ABSTRACT
Romance language spoken by approx. 7 million speakers in the eastern and northeastern part of the Iberian peninsula, on the Balearic Islands, in French Roussillon, in the Sardinian city of Alghero, the official language of Andorra. The dialect of Barcelona, long suppressed by Franco and now enjoying a limited resurgence, forms the basis for the written language. The status of Catalan as an independent language can be seen at the phonological level in the palatalization of initial [1] (Lat. luna>lluna ‘moon’). Catalan dialects break into east and west variants, with Valencian belonging to the latter. Whether Catalan belongs to IberoRomance ( Spanish) or Gallo-Romance ( Occitan) is still debated; in many ways the area where it is spoken can be seen as a transition zone between the two.
