Jump to content

Northern Catalan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Northern Catalan
Roussillonese
català septentrional
rossellonès
Native toFrance
RegionNorthern Catalonia
EthnicityCatalans
Early forms
Catalan alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3
IETFca-FR
A map of the French department of Oriental Pyrenees with most of the areas highlighted but for the middle north.
The areas of French Oriental Pyrenees where Catalan is spoken in orange.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Northern Catalan (Catalan: català septentrional),[a] also known as Roussillonese (rossellonès),[b] is a Catalan dialect mostly spoken in Northern Catalonia (roughly corresponding with the region of Roussillon), but also extending in the northeast part of Southern Catalonia in a transition zone with Central Catalan.[1][2] All speakers of Catalan from North Catalonia are at least natively bilingual with French.[3]

Phonology

[edit]
Vowels
Vowels of Northern Catalan
Front Back
Close i   (y) u
Mid e   (ø) o
Open a
Notes:
  • Northern Catalan has five stressed vowels: /i, e, a, o, u/. In some local varieties /y, ø/ can also be found.
    • Like other Eastern Catalan dialects, unstressed /a/ and /e/ are realized as schwa [ə], and [u] substitutes unstressed /o/.
    • /e, ø, o/ are mid vowels: [e̞, ø̞, o̞] (transcribed here without the diacritic).
  • There are some instances of historic stressed /o/ that has changed to /u/: Canigó > Canigú.
  • As in the Balearic dialects, final ⟨a⟩ [ə] is not pronounced in words ending with ia if the stress is before the penultimate syllable.
Consonants
Consonants of Northern Catalan
Labial Dental/
Alveolar
Palatal Velar Uvular
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive voiceless p t k
voiced b d ɡ
Affricate voiceless t͡s t͡ʃ
voiced d͡z d͡ʒ
Fricative voiceless f s ʃ
voiced z ʒ ʁ
Approximant central j w
lateral l ʎ
Rhotics trill ʀ
tap
Notes:
  • In Northern Catalonia, a uvular trill [ʀ] or approximant [ʁ] can be heard instead of the alveolar trill, e.g. rrer [ˈkoʀə] ~ [ˈkoʁə] ('to run').[4]

Morphology

[edit]

Some subdialects keep the singular masculine definite article lo, as in North-Western Catalan and many varieties of Occitan.

Northern Catalan has a large body of words imported from French and Occitan.[5] It also features some grammatical forms and structures that are typical of Occitan, such as the use of a lone post-verbal pas, rather than a lone preverbal no to express basic negation (Northern Catalan canti pas vs. Central Catalan no canto, 'I don't sing' or 'I'm not singing'); pas is also used in some other Catalan dialects for emphasis but always with no before the verb (Central Catalan no canto pas, 'I do not sing' or 'I am not singing').

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ Catalan pronunciation: [kətəˈla səptəntɾiuˈnal]
  2. ^ Catalan pronunciation: [rusəʎuˈnɛs]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Argenter, Joan A.; Lüdtke, Jens (2020-04-06). Manual of Catalan Linguistics. de Gruyter. pp. 382–383. ISBN 978-3-11-045040-8.
  2. ^ Feldhausen, Ingo (2010-11-25). Sentential Form and Prosodic Structure of Catalan. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 5. ISBN 978-90-272-8759-5.
  3. ^ Kircher, Ruth; Zipp, Lena (2022-07-07). Research Methods in Language Attitudes. Cambridge University Press. p. 342. ISBN 978-1-108-49117-4.
  4. ^ Wheeler 2005, p. 24.
  5. ^ Hawkey, James (2018-04-12). Language Attitudes and Minority Rights: The Case of Catalan in France. Springer. pp. 29–37. ISBN 978-3-319-74597-8.