The Catalan language is a language of romance group, closely related to Occitan. It is the only official language in Andorra, but it shares the status of official with Spanish in the Spanish Autonomous Communities of Catalonia, Valencia and Balearic Islands. It is not recognized as official in the Autonomous Community of Aragon in Spain, the Northern Catalonia in France and the Italian city of Alguer. However it is partially used in the latter as it remains the traditional language of the territory of the Catalan Countries. Depending on the formal status and history the situation of the language differs in many aspects including education, the possibility to use in the public situations and the knowledge. The article deals briefly with these questions on the basis of official statistics as well as the research of the author of the article.
The article focuses on the language situation in Valencia, an important autonomous community of Spain. There are two official languages: Castilian as a language of the whole of Spain (i.e. Spanish) and Valencian as the Valencian people’s language proper. The paper describes the relations between Spanish and Valencian both from a linguistic and a socio-political point of view and offers a statistical summary of the use of both languages in the territory of the Valencian Community. Two tendencies important for the future of Valencia are discussed, a tendency to use “countrywide” Spanish and a tendency to preserve Valencian (the latter tendency is frequently based on respect for tradition as well as on personal decisions). In addition, the article considers relations between Valencian and Catalan.
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