The Languaje

Catalan language map

Catalan, the language of eleven million Europeans

Origins, territory and population

Catalan, part of the Romance group of languages, developed between the 8th and 10th centuries in the heart of the Pyrenees in the territories of the Carolingian Empire that comprised the counties of the Marca Hispanica. During the 12th and 13th centuries it spread southwards and eastwards following the territorial conquests of the Catalan-Aragonese crown, with the linguistic border established at the end of the reign of James I.

The linguistic domain of the Catalan language is spread over 68,000 Km2 inhabited by 11,380,000 people (see table 1). At present, it is divided into seven territories distributed over four states: Andorra, Spain (where the majority of the population and land surface is located), France and Italy.

Knowledge of Catalan

The level of knowledge of Catalan in the territories where it is used as a native language is uneven due to different historical and political circumstances. The censuses and registers of 1986, 1991 and 1996 have been applied in order to obtain data on the degree of linguistic knowledge. Results indicate that the total number of people who can speak Catalan is 7,300,000 and the number of people who can understand it, is over 9,800,000.