# Aragonese, Valencian, Catalan: similarities



## CrazyIvan

Dear all, 

    I am so interested in the Spanish history recently and I am so curious about its various languages. How much difference lies in these three individual languages, since they actually share certain degree of similarity in history...?

   Thank you for your assistance in advance..


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## Setwale_Charm

I can only say that Valencian and Catalan are very very similar, not identical though but similar.  In fact, I have often seen English-Catalan/Valencian phrase-books where occasional differences would be marked with a slash inbetween.


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## Samaruc

The words català (Catalan) and valencià (Valencian) are two official and different names for just one language. Both names are applied to the entire language, so you could officially say that a citizen from Valencia speaks Catalan and that a citizen from Barcelona speaks Valencian… Just use the name you prefer: Catalan, Valencian, Valencian/Catalan, Catalan/Valencian… The most internationally known name is Catalan, but both are official and correct.

The Catalan/Valencian language has several dialects whose main differences are found in the pronunciation and some verbal declensions and whose boundaries don’t coincide with the administrative ones. Anyway, the intercomprehension among dialects is almost absolute.

The official norm of the language has some degree of polymorphism, which allows to adapt the written language to the peculiarities of the main dialects. It means that even the most formal Catalan/Valencian text has always some degree of dialectalism, because you must choose which dialectal set of verbal declensions you want to use (mainly two, one around Barcelona and another one around Valencia. Both are used in WR Catalan Forum).

More information here.

The Aragonese language is a different one, it shares some features with Catalan/Valencian because of neighbourhood and historical reasons, but it is in fact another language. Unfortunately, the Aragonese language is very endangered today. More information, here.

By the way, there are Wikipedias both in Valencian/Catalan and Aragonese.


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## Outsider

Samaruc said:


> More information here.


The sound changes listed in that page are remarkably similar to those of Portuguese.


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## Setwale_Charm

CrazyIvan said:


> Dear all,
> 
> I am so interested in the Spanish history recently and I am so curious about its various languages. How much difference lies in these three individual languages, since they actually share certain degree of similarity in history...?
> 
> Thank you for your assistance in advance..


 
 You forgot to mention other languages of Spain: Asturian, Galician, Basque and... let me think ...


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## panjabigator

Some related threads which are a good read too (and also some of the few Catalan threads that are NOT locked)
*Catalan/Spanish/Galician: Mutual Intelligibility*
*Catalan, French, Portuguese*

And if you know Spanish and/or Catalan, try searching the Catalan forum for differences between Valencian and Catalan.  There are some threads on the past tense which are really interesting.


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## panjabigator

Setwale_Charm said:


> You forgot to mention other languages of Spain: Asturian, Galician, Basque and... let me think ...


Extremaduren, Andalucian,  Aranes,  and....now let me think...


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## panjabigator

Check this ethnologue.com site for a map of Spain and languages.


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## CrazyIvan

Setwale_Charm said:


> You forgot to mention other languages of Spain: Asturian, Galician, Basque and... let me think ...


 

Haha, i understand..I know different languages in Spain. I specially chose these three languages because of they are geographically speaking connected with each other, so as historically.( I am not sure about Valencia, but Aragon y Catalan should have some connection in between.)

I believe that language is a reflection of history, that is why I always feel curious about the connections in between of them.  

Thank you all for the detailed information. I will look into them.....

p.s. It is a pity that Aragonese is endangered. I can get the feeling because I can speak a diminishing language as well. ( Though the number of population speaking this language may still 6 or 7 million, I still know that the context we can use now is no longer as much as what it used to be..)


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## Outsider

Valencian is closer to Catalan than Aragonese. They are considered the same language. Though all three regions had common ties in history, centuries ago.


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## Penyafort

This is an old but interesting topic and I'd like to pinpoint a few things.

1 - Catalan and Valencian are two names for the same language, the latter being traditionally used for the southern variety of the Western branch, with a parastandard of its own in which several particularities of the variety are prioritized. This is scientifically proved by linguistics and history, but as usual, disputed in recent decades by some who base their reasoning on political and extralinguistical issues.

2 - Valencian (and the whole Western Catalan area) was influenced by Aragonese, something that didn't happen with Eastern Catalan. Obviously this had to do with the geographical position but also with the strong intertwining of relationships during the centuries of the Crown of Aragon. This means that many geosynonyms are due to the Aragonese influence in the Ebro delta and Valencia, and some phonological differences could also be explained by this. Heavier, though, was the influence of Catalan on Eastern Aragonese, to the point of changing some grammar features and not only some lexicon, such as using the "go+infinitive" structure for the past tense.

3 - Both Catalan and Aragonese were 'official' during the times of the Crown, meaning that they were known and used alongside Latin by most scribes in the Royal Chancellery, which helped unify spoken differences in written scripta. However, Catalan was usually the most important of the two, given the demographic weight and the expansion over the Mediterranean, mostly undertaken by Catalan speakers. Catalan had some official usage in the 14th and 15th centuries in the Aragonese possessions in Italy and Greece, while Aragonese was only used within the Kingdom of Aragon and was often the language chosen to address Castilians, which could explain the fact that written medieval Aragonese looks more Castilianized than it actually was in the common speech.

4 - Aragonese being closer to Castilian, specially in its western varieties, meant a strong early influence from Spanish (which quickly affected Riojan and Navarrese first, and then southern and central Aragon, to the extent that Aragonese these days is only spoken natively by some ten thousand people in a few villages of Upper Aragon, near the Pyrenees. What most speak now tends to be a hybrid between proper Aragonese and Spanish. But some valleys had still a very genuine Aragonese only some decades ago, before the presence of roads, radios and newcomers in the 1950's and 60's. All this means that one has to be very careful to distinguish between what may now be considered an Aragonese word and what may have been the genuine word decades or centuries ago, probably one closer or coinciding with Catalan/Valencian and Gascon-Occitan. Which is why for some linguists the three languages form a cluster of their own in the Romance family, between the Oil languages and the West Iberian ones.


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## Kaoss

And let's not forget Aranese, an occitan dialect sponken in the Aran valley, a small region in Catalonia, bordering France.


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## Penyafort

Kaoss said:


> And let's not forget Aranese, an occitan dialect sponken in the Aran valley, a small region in Catalonia, bordering France.



Indeed. The "lines" joining Aragonese, Catalan and Occitan are themselves quite interesting, full with transitional features. Aranés is a variety of Eastern Gascon influenced by Catalan. Another very interesting one is Benasqués, a variety of Eastern Aragonese highly influenced by Catalan and Gascon. Capcinès in turn would be a variety of Northern Catalan highly influenced by Occitan. And all the varieties of western Catalan spoken in Aragon are influenced by Aragonese.


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