Balearic Catalan


Balearic is the group of dialects of Catalan spoken in the Balearic Islands: mallorquí in Mallorca, eivissenc in Ibiza and menorquí in Menorca.
At the 2011 census, 861,232 respondents in the Balearic Islands claimed to be able to understand either Balearic or mainland Catalan, compared to 111,912 respondents who could not; proportions were similar on each of the islands.

Dialects

The dialects spoken in the Balearic Islands are mallorquí, spoken on Mallorca; menorquí, on Menorca; and eivissenc, on Ibiza and Formentera.

Features

Distinctive features of Catalan in the Balearic Islands differ according to the specific variant being spoken.

Phonology

;Vowels
;Consonants
;Prosody
  • Except in Ibiza, in combinations of verb and weak pronoun, the accent moves to the final element; e.g. comprar-ne or .

    Morphology and syntax

  • Balearic preserves the salat definite article, a feature shared only with Sardinian among extant Romance languages, but which was more common in other Catalan and Gascon areas in ancient times. However, the salat definite article is also preserved along the Costa Brava and in the Valencian municipalities of Tàrbena and La Vall de Gallinera.
  • The personal article en/''na, n''' is used before personal names.
  • The first person singular present indicative has a zero exponent, i.e. no visible ending. For example, what in Central Catalan would be jo parlo is realised as jo parl.
  • In verbs of the first conjugation, the first and second person plural forms end in -am and -au respectively. For example, cantam, cantau.
  • Also in verbs of the first conjugation, the imperfect subjunctive is formed with -a-, e.g. cantàs, cantassis. However, the Standard Catalan forms in are nowadays also common in many places.
  • In combinations of two unstressed pronouns preceding a verb, one direct with the form el, la, etc. and the other indirect with the form me, te, etc., the direct pronoun appears first. For example, la me dóna, Standard Catalan me la dóna.

    Lexicon

  • Balearic has a large quantity of characteristic vocabulary, especially archaisms preserved by the isolation of the islands and the variety of linguistic influences which surround them. The lexicon differs considerably depending on the subdialect. For example: al·lot for standard "noi", moix for "gat", besada for "petó", ca for "gos", doblers for "diners", horabaixa for "vesprada" and rata-pinyada for "rat-penat".
  • Menorcan has a few English loanwords dating back to the British occupation, such as grevi, xumaquer, boínder, xoc or ull blec.

    Political questions

Some in the Balearic Islands, such as the Partido Popular party member and former Balearic president José Ramón Bauzà, argue that the dialects of Balearic Islands are actually separate languages and not dialects of Catalan. During the election of 2011, Bauzà campaigned against having centralized or standardized standards of Catalan in public education.