Sunday, February 19, 2017

Vocabulary of Catalan

Catalan is a language that is primarily spoken in northeastern Spain. It's the official language of Andorra, a small country between France and Spain. The language is similar to Spanish, but in certain cases the vocabulary is closer to that of French. Here are examples of Catalan words followed by their equivalents in French and Spanish:

one un un uno
two dos deux dos
three tres trois tres
four quatre quatre cuatro
five cinc cinq cinco
six sis six seis
seven set sept siete
eight vuit huit ocho
nine nou neuf nueve
ten deu dix diez

blue blau bleu azul
book llibre livre libro
butter mantega beurre mantequilla
cat gat chat gato
door porta porte puerta
hot calent chaud caliente
kitchen cuina cuisine cocina
nephew nebot neveu sobrino
plum pruna prune ciruela
table taula table mesa

From the vocabulary list it's clear that Catalan words are sometimes closer to Spanish than French. This is the case with dos (two), tres (three) and calent (hot). In other cases the words are closer to French as in quatre (four), vuit (eight) and blau (blue). A few words are similar to both languages such as cinc (five), gat (cat) and porta (door). Thus Catalan has many words which resemble words of both French and Spanish.

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