pronounced as /notice/
The Catalan and Valencian orthographies encompass the spelling and punctuation of standard Catalan (set by the IEC) and Valencian (set by the AVL). There are also several adapted variants to the peculiarities of local dialects of Insular Catalan (Alguerese and the Balearic subdialects).
The history of the Catalan and Valencian orthographies shows a singularity in regard to the other Romance languages. These have been mostly developed from Latin, adapting them to their own phonetic particularities. It had been a gradual and slow process through centuries until the creation of the Academies in the 18th century that fixed the orthography from their language dominant variety.[1]
In the case of Catalan and Valencian, the mediaeval orthography had a noticeable homogeneity. The Royal Chancellery set a unitary written model in several fields. Thus, Ramon Muntaner expressed in his Chronicle (1325–1328) that the Catalans are the largest group with a single language, since all the Romance-speaking regions had very divided languages like the difference that exists between Catalans and Aragonese.[2]
In the 16th century, just after the Golden Age, the split of Catalans started. With the isolation of the Royal Court and several political events, the unitary linguistic consciousness and the shared cultural tradition broke off. The production became more dialectal.
In the 19th century, the recovery of the unity emerged, beginning with the orthography. Institutions like the Acadèmia de Bones Lletres or the Floral Games were in the middle of several orthographic dilemmas.
The orthographic norms of Catalan were first defined officially in the First International Congress of the Catalan Language, held in Barcelona in October 1906. Subsequently, the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC, founded in 1911) published the Normes ortogràfiques in 1913 under the direction of Antoni Maria Alcover and Pompeu Fabra. Despite some opposition, the spelling system was adopted immediately and became widespread enough that, in 1932, Valencian writers and intellectuals gathered in Castelló to make a formal adoption of the so-called Normes de Castelló, a set of guidelines following Pompeu Fabra's Catalan language norms.[3]
In 1917, Fabra published an Orthographic Dictionary following the orthographic norms of the IEC. In 1931–1932 the Diccionari General de la Llengua Catalana (General Dictionary of the Catalan language) appeared. In 1995, a new normative dictionary, the Dictionary of the Catalan Language of the Institute of Catalan Studies (DIEC), marked a new milestone in the orthographic fixation of the language, in addition to the incorporation of neologisms and modern uses of the language.
On the 24th October 2016, the IEC published a new orthography for Catalan, the Catalan; Valencian: Ortografia catalana, which outlined several modifications, including a reduced number of monosyllabic words that take an acute or grave diacritic for reasons of disambiguation.[4] Thus, the disyllabic word is now generally spelled ; the monosyllabic words ("dry", pronounced pronounced as //sɛk// in Central Catalan) and ("fold, wrinkle", pronounced pronounced as //sek//) are both written after the reform. Discretionary use of a diacritic is possible if the context is not sufficient for disambiguation.
Like those of many other Romance languages, the Catalan and Valencian alphabet derives from the Latin alphabet and is largely based on the respective language's phonology.
The Catalan and Valencian alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet:
| Upper case | Z | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower case | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z |
The following letter-diacritic combinations are used, but they do not constitute distinct letters in the alphabet: À à, É é, È è, Í í, Ï ï, Ó ó, Ò ò, Ú ú, Ü ü and Ç ç (though the Catalan keyboard includes the letter Ç as a separate key).[5] K k and W w are used only in loanwords. Outside loanwords, the letters Q q and Y y appear only in the digraphs qu, qü and ny. However, Y was used until the official orthography was established in 1913, when it was replaced with I, except in the digraph ny and loanwords.[6] Some Catalan surnames conserve the letter y and the word-final digraph ch (pronounced pronounced as //k//), e. g. Catalan; Valencian: La'''y'''ret, Catalan; Valencian: A'''y'''meri'''ch'''.
The following table shows the letters and their names in Standard Catalan (IEC) and Standard Valencian (AVL):
| Letter | Catalan | Valencian | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name (IEC) | Pronunciation | Name (AVL) | Pronunciation | ||
| Aa | Catalan; Valencian: a | pronounced as //ˈa// | Catalan; Valencian: a | pronounced as //ˈa// | |
| Bb | Catalan; Valencian: be, Catalan; Valencian: be alta | pronounced as //ˈbe//, pronounced as //ˈbe ˈaltə// | Catalan; Valencian: be, Catalan; Valencian: be alta | pronounced as //ˈbe//, pronounced as //ˈbe ˈalta// | |
| Cc | Catalan; Valencian: ce | pronounced as //ˈse// | Catalan; Valencian: ce | pronounced as //ˈse// | |
| Dd | Catalan; Valencian: de | pronounced as //ˈde// | Catalan; Valencian: de | pronounced as //ˈde// | |
| Ee | Catalan; Valencian: e | pronounced as //ˈɛ// | Catalan; Valencian: e | pronounced as //ˈe// | |
| Ff | Catalan; Valencian: efa | pronounced as //ˈefə// | Catalan; Valencian: efe, Catalan; Valencian: ef | pronounced as //ˈefe//, pronounced as //ˈef// | |
| Gg | Catalan; Valencian: ge | pronounced as //ˈʒe// | Catalan; Valencian: ge | pronounced as //ˈdʒe// | |
| Hh | Catalan; Valencian: hac | pronounced as //ˈak// | Catalan; Valencian: hac | pronounced as //ˈak// | |
| Ii | Catalan; Valencian: i, Catalan; Valencian: i llatina | pronounced as //ˈi//, pronounced as //ˈi ʎəˈtinə// | Catalan; Valencian: i, Catalan; Valencian: i llatina | pronounced as //ˈi//, pronounced as //ˈi ʎaˈtina// | |
| Jj | Catalan; Valencian: jota | pronounced as //ˈʒɔtə// | Catalan; Valencian: jota | pronounced as //ˈdʒota// | |
| Kk | Catalan; Valencian: ca | pronounced as //ˈka// | Catalan; Valencian: ca | pronounced as //ˈka// | |
| Ll | Catalan; Valencian: ela | pronounced as //ˈelə// | Catalan; Valencian: ele, Catalan; Valencian: el | pronounced as //ˈele//, pronounced as //ˈel// | |
| Mm | Catalan; Valencian: ema | pronounced as //ˈemə// | Catalan; Valencian: eme, Catalan; Valencian: em | pronounced as //ˈeme//, pronounced as //ˈem// | |
| Nn | Catalan; Valencian: ena | pronounced as //ˈenə// | Catalan; Valencian: ene, Catalan; Valencian: en | pronounced as //ˈene//, pronounced as //ˈen// | |
| Oo | Catalan; Valencian: o | pronounced as //ˈɔ// | Catalan; Valencian: o | pronounced as //ˈo// | |
| Pp | Catalan; Valencian: pe | pronounced as //ˈpe// | Catalan; Valencian: pe | pronounced as //ˈpe// | |
| Catalan; Valencian: cu | pronounced as //ˈku// | Catalan; Valencian: cu | pronounced as //ˈku// | ||
| Rr | Catalan; Valencian: erra | pronounced as //ˈerə// | Catalan; Valencian: erre, Catalan; Valencian: er | pronounced as //ˈere//, pronounced as //ˈeɾ// | |
| Ss | Catalan; Valencian: essa | pronounced as //ˈesə// | Catalan; Valencian: esse, Catalan; Valencian: es | pronounced as //ˈese//, pronounced as //ˈes// | |
| Tt | Catalan; Valencian: te | pronounced as //ˈte// | Catalan; Valencian: te | pronounced as //ˈte// | |
| Uu | Catalan; Valencian: u | pronounced as //ˈu// | Catalan; Valencian: u | pronounced as //ˈu// | |
| Vv | Catalan; Valencian: ve, Catalan; Valencian: ve baixa | pronounced as //ˈve//, pronounced as //ˈbe ˈbaʃə// | Catalan; Valencian: ve, Catalan; Valencian: ve baixa | pronounced as //ˈve//, pronounced as //ˈbe ˈbajʃa// | |
| Ww | Catalan; Valencian: ve doble | pronounced as //ˈve ˈdobːlə//, pronounced as //ˈbe ˈdobːlə// | Catalan; Valencian: ve doble | pronounced as //ˈve ˈdoble//, pronounced as //ˈbe ˈdoble// | |
| Xx | Catalan; Valencian: ics, Catalan; Valencian: xeix | pronounced as //ˈiks//, pronounced as //ˈʃeʃ// | Catalan; Valencian: ics, Catalan; Valencian: xeix | pronounced as //ˈiks//, pronounced as //ˈʃejʃ// | |
| Yy | Catalan; Valencian: i grega | pronounced as //ˈi ˈɡɾeɡə// | Catalan; Valencian: i grega | pronounced as //ˈi ˈɡɾeɡa// | |
| Zz | Catalan; Valencian: zeta | pronounced as //ˈzɛtə// | Catalan; Valencian: zeta | pronounced as //ˈzeta// | |
The names efa (pronounced as //ˈefa//), ela (pronounced as //ˈela//), ema (pronounced as //ˈema//), ena (pronounced as //ˈena//), erra (pronounced as //ˈera//), and essa (pronounced as //ˈesa//) are also used in certain speeches of Valencian.
The names be alta ("high b") and ve baixa ("low v") are used by speakers who do not distinguish the phonemes pronounced as //b// and pronounced as //v//. Speakers that do distinguish them use the simple names be and ve.[7]
Catalan is a pluricentric language; the pronunciation of some of the letters is different in Central Eastern Catalan (IEC) and Valencian (AVL). Apart from those variations, the pronunciation of most consonants is fairly straightforward and is similar to French, Occitan or Portuguese pronunciation.
See main article: Lists of spelling-to-sound correspondences in Catalan.
The following lists includes a quick pronunciation of letters in standard Catalan and Valencian, for an in-depth view see attached main article on top of this section.
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