Holaa, I was watching the video of Alexia "magic trick", I ́m not spanish and I was wondering something.
Does Alexia speak catalan with her family or spanish ? Because I know she is catalan but I flet like I heard spanish when she talks to her sister.
Also, I have another question about catalan. You said that Patri did not speak catalan, and as I thought they spoke catalan in the Balearic Islands and she comes from there, I wonder what explains this (and it seems to me that Cata who also comes from there speaks it) ?
I am new to women’s football and I really enjoy reading your blog (even if my questions aren’t really about football ^^), so thank youu, I learn a lot because of you !
no, no, no. you need to re-watch the video again because alexia speaks a few sentences in spanish and then the rest of the video they are speaking in catalan. alexia speaks catalan with her family. she's born and raised in barcelona from a catalan family.
spanish and catalan are romance languages, so there are many similar words in spanish and catalan. however, if you are in "mixed" company, sometimes you will default to spanish, so that everyone in a gathering can understand.
patri comes from a spanish speaking family in mallorca, so she did not grow up speaking mallorquín (a dialect of catalan), although she understands it. cata comes from a mallorquín speaking family, as does mariona, in mallorca, so that is their first language.
also, if you watch her documentary, all alexia's scenes with her family are in catalan and the rest of the interviews are in spanish:
do you know of any good (ideally) free resources to learn Catalan? I speak Spanish and a decent amount of French and I’ve always found Catalan really beautiful! I can sort of get the gist with written Catalan but would love to learn to speak it
Yes!
1. FREE ONLINE MOOC COURSE BY UPF UNIVERSITY
As I posted recently the Pompeu Fabra University (a uni from Barcelona) has started a free MOOC course for beginners. The videos of the classes (in English) are uploaded to the course site and you can watch them whenever and follow at your own pace, it's taught in English, and it's completely free. It's the 1st level (A1), for people who have never studied Catalan before.
Inscriptions are still open! They've just started, and since you can watch the videos whenever, there's no problem in joining now. There will also be some more editions in the future.
The second part is A1.2:
Since you already speak other Romance languages, that course maybe might be too basic for you (though I'm sure it's still helpful).
2. FREE ONLINE COURSE PARLA.CAT
Besides that, my recommendation is always the website Parla.cat. This is an online interactive website funded by the Government of Catalonia to teach Catalan. You'll find the website available in Spanish, English, French, and German (choose in the top-left). You have to make an account (it asks for ID information because the certificate you get from it can be used for official immigration paperwork) and you'll get all the lessons and activities. The course is immersive in Catalan, but you get the option to translate in the bottom-right side of exercises. Also, scrolling down on the left bar menu you can find a PDF with grammar explanations, in case you need more support (though if you already know Spanish and some French grammar, I don't think you'll need that much).
In Parla.cat, you'll find all levels: from basic (A) to advanced (C1). You have two options. One option is to do it for free: you'll have access to all the material (explanations, exercises, etc). The other option is to sign up for the paid version, which is an online classroom (you'll have a teacher from Catalonia to tutor you and you can interact with your coursemates for class activities).
3. JOINING A CLASS OR HIRING A PRIVATE TUTOR (PAID)
There are over 100 universities that teach Catalan all around the world. You can check if there's one near you on the interactive map linked here: Institut Ramon Llull.
There are also many Catalan teachers who offer their services online. You can have classes via Zoom, Teams, etc. This is obviously an option you have to pay for, but it can be easier to learn and keep motivation in a personalized way like this, especially people who struggle with procrastination.
Here's a list of some people I know who offer online courses, with a link to their website. Some of them have courses that start only in September, others have private classes that can start at any moment.
Daily Catalan
Català al natural
Easy Catalan
and there's many more
4. STUDENTS' BOOKS
You can buy the students books that are used in lessons. The ones that are mostly used now are the A punt series published by Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat (link to shop here). The series Veus is a bit older but also good and used by many people. You can buy the students book and the exercise book, there's also the teacher's book which has the solutions. You'll see each book is labelled with its level according to the European Common Framework of Reference for Languages, in case it needs to be said the order is A1 (absolute beginner), A2, B1, B2, C1, until C2 (same level as native speakers).
You can also download some of the older books on PDF for free on the internet.
5. MORE FREE SELF-CORRECTING EXERCISES ONLINE
Practise conjugating verbs: Verbs.cat. You can choose what type of verbs you want to practise and for which verb tense.
Exercises to practise: SpeakCat.
JetPunk quizzes for beginners to practice: LearnCatalan - Beginner's level.
6. MORE SUPPORT MATERIAL TO HELP YOU
There are many more free resources that can be used as support. You'll find a masterlist of resources in this website: Intercat.
The books "Life in Catalonia. Learn Catalan from..." can be downloaded for free from the Government of Catalonia's website:
Learn Catalan from English
Learn Catalan from Spanish
Learn Catalan from Arabic
Learn Catalan from Tamazight
Learn Catalan from French
Learn Catalan from Hindi
Learn Catalan from Urdu
Learn Catalan from Punjabi
Learn Catalan from Romanian
Learn Catalan from Russian
Learn Catalan from Chinese
Grammar summary explanations: CPNL gramàtica.
Posters with illustrations and their vocabulary about different topics: Làmines (you can see them with and without the words) and Vocabulari en imatges.
Listening practise:
Ep! Escolta i parla: these are the resources made for the teachers who teach the 1st level of Catalan to illiterate people, so it's all focused on listening and speaking. It probably won't be as useful to you but you can use it as extra material to practise with. There's the listening videos here and exercises here.
Reading and speaking and writing prompts:
Fils de conversa: website here. This was made for a volunteering programme in Catalonia that pairs a learner with a native speaker (VxL mentioned at the end of the post), so it's thought for two people who can have conversations about it. But it can also be useful for one person with an intermediate or advanced level as writing prompts or reading comprehension.
7. IMMERSION / LISTENING PRACTISE
There are different channels that make content for learners. They're native speakers but speak clearly, slowly, and choosing easier vocabulary. This will be particularly useful for beginners who already speak another Romance language (from the first moment you'll already understand a lot) or for speakers of other languages who have already studied a little bit (scroll the videos and you'll find easy topics that even beginner level can understand well enough).
Here's the ones I know:
Català al natural: YouTube.
CouchPolyglot: YouTube. She has a podcast available on Spotify and Amazon Music.
Easy Catalan: YouTube.
You can also watch the Catalan TV channels' streaming service for free from anywhere in the world! The platform from Catalonia is called 3cat, the one from the Valencian Country is A Punt, and the one from the Balearic Islands is IB3. I have recommended shows in the posts linked here and here.
The same platforms also offer the radio shows / podcasts, but it might be better to start with visual material so you can turn on subtitles (since you already speak another Romance language, I recommend turning on the subtitles in Catalan) and have some visual support.
8. GET A VOLUNTEER SPEAKING PARTNER
Even if you don't live in a Catalan speaking country, you can still join the Voluntariat per la Llengua programme in its online form. Both the face-to-face and online options are obviously free of charge.
Voluntariat per la Llengua is a programme that pairs someone who is learning Catalan with a volunteer native speaker. The pair can meet up (or, in this case, videocall) once a week to practise speaking. Their website give them lots of ideas on what to talk about. (If you live in Catalonia, these pairs get free passes or discounts for many museums and cultural activities too so they have more interesting things to see and talk about).
This is a great way to practise, but of course people who are absolute beginners will have to wait until they've learned enough to be able to hold conversations (with mistakes and missing words, but at least something). Either way, I leave you the link with information here in case you might want to use it in the future.
I hope this is useful for you! Thank you very much for considering learning our language, we are always thrilled to share it ^^
Latin languages are typically easy to learn because most of the languages follow very specific sets of rules with only a handful of exceptions that once you memorize you're good to go.
Also, they use accents, which help with figuring out how to pronounce the words and, alternatively, how to spell words.
Here are my goals for the first week of my summer language learning. I've never been very good at teaching myself things, so I'm very open to hearing recommendations of exercises or things to do from other language learners!
Spanish (C1):
watch 3x episodes of Ingobernable
complete work for my literature course on Gabriel García Márquez
raise 5 skills to gold on Duolingo (because I will finish the tree if it kills me)
