groups of native speakers start speaking it quickly:-(, but Valencian dialect seems easier for Spanish ears... So I guess, to summarize, at first Catalan seemed rather simple, then very very easy, but to achieve perfection you need many many years... Ok, so reading what I wrote, it doesn't sound very politically correct at all.... Sorry if I offend anyone... it's just my point of comparing languages... Of course, beyond saying, Catalan is a rich, very unique Romance language in its own right, and should be considered as such. Salut!


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