History of Catalan
[4] The repression continued until recently, when finally the government body of the Pyrénées-Orientales in 2007 symbolically recognized the usage of Catalan publicly and its presence in education.
In Francoist Spain, Catalan was prohibited in government or education, accompaigned with a harsh repression and discouragement of the public use of the language during the first years of the Dictatorship.
[6] Since the death of Franco and the subsequent adoption of the Spanish constitutional monarchy, Catalan was restored as official language and since then has been promoted in different degrees by the autonomous governments of the Catalan-speaking areas (Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia).
Today, despite the efforts to re-normalize the social use of the language (particularly in Catalonia) and their relative successes of the first decades, Catalan still faces issues of diglossia and increasing minorization, alongside the growth of discrimination cases.
[7] By the 9th century, the Catalan language had developed from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the eastern end of the Pyrenees mountains (counties of Rosselló, Empúries, Besalú, Cerdanya, Urgell, Pallars and Ribagorça), as well as in the territories of the Roman province and later archdiocese of Tarraconensis to the south.
Starting in the 9th century, several feudal documents (especially oaths and complaints) written in macaronic Latin began to exhibit elements of Catalan, with proper names or even sentences in Romance.
[2] For example, in the act of consecration of the cathedral of Urgell from 839 the toponymy exhibits clear Catalan traits, like apocope[11] in Argilers < ARGILARĬUS, Llinars < LINĀRES, Kabrils < CAPRĪLES, and reduction of Latin clusters as in Palomera < PALUMBARĬA.
[12] Another text, from the early 11th century, exhibits the names of seven fruit trees:[12] morers III et oliver I et noguer I et pomer I et amendolers IIII et pruners et figuers... Of special historical and linguistic importance is the Memorial of Complaints of Ponç I[13] (ca.
[1] Examples of this can be seen in the works of Majorcan polymath Ramon Llull (1232–1315), the Four Great Chronicles (13th-14th centuries), and the Valencian school of poetry which culminated in Ausiàs March (1397–1459).
[1] The outstanding[1] novel of chivalry Tirant lo Blanc (1490), by Joanot Martorell, shows the transition from medieval to Renaissance values, something that can also be seen in the works of Bernat Metge and Andreu Febrer.
[1] After the Treaty of the Pyrenees, a royal decree by Louis XIV of France on April 2, 1700 prohibited the use of the Catalan language in present-day Northern Catalonia.
The deliberate process of eradicating non-French vernaculars in modern France and dismissing them as mere local and often strictly oral dialects was formalized with Abbé Grégoire's Report on the necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language,[4] which he presented on June 4, 1794 to the National Convention; thereafter, all languages other than French were officially banned in the administration and schools for the sake of linguistically uniting post-Bastille Day France.
The survey found that in Roussillon, almost only Catalan was spoken, and since Napoleon wanted to incorporate Catalonia into France, as happened in 1812, the consul in Barcelona was also asked.
He also indicated that Catalan was spoken "in the Kingdom of Valencia, in the islands of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Sardinia, Corsica and much of Sicily, in the Vall d'Aran and Cerdaña".
