Just some extra info here, in Alguer (North Sardegna) they speak a Catalan dialect: Alguer. That point blew my mind! Languages are amazing :) Regards from Valencia!
@@amiestanteriadigital I’m afraid to say that a friend of mine who lives in Alghero reported that older people speak catalan while most of the young people can’t.
I watched a documentary on the Franco years in Catalunya and the old people sounded like Occitan traditional accent ( at first I thought they were speaking Southern Lengadocian Occitan ), while the young people speak with a Spanish accent and I have trouble understanding them.
The thing that blew my mind regarding to romance languages was occitan. That's the missing part. Once you hear that one everything makes sense and you'll see how the romances languages are rather a continum. Valencian sounds like catalan with castilian accent, occitan sounds like catalan with french accent, then the more north you go with the occitan languages the more it sounds french and the more east you go it starts to sound more like italian until you arrive to italy. Please give it a go and see if it makes sense to make a video about it
This is absolutely right. Catalan used to be a dialect of Occitan Open till very early Renaissance. In Italy it gives way to languages like Friulan and Piemontese. You are spot on though. It is absolutely the missing link. It’s also a very beautiful language.
Catalan and valencian are the same language, they have just diferent accents. Like the spanish from madrid and from andalucia. Same language, diferent accent.
I didn't say otherwise. I'm native Valencian speaker and we always call it Valencian, even the school textbook and the subject is called like that and that doesn't mean we are saying it's a separate language. And for the purpose of my comment it also made sense to use the word valencian since I was pointing out that the way our dialect sounds is closer to castilian than catalan form Catalonia, so stop being so picky @@shareifaedrawolf8556
Though in real ( not french occitanist propaganda ) true non mutilated Nissard ( Lenga d'Ahì ), Brigascu , Rojascu, Mentunascu, Munegascu, Tendascu, Luceram ( Lengua de Sci ) are more transitional to the gallo italian stuff and part to the ligurian intemeliese stuff. Its not occitan
It is amazing that an Italian who has never heard Catalan before will say that he understands most of it by merely paying attention to a couple videos in yt and yet there are Spanish immigrants in Catalonia that lived there for 50 years and claim absolutely no understanding of it. It is almost like they don’t want to understand it, if you know what I mean.
The opposite works for sure. I remember being a child at the Eurodisney, and by then I only spoke was Castillian and Catalan. The problem was that everything was only in four languages: English, French, German, and Italian. So... what I did is start selecting always Italian. And I almost understood everything.
I'm catalan too, and historically the catalans (and italians too) have always traded a lot by sea, which is why they are concentrated around Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and even in Alghero, Sardinia. On the other side of the sea is Italy and it is also very close by land. Many centuries of permanent communication have "brought closer" the speaking and use of the two languages.
As a native English speaker who has a reasonable grasp of French and Italian, but no (Castilian) Spanish, I was amazed when I first visited Barcelona and could read most of the captions in the art museums (which are in Catalan only).
Yes catalan to read is pretty much like french, i'm french and sometimes in the street of barcelona i feel like they wrote in french but made some stupid mistakes then i remmember it's probably catalan and not french. And sometimes they write in spanish in catalan and in french and it seem stupid since the 3 languages are so close, sometimes there is only 1 letter that's different or 1 word but it's often a word that other languages know even if an other synonimous is used so the people would perfectly understand regardless in which of the 3 languages it would be writen.
Catalan is actually a Gallo-Romance language, not Ibero-Romance, but like Galician, it's been heavily influenced by Spanish. Written Catalan is very similar to Occitan, as others have mentioned.
Mostly true that written Catalan and Occitan are very similar, with a few caveats: Provençal variant is harder for us Catalans to understand if written following Felibrige canon, which basically uses French phonetics. Otherwise, if written following their central-western canon, an Occitan text is straightforward read, nearly as if Catalan it was.
I posted a shorter version of this on the Occitan video. Here I'm going to add Spanish (Castillian) and Italian. 11 differences between Occitan (Languedoc) and Catalan (Perpignan ?) according to Pierre Bec in "La langue occitane", in the order Spa, Cat, Occ., ita, Eng: 1) maduro = madur = madür = maturo = mature; luna = lluna = lüna = luna = moon. 2) CAMA = llit = lieit = letto = bed; oo = ull = uelh = occhio = eye. 3) leche = llet = lait = latte = milk; HECHO = fet = fait = fatto = done. 4) col = col = caul = cavolo = cabbage; cosa = cosa = causa = cosa = thing. 5) razón = raó = rason = ragione = reason; decía = deia = disiá = diceva = he/she said. 6) pie = peu = pè = piede = foot; creu = cree = crei = crede = he/she believes. 7) pozo = pou = potz = pozzo = well; oz = veu = votz = voce = voice. 8) bella = bella = bèla = bella = beautiful; caña = canya = cana = canna = cane. 9) NAVA = coma = comba = burrone = combe (valley); venda = bena = benda = benda = band (ribbon). 10) cuatro = quatre = quatre (katre) = quattro = four; guardar = guardar = gardar = (man)tenere = keep. 11) luna = lluna = lüna = luna = moon; ley = llei = lei = legge = law. Also interesting: PIERNA = cama = camba = gamba = leg.
@@amilcarariano2802 If you want to be reductive everything is just latin. Occitano- romance and gallo-romance had clearly separated evolutions both in time and geographically. When linguists speak about the evolution of gallo-romance they are not at all focusing on occitan. That's why we have occitano-romance, which is an entirely different field of study and approach. I'm so tired of spanish and french linguist supremacism...
Well, as a Catalan native speaker I can say that Italian is easy to understand and I can generally follow normal conversations at least by 80%. Probably the fact that both cultures have been in touch through the Mediterranean trade for centuries has something to do with it. In the case of French is a bit different. We can read most of it (60%) but spoken French is generally not grasped. However, once we study the particularities of French pronounciation and a few key words, gates open wide and we can also rapidly understand most of it.
I wonder if you recognise this: Mentre els avis practicaven llengües amb els turistes dels contorns: "Vus tiré tot druat i després turas quilometres giré cap a la goix. I ja ho trobareu, ja ho trobareu". Veus com m'ha entès, el proper te'l fas tu. Pssa, en francès qualsevol se'n surt.
Nothing to do with any meaningful contact with Italy beyond the rest of Spain. It just diverged from the local Vulgar Latin in a manner that diverged from the dialects spoken in the West of the Peninsula.
I knew you would understand Catalan the best so far. I'm B2 in 🇪🇸🇵🇹 and A2🇮🇹, and somehow I can understand Catalan really well, even though I can't speak a word of it and have never studied it. It really is like magic. I can watch a movie in Catalan and know exactly what's happening. It's Sorcery!!!
And somehow people who have lived for 40 years in Catalonia say they understand nothing, that catalan is basically polish, and that we should all speak castillian out of respect 😂. I agree, Catalan is super easy to understand for italian, french and spanish speakers (even romanian speakers have an easy time understanding us); one of the main benefits of both being mediterranean (more cross-cultural exposure) and in the middle of most other romance languages
By the way, the oldest attested usage of the word "Catalan" was in a medieval chronicle from Pisa: "And here comes the count of Barcelona with his 'Catalans'". I leave you as homework to explore the Catalan / Italian connection during the Middle Ages.
@@worldgrea Yes, Peter III, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, helped the Sicilians to expel the French from the island in the XIV century and, in return, a Kingdom of Sicily ruled by the House of Barcelona was established. It later evolved into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies after the conquest of Naples from the French. In the following article, "KIngdom of Aragon" should be "Crown of Aragon and Catalonia" and "Aragonese" should be "Catalano-Aragonese": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Sicilian_Vespers
Catalan here. You nailed it. I don't think you misunderstood any of the things you thought you understood. Happy that you liked our language! I've recently started listening to Italian music and it's surprising how much I understand despite the fact that I've never studied Italian.
When you get to Occitan, make certain you find both speakers on the Spanish and French sides. For me, it's always really interesting to hear French speakers speaking Occitan. I don't know why, but I like the French versions more...there's something about the French pronunciations that makes the language more interesting to me.
The opposite does happen for sure. Despite never having learnt Italian language, I've visited your country quite often (Piemonte, Liguria, Veneto, Toscana, Lazio and Sardinia so far) and have always managed to get understood there by just pattering your language the best I could (that is, just by applying a few simple mechanisms to convert my catalanesque thoughts into Italian-some language); with enough success to be mistakingly taken by an italian several times! My wife uses to say as a joke that I'm "like a parrott" because I tend to instinctively listen and imitate the pronunciations, accents and rythms sorrounding me while in a journey. Perhaps there is some truth there, but I must admit that, despite she has never dared to speak Italian when visiting your country, she can also understand Italian too. Worth to be noted that, during a trip to Turin some years ago, the hotel owner happened to hear a conversation I was holding with my wife, and he got so shocked that kindly interrupted us to politely ask what language we were speaking... because it so closely resembled the occitan dialect his grandfather spoke! Due to this one and other reasons, when visiting Italy we use to feel nearly as at home. Serious.
As a Quebec French speaker, when catalans speak slowly, I can understand them pretty well. Interestingly, some words and expressions are almost the same as in dialectal Quebec French.
Je suis Québécois moé itou pis je parle un peu d'occitan provençal. Le catalan est compréhensible à 50%+ ; parfois je comprends tout, parfois je comprends rien.
Not a Romance language, but my heritage language is Mennonite Low German. It originated in the area of (modern) northwestern Germany and the Netherlands. It's always amusing to me because even though I know some High German, I've never learned Dutch, but if I hear it or read it, I have a similar experience where I can understand certain things and think "Okay, the way we say that is a lot closer to Dutch, but this other thing is a lot closer to High German". It's so interesting.
The Netherlands are sort of an escaped province of the Holy Roman Empire via rebellion from Spain, so it makes a lot of sense. It's a much closer relationship than we remember. My opinion, not fact, but it seems a lot like Dutch is just a heavy German dialect. To look at it another way, the German dialects are also separate languages, but the vagaries of political history prevented them from being considered distinct languages. Had Bavarian remained outside the eventual German (not Holy Roman) Empire, we might well think of it the same way we think of Dutch or Frisian. Though it's possible that's too recent a point in history for that truly to be so.
@@user-ef4gf7rr9r I haven't really listened to Frisian yet, but that could easily be. My one Dutch friend agrees that our language does sound like somewhat of a bridge (kind of like Occitan is in the Romance family, from the little I know about it) between High German and Dutch. I admit that I understand my language much better than I can speak it, but it's still a fascinating thing. One example would be "At home"; HG "zu Hause", Dutch "Thuis" , and for us "T'huus" or "T'hüss" (Written Mennonite German is weird), so almost the same as Dutch; but we have a word for "Sibling", "Jeschwista", that is practically the same as HG "Geschwister" with a slightly different spelling, whereas Dutch doesn't (according to my friend they just say Brother or Sister).
@user Dutch and German are completly different languages with a lot of false friends and a completly different wordorder. For example I neven been there (english) , Ik ben daar nog nooit geweest (Dutch) Ich war dar noch nie gewesen sein (German)
As someone born and raised in the Vicenza province (North-East Italy), I think I'm understanding even a 5% more than Metatron here XD That's fascinating!
I once knew a girl from Valencia who told me that Catalan was closer to Italian than Castilian. However, she said that she could understand Italians better than they could understand her. It was a matter of pronunciation she said. It seems similar to how Portuguese speakers understand Castilian very well, but the reverse is not true. Thanks for another great video!
It deppends on the accent. There are accents in the Balearic Islands where all As and Es are pronounced the same. Accents in Valencia where you don't say all the Ls and you add an A at the beggining of random words. And accents that are readed exactly as they are written. Also, because everybody speaking valencian speaks also spanish we understand better Italian than italians understand valencian. If valencian and italian have 70% of the words in common, we understand almost the rest of the words because they are in common with spanish.
The weirdest thing to me is that Portuguese speakers can understand Castillian without much trouble, but have a much harder time understanding Galician (at least that's what they say) I mean, the two languages are very closely related and Galician is objectively _more_ similar to Portuguese than Castillian ????
@@ArkadiBolschek Typically (for a Portuguese), Castilian is almost the same language (>85% lexical similarity) with different phonetics. Galician is the same language as Portuguese (albeit retaining many archaisms). In the case of modern 'Neo-Galician', 'artificial' phonetics but highly intelligible. In the case of 'Traditional Galician', especially that spoken natively in non-urban areas by the elderly, you can hardly notice the difference from modern Portuguese 😊(I can link amazing examples if you like).
Yes, I believe it is a question of phonetics. Portuguese and Catalan have many common points in that regard (many words having a similar pronunciation), with a higher complexity than Castilian or Italian.
I suggest you try Langue d'Oc / Occitan, I think it's closer to catalan and italian. I'm portuguese and once I was in south France and entered a souvenir shop where I found a tile with the saying "vai t’en cagar a la vinha e porta me la clau" and I immediately knew its meaning (go take a sh*t to the vinyard and bring me the key). Literally in portuguese would be "vai cagar à vinha e traz-me a chave", and figuratively we have the equivalent "vai ver se eu estou lá fora" (go see if I'm out there) ou "vai lá fora ver se está a chover" (go outside to see if it's raining), both meaning "get lost".
There are two main accents of catalan. You heard the one spoken in Girona, Barcelona, northern Tarragona and the Balearic Islands. The accent spoken in Lleida, western Aragón, southern Tarragona and Valencia would be even easyer for you because the way they pronunciate vowels is more similar to the way you intuitively readed them in the text.
What a pleasant surprise to have my lingua mater having a dedicated video on your channel, thanks a lot! I worked on Formentera (Balearic Islands) for a few years, tons of italian tourists aroud there, it always fascinated me how much I could understand without any study of italian, and also the pronunciation adds to the similarity most of the time, no doubt that catalan is way more similar to italian than spanish. We also have a lot of french influence.
As a southern Sardinian is quite understandable, especially bcs we have a lot of lot of loan words from the time of Aragon/spaniard rule, and while our languages don't belong to the same branch of romance languages, we share some other features, like the "salty articles". Cadira : chair Taula: it's a false friend but understandable, we use mesa /meza/ for table, while taula for us means 'board' And we use aici (aixi: so), matessi (mateix: same), and so on
Only in Alghero (L'Alguer in catalan) but it's a dialect based on medieval catalan , with the addition of sardinian and Italian loanwords, I don't know how much is intellegibile by a modern catalan speaker; as I said above a lot of catalan words are in Sardinian dialects too, but I found that some are very old fashioned, and that can be found only in dictionaries, in some cases are used in some isolated areas like in the Balearic dialects (i.e. in southern Sardinia we use "basca" for heatwave as in Balearic Islands, but in central catalan this has a different meaning, distress, or we use bastasciu : porter from catalan bastaix, but the Catalan persons I asked didn't know this word)
Catalan is the perfect mix between Italian, Spanish and French. Actually, if asian people/whoever, wanted to learn romance languages, the optimal way would be learning catalan first and then the rest would follow quite easily.
@@ballsxan Problem is that occitan is mostly dead and can't support this kind of operation. Actually catalan and occitan are very similar, but have different ways of writing the same pronunciation. There should be a unification of writing.
That's a double edged sword. As a Spanish speaker who lived in Catalonia for a while I can understand Catalan pretty well, but since the 2 languages are so close it's hard to venture into speaking Catalan because when in doubt I subconsciously revert to the safe choice. Spanish.
Hey there, Metraton. Another good video. You won me over. I'm Portuguese and I worked in Madrid for a very short spell. I met one Catalan guy, who always surprised me by choosing expressions in Catalan, which always transported instantly me back to Portugal. I definitely short circuited a couple of times. The first obviously with "Bon dia" ("Bom dia", in Portuguese). It's not exactly the same (almost, though), but since the contrast was with Castilian, it made a strong impression. I think I find also some similarities with french, besides Italian and Portuguese. Ciao, de Portugal.
I am French and a few years ago went to Barcelona and could understand 90% of what the taxi driver said in catalan. We talked about the catalan economy and independence.
You have to try Galician. --- 1. 'fenestra' (early Old Castilian) --> either 'hiniestra' or 'ventana' (c. XV) --> 'ventana' (c. XVII) 'hiniestra' was obsolete. although, 'defenestrar' is still used in Spanish. 2. 'tabula' (early Old Castilian) --> 'mesa' (from 'mensa') This is how 'mensa' got different meanings until reaching the meaning of table, presumably: 'mensa' was a specific type of cake for rituals, perfectly divided --> elaborated meal --> each part of a meal, like course in English (prima mensa, secunda mensa ) --> dish or tray --> table for eating --> table for anything. 3. 'horca' and 'furca' are cognates. 'furca' --> 'forca'?? --> 'horca', although, nowadays "horca" means either pitchfork or gallows. (It's a long story) other words related to 'furca' horqueta or forqueta = pitchfork (like saying forkette) la horquilla = the bicycle fork (like saying little fork) ahorcar = choke sb / execute by hanging
I' m catalan and this was preety cool. I spent like foud days in Torino years ago and I left with the feeling that if I had stayed a couple of days more, I would have started speaking italian.
@@mrtrollnator123 Yes, I know, I´m spanish... But there´s no such thing as "Asturian". I guess they mean bable, but that´s nearly a dead language. I was being ironical.
@@Antoniales321los que decís que es casi una lengua muerta es porque no tenéis ni idea. El nombre que se la da al bable actualmente es "asturiano". Lo que aprendiste en el cole hace 40 años ya no tiene validez.
You are indeed correct about the pronunciation of g and j. The aspirated /x/ sound of Castillian is represented with the letters "kh", and is reserved for foreign words, like certain placenames (e.g. Khorasan). There's a softer aspirated "h" we use when laughing (ahahaha) and in interjections like "ehem" and "ahá". You are also correct in identifying a similarity between Catalan and north italian languages (like Lombard and Piedmontese). Gallo-Italic languages belong to the gallo-romance branch, to which Catalan also belongs. In fact, I believe there's a video by ecolinguist where someone speaks Lombard and the Catalan speaker understands him fully. Catalan is linguistically closer to french and italian than to castillian spanish, however, because of cross-cultural contact, some words which were less common in the past have now become more popular, those words being closer to castillian. For example, the word for "more" in old catalan was "pus" (closer to french "plus" and italian "piu") but today it's "més", similar to spanish "más". Something used to be "qualque cosa" and today it's "alguna cosa". And there are many more examples. Old catalan used "haver" as the possessive verb, whereas today its "tener" which in the past meant something like "to keep". The word for "exit" is, today, "sortir", but in the past it was "eixir" (pronounced eshir, similar to italian uscire), whereas sortir meant "to come out with strength".
I think I’ve heard a Catalan girl say the word “heavy” while speaking Catalan and that was with a [x] sound like a Spanish jota. Piedmontese and Lombard are not Gallo-Romance, they are so-called Gallo-Italic dialects and they’re part of Italo-Romance varieties. Gallo-Romance is just the Romance varieties spoken in France, minus Corsican which is Italo-Romance, and Gascon which is intermediate between Gallo- and Ibero-Romance. Of course there are also Catalan-speaking pockets in France, and Catalan is Ibero-Romance.
@@mattiamele3015 No, Catalan is Occitano-Romance. Occitano-Romance is a subset of Gallo-romance. Gallo-Italic languages are Gallo-Romance too. Italian languages are subdivided into Gallo-Italic and Rhaeto-Romance (which are both Gallo-Romance and Western Romance) and Italo-Dalmatian, which is Eastern Romance. Catalan is not Ibero-Romance.
And then there’s also this English th sound that Castilian Spanish has (I’m deliberately not making it too technical here), but Catalan, to my knowledge, does not. In medieval Spanish, there were a voiceless s, a voiced s (like a z in English), a single phoneme /ts/ and its voiced counterpart /dz/ and the /sh/ /zh/ pair. At some point, depending on the region of Spain, the distinction between the voiced and the voiceless sounds disappeared and the combination of the sibilant (s sound) and the d/t sound disappeared, as did the combination of the sibilant and the y-like sound. This resulted in 3 very similar sounds with points of articulation that were very close together. As a consequence, confusion increased and to compensate for this confusion, the sh/zh moved backwards in the mouth until it reached the throat (resulting in /x/), while the ts/dz moved forwards until it reached the teeth (English interdental th sound). In Catalan this did not happen.
@@jasperkok8745 Some dialects of Catalan actually do have the th sound. Its the dialects spoken in southern Aragon. It's said that's where the th sound originated, so it would make sense that aragonese influenced dialects of catalan use it. It could also explain how the north adopted the th sound but the south of Castille didn't
For those that are surprised it is easier to understand than Spanish: The important thing to remember with catalan is it's the west most dialect of the occitan language. Occitan is like the missing link between french spanish and italian because it covered that area that divided them historically, but now much of the area speaks French and the occitan dialects are weakly holding on. In Italy the northern dialects are of course the closest because they bordered occitan on the dialect continuum. I think if metatron does occitan he'll probably reach his max for understanding. That or corsican if that's big enough of a language to do.
Molt bé Metatron. Visc al nord d'Itàlia (província de Bèrgam), però la meva dona és de Galícia, al nord-oest d'Espanya, i els darrers anys hem passat les vacances d'estiu a Catalunya. La meva filla i la seva família hi són ara. Amb la meva dona parlem en castellà, però a la família de la meva filla parlen italià i bergamasco. Per a tothom el català és més fàcil d'entendre que el bergamasco. Si ara passes al francès, serà difícil sense estudi previ. L'occità és molt variable, de Gascunya a Niça. Al departament francès de Perpinyà (Pirineus Orientals) la llengua històrica és el català, i l'occità de Llenguadoc és la més propera al català estàndard. A la Val d'Aran catalana parlen un dialecte gascó. PS. Aquesta vegada en anglès: The so-called Aragonese associated with southern Italy were mostly Catalan speakers, especially in early times (Siclian Vespers, etc.). The Kings of Aragon were also Counts of Barcelona and soveriegns of Valencia, Majorca and the Balearic Islands, Perpignan, Sardinia, SICILY, and Naples. The town of Alghero in Sardinia, where Catalan is still spoken, was populated by people from Barcelona, which is why their Catalan is not Balearic. The Borgias were from the Kingdom of Valencia. The Spanish in the Duchy of Milan ((from 1535 to 1714), as described by Manzoni in "The Betroathed" ("I promessi sposi") were instead generally speakers of Castillian, as were many governors (Toledo, etc.) in southern Itlay in that same period. Just to put the dots on the "I's" and the tildes on the Ñs. ;-)
As an Gascon Occitan speaker, I understand 90% of what you said. Without any prior studies of Catalan. This is pretty astounding. When I went to Barcelona, I usually got better results speaking a «simplified/ more straightforward» Occitan to people than with my broken Castillan…
@@DoraEmon-xf8br Same experience when I went to southern France with my extremely basic French. I was better off with Catalan, finding synonyms when I wasn't understood than speaking French.
Nissa non es ussitana, achesta caua es tipicament pròpaganda despi l'anession fransesa. Siem üna lenga d'ahi. Cuma vautre siem nuòstra caua, en transission, ma siem pü vesin lu latìn dòu pòble e sud piemunt e imperia ligüria. E Catalan finda. E siem estat sempre in gherra ambe la provensa. Nissa era sutta la protession de Genua e Pisa, e era üna ciutat ghelfa, ambe lü Grimaldi en giusc'a 1229, . La nobilita de Nissa era finda lü Lascaris, cumtat de Vintimija. Jeu parli lu nissard avant la mütilassion de la fransa e lü autre ambe ellü cros de tolosa che giamai es estada nuòstre simbolo. E debi dir che autre lu fac' che siem pròpi roman e che lü nuòstre mòt per aja sun tamben pü italian / sud piemunt - ligüria punenta che l'ussitan. Tuti achesti caua : gallina, prossima, abassia, seneca, can, cat,, viage, canta, pija, babacciu, babi, capi, fuòrsi, certu. E espression che trobes solament en Nissa : pei, buòni calena, blea, spanabanchet,, cora, giüega, düermi, finda, ecc.. Che cada sighe en la sieu majun. Acchì era la lenga d'ahi. Basta.
Yes, Catalan words and pronunciation are closer to Italian: però (typically pron. "prò"), encara, parlar, aquest (questo), finestra, cosa ("coza"), casa ("caza"), porta, molt (molto), molt bé (molto bene), etc. And, yes, "cuir" means "leather". The connection with Northern Italian might be because of gallo-romanic influence. Catalan is typically classified as gallo-romanic along with Occitan and French. That was the case originally, but as time passes it gets more influenced by Spanish. And the possessive are like in Italian, too: el meu (il mio), el teu (il tuo), etc.
'Does Wikipedia have Catalan?' Actually when i was studying Catalan and reading lots of Wikipedia articles I found some statistic somewhere saying that Catalan has something like the 10th most Wikipedia articles in the world. Obviously English is first and i think German was second or third! Catalan being in the top 10 (or maybe 11th, not sure) surprised me
I could understand a lot of it, knowing a fair amount of Spanish. Definitely the most of I have understood of any romance language. They enunciate in a way that I hear the word even if I don't know what it means immediately, which makes it easier to make a connection to a Castillian Spanish word that I can't with other romance languages, where I immediately just either get it or I don't.
As a native catalan speaker I can say that you nailed it. Or as we say in català "Ho has clavat" We have lots of similar words: Dona, cosa (with the same pronunciation), finestra, la meva (you say La mia, I think...), qui, argent, ocell, demà, parlar, fugir, estiu, prendre, voler, mai, formatge... and much more. First time in your channel, and I liked it. Congrats!
Yeah, it's truly fascinating. Lately I've been studying Italian because I leave for an Erasmus (to Palermo, by the way) and Catalan, my native language alongside Spanish, has really helped a lot. And yes, the j with every vocal is soft, but it's rarely used with e (objecte, Jerusalem, injectar...) and never used with i.
As a Catalan, I like to say that Catalan is the "cute/cutesy" one of the Romance languages. Catalan sounds very cute, while French for example is more "refined" Catalan is just like the cute younger cousin I see it as something like this! Please don’t get mad 😂 Spanish: strong French: posh Italian: sexy Romanian: the weird one Portuguese and Galician: sad Catalan: cute
i would honestly go as far as to say that Catalan can sound like it could be a regional language from Italy. very close to the Gallo-Italic languages from the north. Catalan is my favourite language (apart from Italian) because of how everything can rhyme and how musical it sounds. It's perfect for poetry and songwriting.
That's mostly because, during the "normalització llingüística" back in the 80's, political interference in "recreating catalan" took words from italian or portuguese if the old catalan word looked too much like spanish or french. Modern catalan has been a political tool for a few decades now.
@@star-pixieJust compare a dictionary (or any book that's not florid poetry) from the early 70's with one from the late 80's. Even better if from the same publisher. Maybe you still have them around, since it was mandatory in school to bring "the official latest edition" (old EGB), that changed each year, sometimes.
@@RCZM64 I know what I’m saying. My EGB went almost all under Franco. I lived the transition in my twenties. If anything, daily catalan is more Spanish nowadays than before. And the ral grammar “Pompeu Fabra” is older than that, nothing changed, at lest not more than Spanish or any other language do.
@@star-pixie Then you really didn't see (or suffer) what I'm saying. I went through that in the 80's, and still have the books to prove it wasn't a "Mandela Effect".
The first girl is the most difficult dialect in my opinion. She is from Balearic Islands… Being spaniard and bilingual in Catalan and Castilian I lived in Italy and I learned Italian in two months. Of course is not perfect but I’m fluent.
@@rogerdepoller2124 She does have Balearic accent and traits such as retaining the vowel o sound when unstressed, which is exclusive to Mallorcan dialect , but does not use the article salat and for the most part sticks to a standard Catalan vocabulary to make her, I suppose , more understandable to all Catalan speakers.
I’m italian and I lived in Barcelona, and the Catalan told me they could understand me speaking Italian very better that someone only knowing Castillan (because every Catalan knows both Catalan and Castillan). It is easy, from your video, to figure out why!
A Catalan here. It was funny to hear you. I personally tried to learn Italian some years ago I could understand 80% of what the teacher was saying, however writing and reading was tough and grammar was also a nightmare because it was quite different from ours
As an Italian who understand French and Spanish, both Catalan and Occitan sound like a charming mix of the two in different percentage. Beautiful languages.
Romance Languages are a spectrum: From left to right it goes: Portuguese, Galician, Castillian, Catalan, Aquitanian, Italian, Friulian, Romenian. And out of the spectrum, fitting nowhere, there is French.
I speak Spanish from Spain, and dont know Catalan at all and I understood the same exact thing as you did. Its very easy to pick up the meaning of it. I was translating it in my head before you did and we got the same results. "Tabla" etc... are words that also exist in Spanish so you can guess by meaning or context what they are saying.
El catalán es parte de las lenguas galo-romances, como varias de las lenguas que se hablan en el norte de Italia. Además, en Cerdeña hay un pueblo, Alghero, donde se habla catalán.
Quebecois is not French. Lived in France. Studied French in Canadian schools. Didn't help. Had a French girlfriend come over to visit. She couldn't understand it. You have to be from Quebec in order to understand Quebecois.
@@TagusMan It most certainly is French. I used to struggle to understand Scots speaking English. I sometimes struggle with Americans. And I’m a native English speaker. I lived in Montreal for two years, so I’ve heard plenty of Quebecois speech.
Its crazy how much closer romance languages are to each other then Germanic languages are. Like im a native english speaker but i can barely understand dutch and cant understand German at all. This experiment is mind blowing. Glad your doing it.
North Germanic languages, like Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are even closer than Romance languages. In fact, they are so close they could even be considered the same language (kind of like Catalan and Occitan, or Lombard and Piedmontese, or Castillian Spanish and Asturleonese). Continental Germanic languages are almost as distinct as romance languages, it just so happens most call the different continental germanic languages "dialects". But Alemannic (spoken in Switzerland) is as distant from Standard Berlin German as Portuguese is from Italian. And Dutch is closer to the northern "dialects" of German, than Berlin German is. As for English, despite all of the Norman influence, it's still pretty close to Frisian and even closer to Scots (which some people even call a dialect)
@@MrAllmightyCornholioz this is because english has been bastardized by 2 major migrations.... danes... and normans. the language is therefore a mélange and really nothing like old english (Anglo-Saxons). A german speaker would have a much easier time understanding dutch for instance. the grammar is similar. same with danish. words are also somewhat similar. If you went back 1000 years, you'd say that old-english sounds a lot like german. Not it sounds like a bunch of latin based words spoken with a celtic accent of some sort and a simplified grammar.
@@alejandror.planas9802 "In fact, they are so close they could even be considered the same language (kind of like Catalan and Occitan, or Lombard and Piedmontese, or Castillian Spanish and Asturleonese)." Not really. Danish sounds very unintelligible with Swedish and Norweigian. BUT Danes/Norweigians basically share the same writing system so it's intelligible when written. Swedish and Norweigian share the same phonology, but not always intelligible. Faroese and Icelandic are easiily understood when written although the phonology is quite different.
I'd say, as a catalan bilingual in both Castilian and Catalan, one thing that absolutely contributed to me enjoying my stay in Italy was being able to communicate with the locals in a really smooth way. I have to say you nailed most of the spoken part and you even pronounced quite accurately the written part. All in all, a really interesting video, thank you very much ☺️
As a catalan with decent understanding of languages, I can say with confidence that I can understand about 60% of an italian conversation. Sometimes even more, like 70% or higher, it depends mostly on the cadence of the words and the vocabulary used. It really is fascinating, indeed, the way that romance languages kinda mesh together. It's very cool that the catalan has a spoonful of french in it, or should I say... Both catalan and french had a common ancestor. Anyways, I'm not a linguist, so yeah. Very cool video Metatron! Take care
As a person from Brescia (east Lombardy) I can understand the catalan word for chair, "cadira". In our dialect (meant as local variation of lombard language) we say "cadrega" or even "scagna" (the latter is more commonly used).
In Portugal we also use the word "gente" and we pronunce it basically the same way. There's also other words which are similar to Portuguese, as "forquilha" for example.
It's like after the Empire fell, Northern Italy, Southeast France, and Northeast Spain formed a Romance continuum, from Castilian, Catalan, Occitan, to Piedmontese and the other Northern dialects. Metatron is working his way back to Italy.
@@alexj9603 Catalan speaking in all Kingdom of Aragon in the Spanish part? lol; in Aragon speak Aragonese ( very minority)and Spanish in some areas of Valencia the native language is Spanish and Valencian is not Catalan has its own Gubernamental the Language Academy oficial indepent of Catalan academy..
@@Lacteagalaxia Of course we can debate whether Valencian, Aragonés (and Balearic!) were separate languages in the late middle ages. The center of culture and power of the kingdom of Aragon (before 1492) war clearly Barcelona. One can assume that most people who were sent to Naples and Sicily by the Kings and government of Aragon came from around Barcelona. How strong their influence on the local lingo in southern Italy was, is another question.
Being a Lombard speaker I can confirm that some words are almost identical to lombard (or maybe venetian in some cases). Taola is identical, Cadira is similar to cadrega This word is particularly interesting because it's not very widely used in modern lombard, "scagna" is more common but Cadrega got a lot of pubblicity in the past decades thanks to comedians(Aldo/Giovannie/Giacomo) that used it in a routine with the value of a test-word, only true northeners can know it because it's rare, southeners pretending to be northers had no idea and had to pretend they knew and guess, with hilarious results. The fact that a Catalan would most likely know and "pass" comedic "test" while many italians would not is quite remarkable. Another example is "Sodats a Peu" is clearly "foot soldiers". In lombard would be like "Soldacc a pè" ( "Andaa a' pè" means go by feet) Many years ago my father went to a medical convention in Barcelona, it was in Catalan but there was live translation. My father knew only standard Italian and used the translation but some of his collegues more familiar with local languages like Lombard or Venetian preferred to not use the live translation as it was easy enough anyway Coincidentally the same comedians mentioned before in the 90s also popularized a fake Sardinian-sounding dialect in another routine. The real Sardinian language (commonly referred as dialect as almost all italian local languages) is spoken throughout the Island EXCEPT for Alghero, where they speak Catalan instead. I though it was worth to mention.
In Portuguese, it would be 'cadeira' and 'soldados a pé'. I think have seen something like 'cadieira' in Occitan and 'cadeir' in Welsh... Some Lombard dialects also seem to have some phonetic proximity to Portuguese as in this example of Lombard Trentin. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Aiqo-0HAl3o.html&pp=gAQBiAQB
I love the passion this guy has about languages and how similar they can be. Probably because it shows how we are all connected. PS: I'm from Catalonia, and you did a good job at guessing what they were saying :)
More than close to portuguese. Both are dialects of the same language. And yes, galician has a strong castilian accent, but some people there have an accent pretty closer to portuguese
Consonants sound like Spanish for the most part (except x) ; vowels are more like some Brasilian accents & like Italian (a [sometimes ɐ], closed & open e, i, closed & open o, u). Melody & rhythm can be Italian at times.
@@loicrodriguez2532 Depends heavily on the Galician speeches in consideration. The more 'castilianised' varieties are vocalically closer to Brazilian PT accents. The ones closer to Euro Portuguese (which seem to be 'dying'), can be so similar (far more than to BR PT) that Portuguese have a hard time telling the difference solely by the pronunciation (let alone Brazilians). These varieties have the typical vowel reduction of Portuguese, that Brazilian PT partially lacks, and display the 4 (or more) different realizations of the 'E' grapheme, including the emblematic portuguese very closed 'E', /ɨ/, virtually nonexistent in BR PT. Examples (especially the elderly people): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cS1Xn-eqshM.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8dtRULG-cB8.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wxg3ksMsZyY.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hZMpYnt7AXk.html
@@jandeolive6007⋅ I said some Brasilian accents. But in the border between Galicia & Portugal, like the Baixa Limia - Serra do Gerês, people have always been in close contact with Portugual & Portuguese obviously. Castilian has only 5 vowels, [a ɛ i ɔ u] while Galician has 7 vowels in stressed position, (exception: the Ancares area that presents nasals = 12 vowels). /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/ (basically like Italian as I said). This vowel system is the same as in Proto-Romance. They're normally reduced to 5 vowels in non-tonic syllables [a e i o u], &, sometimes, in final unstressed position, we hear [ e̝ o̝ a̝ ] / [ ɪ ʊ ɐ ], but it's not "castilianised" to just use close-mid [e o]: a "castilianised" accent would use the mid ([e̞ o̞]) & open-mid ([ɛ ɔ]) in any position without distinction.
Most of the very few times I've heard Catalan in my life, were the interviews after Barcelona played a match, and I usually couldn't understand a thing to save my life. This video was a pretty positive surprise for me, because I just found out that I can understand a lot more than I thought before.
The first girl speaks a Catalan in which the accent sounds clearly influenced by Castillian Spanish, she even uses some Spanish words mixed with the Catalonian ones but correct. Catalonia had a great relation with Italy, specially Sicily and Naples (they both were part of the Corona of Aragón as you surely know) so they would have been mutually influenced for centuries. It's logical that it would sound easier to understand than Castillian for an Italian. The guys on the second clip use a most standard Catalan. Interesting video pal. I was born in Barcelona and Catalan is easy to understand in a few weeks for anyone who speaks Castillian, so it would be so for an Italian speaker.
Italian here, honestly it feels closer to northern italian dialects than southern. I think the big link here is old Occitan, more than anything else really.
Yes, is a great link between both languages, I agree, in the middle Ages, between northern Italy and Spain. But the relation by sea between Spain and Southern Italy is too a fact in this relation Catalan and Italian @@alessandronavone6731
Back in the day I travelled through Italy with a friend from Barcelona. She just shouted at the locals in Catalan and was able to communicate everything we needed. 😉
First time hearing Catalan, I thought it was like a mixture of French and Castilian. But then I noticed a lot of words were exaxtly the same in Portuguese rather than Spanish. Funny how the western and eastern bits of the Iberian Peninsula have languages more similar to one another than the dominant language that seperates them geographically.
Politics. As I mentioned somewhere else, during the early 80's regional government decided to use language politically, changing a lot of vocabulary that looked too french or too spanish to something derived from portuguese and italian, respectivelly. Then, the educative system, and public TV (and radio, and newspapers) took the job to enforce it. Small rural areas took longer to adapt, actually.
@@imb5128 From memory, I only recall "mando" & "bocadillo", with many other "spanish vulgarisms that must be eliminated". Also many neologisms introduced from english since the late XIX century, ironically received first in the parts of Catalonia that industrialised first but looked "too spanish" or "too french". Without checking my old school books, still probably at my parents house, cannot search for more, since I stopped using catalan the moment I finished high school. I use way more Galician than I ever needed Catalan. But that's the way my life went, o YMMV.
@@RCZM64 That's rather ridiculous, those words were never Catalan to begin with weren't they. It's a no brainer that some minority languages might mistakenly incorporate vocabulary which actually belongs to a domineering tongue. It's in the efforts of the people to keep the language as alive and as authentic as it can get. You're presenting something quite positive and natural as the weaponizing of a language. Sorry buddy but Filipinos are also trying to get rid of uno, dos and tres, and go back to their original way of saying their numbers. It's just normal all over the world
@@imb5128 mistakenly... for several centuries, and then take it from another language. Yeah, right. Weaponizing the language is not letting you label your business ALSO in spanish instead of exclusively catalan, after enforcing bilinguism by decree for a couple decades. "Political comissars" attacking restaurants for having menus in Spanish for those who want it (english or chinese are fine, bilingual are frowned upon), or making it difficult to take university exams in any language that is not catalan, no matter if you want to take a course somewhere else. Yeah, very similar case to Philippines, sure. Whatever you say.
As someone who speaks Spanish and French Catalán does make sense and I can understand most of what they say and get the context when written is just like a French guy trying to write Spanish I love this language and same for the valencian verity (aka valencian) well I understand valencian much better then catalá Cataluña
I would love hear an ancient Catalan before the heavily influence of Castilian. I believe it was a lot closer to Italian than these days, again, due to Castilian accent as all catalan citizen are biligual.
As a Romanian I was quite shocked to see how much I understood from Catalan - it was around 60-80% written. It would be interesting to do a video about that because Emperor Trajan conquered Dacia with troops from current day Catalonia . When I’ve learned this then it all made sense
As an Andorran, I can say that it's very easy to understand (not to talk) Italian, and quite easy to grasp Portuguese, but it's probalby due to our country's schools teaching French and Spanish mandatorily (English too), making my fellow citizens quadrilinguists by the age of 18 (there are also many Portuguese children living here that speak 5 languages when they finish school). That being said, there are lots of problems understanding regional dialects or specific differences in those languages. For example, Brazilian Portuguese is easier for me than the European one and I even have trouble understanding some Catalan dialects myself.
Catalans say "Bom dia" (good morning) exactly in the same way as us (Portuguese). It may be a bit "risky" for a Portuguese saying "Bom dia" to them, as they may pursue the conversation in Catalan, of which I can understand only a few words 😊
Btw... I believe that the similarity comes from the XV century and around, because by then the Catalan fleet was across all the Mediterranean and as far as I know, a lot of contact with the Italia peninsula and islands. Until the point that in the Alguer the Catalan language remained for centuries.
Devi tener conto della presenza di elementi grammaticali che avvicinano moltissimo il catalano e l'italiano. A differenza del castigliano, in catalano tu trovi questi pronomi: hi (che equivale al ci italiano); ne (come il ne italiano). Per això (che si pronuncia perasciò = perciò). Ho imparato il catalano dopo aver parlato italiano durante più di 30 anni ed è stato molto facile per me.
Me being Maltese and knowing Italian can understand Catalan too 😇 You should try Maltese next 😅. I found out that the next upload was actually Maltese 😳
