From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Catalan, Valencian
Català, Valencià
Spoken in	Spain, France, Italy, Andorra.
Region	In Spain: Catalonia, Valencian Community, Balearic Islands, Aragon (in La Franja), Murcia (in Carche). In France: Northern Catalonia. In Italy: The city of Alghero. In Andorra.
Total speakers	9.1 million
Ranking	93
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Western Gallo-Iberian Gallo-Romance Occitano-Romance Catalan, Valencian
Official status
Official language in	In Spain: Catalonia, Valencian Community, Balearic Islands. In Italy: Alghero. In Andorra.
Regulated by	Institut d'Estudis Catalans Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ca
ISO 639-2	cat
ISO 639-3	cat – Catalan
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Philologists coined Balearic as a collective name for the group of Catalan variants that people speak in the Balearic Islands. Those who speak it refer to their variant by the name local to their individual island: "Mallorquí" (on Majorca), "Eivissenc" (Ibiza), and "Menorquí" (Minorca).

At the last census, 746,792 people in the Balearic Islands claimed to be able to speak Catalan, though some of these people may be speakers of mainland variants.^[1]

Some features of Balearic:

• Most variants of Balearic preserve a vocalic system of 8 stressed vowels /a ə ɛ e i ɔ o u/:
  • The Majorcan system has 8 stressed vowels /a ə ɛ e i ɔ o u/, reduced to 4 in unstressed position (/a ə ɛ e/ → [ə]), (/ɔ o/ → [o]).
  • The Western Minorcan system has 8 stressed vowels /a ə ɛ e i ɔ o u/, reduced to 3 in unstressed position (/a ə ɛ e/ → [ə]), (/ɔ o u/ → [u]);
  • The Eastern Minorcan and Ibizan system has only 7 stressed vowels /a ɛ e i ɔ o u/ reduced to 3 in unstressed position (/a ɛ e/ → [ə]) (/ɔ o u/ → [u]), just as in Central Catalan. There are differences between the dialect spoken in Ibiza Town (eivissenc de vila) and those of the rest of the island (eivissenc pagès) and Formentera (formenterer).
• Balearic preserves a phonemic distinction between /v/ and /b/, as do Alguerese and most varieties of Valencian.
• Balearic is the variant of Catalan that has the strongest tendency not to pronounce historical final r in any context.
• Balearic preserves the salat definite article (derived from Latin ipse/ipsa instead of ille/illa), a feature shared only with Sardinian among extant Romance languages, but which was more common in other Catalan and Gascon areas in ancient times. However, the salat definite article is also preserved along the Costa Brava (Catalonia) and in the Valencian municipalities of Tàrbena and La Vall de Gallinera.

See also

• Catalan language
• Valencian
• Alguerese

References

1. ^ http://www.caib.es/ibae/demo/catala/t2.htm. 2001 census, from Institut Balear d'Estadística, Govern de les Illes Balears

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

English

Adjective

Balearic (not comparable)

1. From, or pertaining to, the Balearic Islands

Translations

Proper noun

Balearic

1. A dialect of Catalan used in the Balearic Islands.

Translations