ABSTRACT
Catalan is one of the widespread and numerous Romance family of languages, all directly descended from Latin and therefore members of the Italic family of Indo-European. As the southern member of the rich and vigorous Ibero-Gallic culture which included Provençal, Catalan shares both French and Spanish traits, though it is genetically closer to Spanish – the two languages are both part of the Ibero-Romance subgroup, as opposed to the Gallo-Romance French and Provençal. At present, it is spoken by about 7 million people (mostly bilingual) in the north-eastern coastal strip of Spain, stretching from Roussillon and Andorra (where it has official status, along with French) through Catalunya (Catalonia) to Valencia and the Balearics. The standard literary language is based on the Barcelona dialect.
