Posted by: AgenteMunicipal
Spoke Catalan..more like French or Spanish ??? - 03/27/05 12:54 PM
As some who speaks/reads/writes French Fluently, and can understand Spanish (but speak poorly)...I can read Catalan to the point of getting a jist of what the paragraph is a about...
but I've never heard Catalan spoken before...my question is...in relality, is spoken Catalan more like French or more like Spanish ???
Posted by: Fernando
Re: Spoke Catalan..more like French or Spanish ??? - 03/27/05 01:14 PM
It has a big influence from both languages. You should be able to understand it more or less while reading it, because the vocabulary is similar to french or spanish (or by the way, to any lathyn language).
Understanding it spoken is somewhat more difficult. Think it is a completely different language, so you will have the same difficulties as if you were trying to understand italian.
Fernando
Posted by: fadapreta
Re: Spoke Catalan..more like French or Spanish ??? - 04/15/05 11:05 AM
Radio Nacional de Espaņa broadcasts a channel in Catalā(Rādio 4). You can listen on-line at
http://www.rne.es/index.htm
Posted by: Old-Gringo
Re: Spoke Catalan..more like French or Spanish ??? - 05/23/05 07:01 PM
Heres my cut on it.
A long time ago I visited my companys factory in Barcelona.
In the waiting room they had the company creed on two large plaques. One was in Spanish (which I speak), the other was Catalan (which I dont speak). As I had some time on my hands I studied each.
I would probably be assaulted in Barcelona for saying this but this is what I concluded from this quick non-academic study, Catalan is Spanish with about 10%+ French thrown in.
Interestingly most Spaniards (non-Basque, non-Catalan, non-Valencian) Ive shared this observation with, totally agree.
Obviously this is a touchy subject.
Posted by: albert
Re: Spoke Catalan..more like French or Spanish ??? - 05/24/05 04:59 AM
Put a soup spoon full of peanut butter in your mouth and try to speak spanish, that's about the same thing as speaking in catalan.
As many times as I travel to barcelona, I swear I don't understand a freaking word of what they are saying to me in catalan.