Catalan orthography


The Catalan and Valencian orthographies encompass the spelling and punctuation of standard Catalan and Valencian. There are also several adapted variants to the peculiarities of local dialects of Insular Catalan.

History

The history of the Catalan and Valencian orthographies shows a singularity in regard to the other Romance languages. These have been mostly developed from Latin, adapting them to their own phonetic particularities. It had been a gradual and slow process through centuries until the creation of the Academies in the 18th century that fixed the orthography from their language dominant variety.
In the case of Catalan and Valencian, the mediaeval orthography had a noticeable homogeneity. The Royal Chancellery set a unitary written model in several fields. Thus, Ramon Muntaner expressed in his Chronicle that the Catalans are the largest group with a single language, since all the Romance-speaking regions had very divided languages like the difference that exists between Catalans and Aragonese.
In the 16th century, just after the Golden Age, the split of Catalans started. With the isolation of the Royal Court and several political events, the unitary linguistic consciousness and the shared cultural tradition broke off. The production became more dialectal.
In the 19th century, the recovery of the unity emerged, beginning with the orthography. Institutions like the Acadèmia de Bones Lletres or the Floral Games were in the middle of several orthographic dilemmas.
The orthographic norms of Catalan were first defined officially in the First Internationals Congress of the Catalan Language, held in Barcelona in October 1906. Subsequently, the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans published the Normes ortogràfiques in 1913 under the direction of Antoni Maria Alcover and Pompeu Fabra. Despite some opposition, the spelling system was adopted immediately and became widespread enough that, in 1932, Valencian writers and intellectuals gathered in Castelló to make a formal adoption of the so-called Normes de Castelló, a set of guidelines following Pompeu Fabra's Catalan language norms.
In 1917, Fabra published an Orthographic Dictionary following the orthographic norms of the IEC. In 1931–1932 the Diccionari General de la Llengua Catalana appeared.  In 1995, a new normative dictionary, the Dictionary of the Catalan Language of the Institute of Catalan Studies, marked a new milestone in the orthographic fixation of the language, in addition to the incorporation of neologisms and modern uses of the language.
On the 24th October 2016, the IEC published a new orthography for Catalan, the Ortografia catalana, which outlined several modifications, including a reduced number of monosyllabic words that take an acute or grave diacritic for reasons of disambiguation. Thus, the disyllabic word is now generally spelled ; the monosyllabic words and are both written after the reform. Discretionary use of a diacritic is possible if the context is not sufficient for disambiguation.

Alphabet

Like those of many other Romance languages, the Catalan and Valencian alphabet derives from the Latin alphabet and is largely based on the respective language's phonology.
The Catalan and Valencian alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet:
Upper caseABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Lower caseabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

The following letter-diacritic combinations are used, but they do not constitute distinct letters in the alphabet: À à, É é, È è, Í í, Ï ï, Ó ó, Ò ò, Ú ú, Ü ü and Ç ç. K k and W w are used only in loanwords. Outside loanwords, the letters Q q and Y y appear only in the digraphs qu, qü and ny. However, Y was used until the official orthography was established in 1913, when it was replaced with I, except in the digraph ny and loanwords. Some Catalan surnames conserve the letter y and the word-final digraph ch, e. g. Layret, Aymerich.
The following table shows the letters and their names in Standard Catalan and Standard Valencian :
The names efa, ela, ema, ena, erra, and essa are also used in certain speeches of Valencian.
The names be alta and ve baixa are used by speakers who do not distinguish the phonemes and. Speakers that do distinguish them use the simple names be and ve.

Spelling and pronunciation

Catalan is a pluricentric language; the pronunciation of some of the letters is different in Central Eastern Catalan and Valencian. Apart from those variations, the pronunciation of most consonants is fairly straightforward and is similar to French, Occitan or Portuguese pronunciation.

Spelling-to-sound correspondences

The following lists includes a quick pronunciation of letters in standard Catalan and Valencian, for an in-depth view see attached main article on top of this section.

Sound-to-spelling correspondences

The following lists include most sound-to-spelling correspondences in Catalan and Valencian. It also includes gemination as well as more foreign spellings than previous lists.

Letters

The sounds ɡ and k

The voiced plosive is represented by the spellings g and gu, and the voiceless stop sound, by the spellings c, q, qu and, sporadically, g and k.
At the beginning of a syllable, the sounds and :
In the case of the sound, in addition:
At the end of a syllable, in the inner or final position of the word, the opposition between the unvoiced and the voiced consonant is neutralized, to the extent that it ceases to be distinctive. Regardless of the pronunciation, which can be unvoiced or voiced depending on the phonic context, the use of the spellings c or g conforms to the following rules:
Instead, g or c is written, depending on the spelling of the derivatives, at the end of an acute word after another consonant or at the end of a plain word after a vowel:

The representation of the sound s: the spellings s, ss, c and ç

The spelling s

The voiceless fricative alveolar sound is represented by s in the following cases:

The spelling ss

The voiceless fricative alveolar sound is represented by ss between vowels: bassa, passar.
NOTE: The spelling ss preceded by a consonant may also appear in words in which a prefix ending in s, such as trans- or sots-, is attached to a root beginning with s and in the plurals of cultured formation qualssevol and qualssevulla.

The spellings c and ç

For etymological reasons, the sound is also represented by the spellings c and ç in certain cases:

The representation of the sound z: The spellings s and z

The voiced fricative alveolar sound is represented by the spellings z or s, according to the following rules:

The spelling tz

In certain heritage words, the spelling tz represents the alveolar affricate phonetic group : dotze, tretze, setze.
This same group is also used, with the phonetic value of, in the graphic representation of verbs formed with the suffix -itzar, such as caracteritzar, realització, etc.

The representation of the sounds ʒ and dʒ: The spellings g, j, tg and tj

The voiced fricative palatal sound or the affricate palatal sound is represented by the consonants g and j, according to the following rules:
The spellings tg and tj for the sound in both language standards, which correspond to the geminate pronunciation practiced in some places, are presented only in intervocalic position. Parallel to the corresponding simple spellings, tg is written before e, i, and tj before a, o, u: coratge, paisatgístic ; desitjar, pitjor, corretjut.

The representation of the sound tʃ: The spellings x, tx, ig and g

The voiceless affricate palatal sound is represented by the spellings x, tx, ig and g, according to the following rules:

The representation of the sound ʃ: The spelling x

The voiceless fricative palatal sound is always represented by the spelling x: Xàtiva, Xavier, xenòfob, coixí, dibuix. The letter x in this value can be word-initial, follow a syllabic or non-syllabic i, a non-syllabic u or a consonant. Some speakers do not pronounced a non-syllabic i before an x, so the sound following a syllabic vowel different from i should be written as ix except in compound words and in some surnames.

The representation of the phonetic group ks

The phonetic group is represented by the letter x in the following positions:

The spellings b and p

The bilabial occlusive voiced sound is represented by the spelling b, and the bilabial voiceless occlusive sound, by the spelling p: baix, roba ; poc, llépol, compra.
At the end of a syllable, in internal or word-final position, the opposition between voiceless and voiced consonants is neutralized. Regardless of the pronunciation, which can be unvoiced or voiced depending on the context, the use of the spellings b and p conforms to the following rules:
Instead, b or p is written, depending on the spelling of the derivatives, at the end of an acute word after another consonant or at the end of a plain word after a vowel:

The spellings b and v

Although some Valencian speakers differentiate the voiced occlusive bilabial sound from the voiced labiodental fricative, to avoid confusion in the use of the spellings b and v it is necessary to take into account that b is written in the following cases:
And v is written in the following cases:

The spellings d and t

The voiced occlusive dental sound is represented by the spelling d, and its voiceless correlate, by the spelling t: donar, banda, badar ; tallar, contar, gaiato.
At the end of a syllable, in internal or word-final position, the opposition between voiceless and voiced consonants is neutralized. Regardless of the pronunciation, which can be unvoiced or voiced depending on the phonetic context, the use of the spellings d or t conforms to the following rules:
Instead, d or t is written, depending on the spelling of the derivatives, at the end of an acute word after another consonant or at the end of a flat word after a vowel:

The spellings m, n, mp, tm and tn

The letter m usually represents the nasal bilabial sound : mare, cama, termal, bram, and the n, the nasal alveolar sound : nas, manar, urna, gran.
The spelling mp is used with the value of or, for etymological reasons, in a medial syllable, in cases such assumpció, atemptar, compte, prompte, símptoma, etc.
At the end of a syllable, in word-internal position, the opposition between the nasal consonants is neutralized. In this position, the spellings m or n are used, according to the following rules:
For etymological reasons, certain borrowings are spelled tm or tn: setmana, setmesí, logaritme ; cotna, ètnia.

The spelling ny

The nasal palatal sound is represented in all positions by the spelling ny: nyora, pinya, codony.

The spellings l, ŀl and tl

The lateral alveolar sound is represented in all cases by the consonant l: líquid, colar, pèl, blat.
For etymological reasons, certain words are written with ŀl: aŀlicient, Aveŀlí, Brusseŀles, coŀlaborar, escarapeŀla, gaŀlicisme, iŀlegal, iŀlògic, iŀlusió, miŀlímetre, síŀlaba, aquareŀla, etc.
Some heritage words that have a geminate pronunciation in a part of Valencian are written with the spelling tl, such as ametla, batle, guatla, motle, vetlar, etc. However, the spelling tl represents the sounds in borrowings such as atles, atlàntic, etc.

The spellings ll and tll

The lateral palatal sound is usually represented by the letter ll, which can appear in any position: llebre, pallasso, coll.
But, in certain cases, it is also represented by the spelling tll : bitllet, rotllo, ratlla, etc.

The spellings r and rr

The spelling r is used to represent the alveolar tap sound and the vibrating alveolar sound : mira / mirra.
The tap is always represented by the spelling r, while the vibrating is represented by the spellings r or rr, according to the following rules:

The h spelling

The h spelling is usually silent; it is used, for etymological reasons, in a series of words, such as harmonia, herba, hivern, ahir, etc.
NOTE: In certain interjections or in words derived from foreign proper names, the spelling h is pronounced aspirated: ehem, ha, he, hegelià.

The spelling w

The spelling w is used in certain words from other languages, but it represents two different phonic values depending on whether they have a Germanic or Anglo-Saxon origin:

The spelling y

The spelling y, in addition to being used to form the digraph ny, is also used independently, with the phonetic value that would correspond to i, in the representation of certain words from other languages or formed from proper names: faraday, gray, jansky, Nova York, etc.

Diacritics

Accentuation

Acute and grave accents

Catalan and Valencian also use the acute and grave accents to mark stress or vowel quality. An acute on indicates that the vowel is stressed and close-mid, while grave on indicates that the vowel is stressed and open-mid. Grave on and acute on simply indicate that the vowels are stressed. Thus, the acute is used on close or close-mid vowels, and the grave on open or open-mid vowels. For example:també: or èxtasi: or córrer: or pròxim: ànima: or pastís: or fúcsia: or
Standard rules governing the presence of accents are based on word endings and the position of the stressed syllable. In particular, accents are expected for:
  • Oxytones ending in a syllabic vowel, a vowel + -, or -/, examples:
  • *parlà or
  • *parlés or
  • *entén or
  • Paroxytones with any other ending, including non-syllabic -, -, examples:
  • *parlàveu or
  • *parlàvem or
  • Any proparoxytones, examples:
  • *química or
  • *ciència or
Since there is no need to mark the stressed syllable of a monosyllabic word, most of them do not have an accent. Exceptions are those with a diacritical accent differentiating words that would otherwise be homographic. Example: es or vs és , te or vs té , mes or vs més , dona or vs dóna or . In most cases, the word bearing no accent is either unstressed, or the word without the accent is more common, usually a function word.
The different distribution of open e vs closed e between Eastern Catalan and Western Catalan is reflected in some orthographic divergences between standard Catalan and Valencian norms, for example: anglès vs anglés . In the Balearic Islands, open e tends to be a centralised e in the same cases where open e contrasts with closed e in Catalan and Valencian. The cases where the difference of pronunciation of e can have graphical repercussions are the followings:
  • Words ending with the demonym -es, the past participles and adjectives.
  • The ordinal numerals ending in stressed e: cinquè / cinqué, sisè / sisé.
  • The ending of the third person of the plural of indicative -en of some verbs of the 2nd conjugation, except in the cases where this ending is preceded by the consonant t or c, where it is pronounced with a closed e in all speeches.
  • The infinitives ending in -eixer and -encer.
  • The second and third person of the plural of the simple past tense of indicative with accent on the radical: fèiem / féiem 'we did', fèieu / féieu 'you pl. did'.

Circumflex

The circumflex is rarely used in modern Catalan and Valencian, nonetheless it has been used in the beginning of the 19th century by Antoni Febrer i Cardona to represent schwa in the Balearic subdialects. According to the Diccionari català-valencià-balear, in modern times there are some cases where the circumflex can be used to indicate silent etymological sounds or a contraction. Contrary to the restrictions of the acute and grave accent, the circumflex can be used with all vowels, the most common, especially in Valencian, being , e.g. mascletâes, anâ, témê, sortî, pâ.

Diaeresis

The diaeresis has two different uses: to mark hiatus over, and to mark that is not silent in the groups.
If a diaeresis appears over an or that follows another vowel, it denotes a hiatus, examples:
  • raïm or
  • taüt or
This diaeresis is not used over a stressed vowel that already should have an accent. Examples: suís , but suïssa or , suïs .
Certain verb forms of verbs ending in -uir do not receive a diaeresis, although they are pronounced with separate syllables. This concerns the infinitive, gerund, future and conditional forms. All other forms of such verbs do receive a diaeresis on the ï according to the normal rules.
In addition to this, represents between a velar consonant or and a front vowel.
  • ungüent
  • qüestió or
Forms of the verb argüir represents a rare case of the sequence, and the rules for and clash in this case. The ambiguity is resolved by an additional rule, which states that in cases where diaereses would appear on two consecutive letters, only the second receives one. This thus gives arguïm /arguˈim/, i.e. and arguïa /arguˈia/, but argüir /arˈgwir/, ''argüint /arˈgwint/ and argüiré /argwiˈre/ as these forms don't receive a diaeresis on the i'' normally, according to the exception above.

''Ce trencada'' (c-cedilla)

Catalan and Valencian ce trencada, literally 'broken c', is a modified with a cedilla mark. It is only used before to indicate a soft c because using, much like in Portuguese, Occitan or French, would make it pronounced . In Catalan and Valencian, ce trencada also appears as last letter of a word, but then may be voiced to before vowels and voiced consonants, e.g. feliçment or and braç esquerre or .

Capitalization

Neither of the Catalan and Valencian standards capitalise days of the week, months, or demonyms. Although, like in English, both standards capitalise proper nouns.

Punctuation

Catalan and Valencian punctuation rules are similar to English, with some minor differences.
  • Guillemets « » are frequently used instead of double inverted commas. They are used to mark titles of works, or phrases used as proper names.
  • In texts containing dialogue, quoted speech is usually set off with dashes, rather than inverted commas.
  • In Catalan, there is no or unlike in Spanish, but in Valencian questions and exclamations are optionally opened with a or, like in Spanish. Before 1993, questions and exclamations could be enclosed with ¿...? or ¡...!, but this is no longer recommended by the IEC but still is optionally allowed by the AVL.

''Punt volat'' (middot)

The punt volat or middot is only used in the sequence to represent a geminated sound , as the digraph is used for the palatal lateral. This usage of the middot sign dates to the beginning of twentieth century; in medieval and modern Catalan, before Fabra's standardisation, it was sometimes used to note certain elisions, especially in poetry. The only possibility of ambiguity in the whole language is the pair ceŀla vs cella .

Hyphen

The hyphen is used in Catalan and Valencian to separate a verb and the combination of pronouns that follow them, to separate certain compounds, and to split a word at the end of a line of text for the purpose of maintaining page margins.
Compounds are hyphenated in cases that involve numerals ; cardinal points ; repetitive and expressive compounds ; those compounds in which the first element ends in a vowel and the second starts with,, or ; and those compounds in which the combination of the two elements can lead to wrong reading. There are also compound terms in which the first element carries a grave accent, the construction no plus noun and certain singular constructions like abans-d'ahir and adéu-siau.
The hyphen in numbers is set according to the D-U-C rule, thus, a hyphen is placed between tens and units and between units and hundreds. For example, the number 35,422 is written trenta-cinc mil quatre-cents vint-i-dos.
When a word gets separated due to a new line, syllable boundaries are kept, although, there are some digraphs that can be separated. These digraphs are those that, when splitting them, they result in two graphs the corresponding sound from which they share a phonetic trait with the sound of the digraph. The digraphs that cannot be separated are those in which the two graphs correspond to sounds that they are not related with the sound of the digraph.
The syllabic separation of words follow the following rules:
  • The following digraphs and combination of letters can be separated:
  • The following digraphs cannot be separated:
  • The constituents of a compound, or the prefix of a prefixed word, can be separated:
  • Letters cannot be left on their own at the end or beginning of a line:

Apostrophes

Catalan and Valencian follow some apostrophisation rules that serve to determine whether it is necessary to use an apostrophe or not
;Articles
The masculine singular articles, and the feminine singular articles are apostrophised before all masculine words that begin with a vowel, e.g. l'avió, l'encant, l'odi, n'Albert, s'arbre, and l'emoció, l'ungla, l'aigua; with a silent h, e.g. l'home, l'ham, n'Hug, s'home, and l'heura, l'holografia, n'Hermínia, s'horabaixa. The masculine singular article also contract when the next word starts with s + consonant, e.g. l'spa, l'Stuttgart; but la Scala de Milà. They aren't apostrophised before words that begin with an or that is pronounced or, or for the feminine articles when the word begins with an unstressed or, e.g. el iogurt, el iode, and, la hiena, la humitat, la universitat, la imatge. Additionally, la, na and sa before letter names, e.g. la i, la hac, la essa; and some other specific words like la una , la ira, la host, etc..
The forms al, del, pel, cal  and can are broken and become a l', de l', per l', ca l'  and ca n' respectively.
Traditionally, to avoid ambiguity, words beginning with the negative prefix a- did not take an apostrophe. Nowadays, general apostrophising rules are followed: l'anormalitat, l'amoralitat, l'atipicitat, l'asimetria, l'asèpsia, etc.. The 1995 edition of the Diccionari de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans started was the first one to use this rule, however, it was never explicitly stated.
;The preposition de
The preposition de changes into d' in all the same cases as the feminine singular articles with one exception: normally it doesn't contract in metalanguage: el plural de alt és alts.
;Weak pronouns
Weak pronouns take the apostrophe in the following cases:
Before a verb that starts with a vowel, using its elided form: m'agrada, n'abastava, s'estimaran, l'aconseguiria, at the end of a verb that finishes in a vowel, using the reduced form: menja'n, trenca'l, fondre's, compra'ns, between two of them if the other orthographic rules allow it: me'n, li'n, se'm, te'ls, la'n, n'hi; if it is possible, it takes the apostrophe with the following word, like me n'ha dut tres. The apostrophe always goes the further to the right possible: te l'emportes, not *te'l emportes.
Does not take the apostrophe:
The pronouns us, vos, hi, ho, li, les: us el dono or vos el done, se us esperava or se vos esperava. Like in the case of the article, the pronoun before words that start by unstressed i and u : la ignora, la hi pren, la humitejarem, la usàvem. It also does not take the apostrophe the first weak pronoun in the forms la hi and se us.

Other conventions

The distribution of the two rhotics and closely parallels that of Spanish. Between vowels, the two contrast but they are otherwise in complementary distribution: in the onset, an alveolar trill,, appears unless preceded by a consonant; different dialects vary in regards to rhotics in the coda with Western Catalan generally featuring an alveolar tap,, and Central Catalan dialects like those of Barcelona or Girona featuring a weakly trilled unless it precedes a vowel-initial word in the same prosodic unit, in which case appears.
In Eastern Catalan and North Western Catalan, most instances of word-final are silent, but there are plenty of unpredictable exceptions.
In Valencian, most instances of word-final are pronounced.