Catalan orthography

With the isolation of the Royal Court and several political events, the unitary linguistic consciousness and the shared cultural tradition broke off.

Subsequently, the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC, founded in 1911) published the Normes ortogràfiques in 1913 under the direction of Antoni Maria Alcover and Pompeu Fabra.

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.

[5] The Catalan and Valencian alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet: 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 (though the Catalan keyboard includes the letter Ç as a separate key).

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.

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 voiceless fricative alveolar sound [s] is represented by s in the following cases: The voiceless fricative alveolar sound [s] is represented by ss between vowels: bassa ('pond'), passar ('to pass').

The voiced affricate palatal sound [dʒ] is represented by the consonants g and j, according to the following rules: The spellings tg and tj, 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 ('courage'), paisatgístic ('landscape'); desitjar ('to wish'), pitjor ('worse'), corretjut ('leathery, tough').

The phonetic group [ks] is represented by the letter x in the following positions: The bilabial occlusive voiced sound [b] (or the corresponding fricative variant [β]) is represented by the spelling b, and the bilabial voiceless occlusive sound [p], by the spelling p: baix ('low, short'), roba ('clothes'); poc ('little, [a] few'), llépol ('sweet-toothed'), compra ('shopping').

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 letter m usually represents the nasal bilabial sound [m]: mare ('mother'), cama ('leg'), termal ('thermal'), bram ('bray, roar'), and the n, the nasal alveolar sound [n]: nas ('nose'), manar ('to command'), urna ('urn'), gran ('great, grand').

The spelling mp is used with the value of [m] or [n], for etymological reasons, in a medial syllable, in cases such assumpció ('assumption'), atemptar ('attempt'), compte ('to count'), prompte ('soon'), símptoma ('symptom'), etc.

The nasal palatal sound [ɲ] is represented in all positions by the spelling ny: nyora ('a type of pepper'), pinya ('pine cone, pineapple'), codony ('quince [fruit]').

For etymological reasons, certain words are written with ŀl: aŀlicient ('lure, incentive'), Aveŀlí ('Avelline'), Brusseŀles ('Brussels'), coŀlaborar ('to collaborate'), escarapeŀla ('cockade'), gaŀlicisme ('Gallicism'), iŀlegal ('illegal'), iŀlògic ('illogical'), iŀlusió ('illusion, hope, happiness'), miŀlímetre ('millimeter'), síŀlaba ('syllable'), aquareŀla ('watercolour'), etc.

Some heritage words that have a geminate pronunciation [lː] in a part of Valencian are written with the spelling tl, such as ametla ('almond'), batle ('mayor'), guatla ('quail'), motle ('mold'), vetlar ('to stay up, to patrol, to watch over'), etc.

But, in certain cases, it is also represented by the spelling tll ([ʎː] in Standard Catalan): bitllet ('ticket, bank note'), rotllo ('roll, annoyance'), ratlla ('line, scratch'), etc.

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, 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 ('faraday'), gray ('gray'), jansky ('jansky'), Nova York ('New York'), etc.

The cases where the difference of pronunciation of e can have graphical repercussions are the followings:[9] 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 (similar to French)[10] or a contraction.

This concerns the infinitive, gerund, future and conditional forms (for example traduir, traduint, traduiré and traduiria, all with bisyllabic /u.i/).

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.

This usage of the middot sign dates to the beginning of twentieth century; in medieval and modern Catalan, before Fabra's standardization, it was sometimes used to note certain elisions, especially in poetry.

Thus, the general norm set that the prefixed forms, aside from the cited exceptions, are written without hyphen (the only normative option, then, is to write arxienemic and fisicoquímic).

The masculine singular article (el, en, and dialectally also lo, in Continental Catalan, and es and so in Balearic, the so called salted article, with s) is apostrophated before all words of masculine gender that begin with a vowel, e.g. l'avió, l'encant, l'odi, n'Albert, s'arbre; with a silent h, e.g. l'home, l'ham, n'Hug, s'home; with a liquid s, e.g. l'spa, l'Stuttgart.

Nowadays, general apostrophation rules are followed in written text: l'anormalitat, l'amoralitat, l'atipicitat, l'asimetria, l'asèpsia, etc.

In the same way, the introduction of DIEC writes about the abnormality of the situation, and the outline of the new normative grammar that prepares the IEC already does not collect that traditional exception.

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.

When there are two, the second if the 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.

Between vowels, the two contrast but they are otherwise in complementary distribution: in the onset, an alveolar trill, [r], appears unless preceded by a consonant; different dialects vary in regards to rhotics in the coda with Western Catalan generally featuring an alveolar tap, [ɾ], and Central Catalan dialects like those of Barcelona or Girona featuring a weakly trilled [r] unless it precedes a vowel-initial word in the same prosodic unit, in which case [ɾ] appears.