#catalan:resources

[guillemelgat]

Hi! Do you know of good resources for people looking to learn the pronunciation rules for Catalan? I don't know that I'm looking to necessarily dive in to learning a whole 'nother language at the moment, but I'd like to have a frame of reference for how Catalan sounds. I know it's Not Spanish, but as a native English speaker who has taken some Spanish, I'd like to know what it does sound like, because I automatically parse it as Spanish when I see it written, and I know that ain't it. Thanks!

Hello! Thank you for asking, it's always exciting when other people want to learn Catalan :)

Catalan has a lot of similarities in vocabulary and grammar to Spanish, but in terms of pronunciation it's very different—this is a big sticking point for a lot of learners. The hardest part, if you're coming from Spanish, is definitely the vowels. Unlike Spanish, there are seven vowels in Catalan—the e and the o each have a more open and a more closed pronunciation, which is hard to explain, but they'll demonstrate it in the video below. (This system of seven vowels is actually present in most Romance languages, and Spanish is an exception 😅) Catalan vowels are also fun because if they're not stressed, they change/simplify! In the western dialects of Catalan, they simplify like this:

a -> a

è, é -> é

i -> i

ò, ó -> ó

u -> u

That one's not too crazy, but in eastern dialects, they simplify wayyyy down, and it takes a lot of practice before you get accustomed to it:

a, è, é -> [ə] (this is a schwa, it's like the 'uh' sound in English)

i -> i

ò, ó, u -> u

This video from Easy Catalan does a great job of showing the pronunciation of the language, explaining all the different letters, giving examples, and letting you hear spoken Catalan! I brought up the difference between eastern/western dialects in vowel reduction because that's the only thing they don't mention, but it does show up in the video—the person in the green jacket speaks with the eastern pronunciation, and the person in the sweater with the western pronunciation.

[guillemelgat]

I’m probably very late finding this out, but Briz’s Cansons de la terra is on Wikitexts, with sheet music and MIDI recordings, so if you want to go wild looking through 19th century Catalan folksongs you can now do that!

[guillemelgat]

LGBT Terminology/Dictionaries in Minoritized Languages

I was asked by @portugue for some dictionaries/terminology lists in different languages, but I realized when I checked that I actually only have them for 2 of the languages I study. If people have more minoritized language resources for LGBTQIA+ terminology, please add them on here! Let’s try to get as many as we can.

TERMCAT - Diccionari LGBT (Catalan): https://www.termcat.cat/ca/diccionaris-en-linia/256

Stonewall Cymru - Geirfa (Welsh): https://www.stonewallcymru.org.uk/cy/cymorth-chyngor/geirfa -UPDATE: This Google doc has corrections/improvements on the Stonewall Cymru list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bE8oVmZEhl6Wxqk6EEiEkv8z5xxq-cyQYjjigQPYKO0/edit

An Foclóir Aiteach (Irish): https://usi.ie/focloir-aiteach/

Celtic Students Blog - LGBTQ Terminology in the Celtic Languages (Welsh, Cornish, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx, Breton): https://celticstudents.blogspot.com/2021/02/lgbtq-terminology-in-celtic-languages.html?m=1

Geidh.uk - Briathrachas LGDTCE+ (Scottish Gaelic): https://geidh.uk/briathrachas-lcdt/

(Last edited: 6/8/21)

[guillemelgat]

📚Aquí teniu el text d’aquesta setmana (un fragment d’Història de la llengua catalana)

📝 Tasca 2: Busca una paraula catalana al diccionari. Mira l'etimologia i comenta'ns què has trobat: una història o origen inesperat o únic, si té alguna cosa a veure amb la teva llengua materna, o qualsevol altra cosa que t'hagi semblat interessant (o no tan interessant, segons el cas). 

Aquí teniu unes diccionaris amb etimologies que podeu consultar:

Diccionari català-valencià-balear / Diccionari Alcover-Moll - https://dcvb.iec.cat/

Diccionari de l’Enciclopèdia Catalana - http://diccionari.cat/

Viccionari (Wiktionary) - https://ca.wiktionary.org/

📍Fés un post amb… la paraula escollida, la seva etimologia, i el teu comentari.

[guillemelgat]

My Catalan professor showed me this website, which has maps of regional pronunciations and variants of Catalan words collected between 1964 and 1978 by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. If you want to look at the maps themselves, you should find them by looking under Volums, hovering over a volume, clicking on Mapes, then choosing the word that you want to look at. Just a warning that if you like Catalan sociolinguistics/phonology, you will waste an entire afternoon on this website, so use with caution.

[guillemelgat]

(2/2 Random Fun Resources)

This is a resource specifically for Catalan learners, but it’s really cool! It’s basically a website that compiles poetry by Catalan authors and the different songs that these poems have been used in. If you know me and my love of Ovidi and Obrint Pas, or the fact that I have a quote from Estellés as the header image of this blog, you will understand why I think this is amazing and you should too. (My Catalan professor was very angry about the fact that they order people by first name instead of last name, but that’s a minor issue.)

[guillemelgat]

A good Catalan vocab resource

I don’t know if someone has mentioned this before, but there’s a website called Rodamots that sends out a daily email (Mon-Fri) with a word in Catalan. It’s usually a fairly advanced word (I haven’t used a lot of the words), but they’re usually fun things to know, and they also come with a passage in Catalan or two as well as a quote for the day and lots of good links. Their website has all of their previous words and expressions to go through if you want. Their Twitter will also give an overview of words and stuff, but personally I like the emails better because they’re a daily chance to practice Catalan. (They also used to send out words for Catalan beginners, but I can’t seem to find the link to that on their new website...)

[guillemelgat]

I had forgotten how good listening to LaTdT (aka LaTdP) is, I don’t know who half the players on Barça are anymore but it’s just nice listening to Catalan in the background.