Wiktionary:About Catalan

Entry name
The name of the entry is the word or phrase you are defining.

Capitalisation: Catalan does not capitalise words as often as English, so the entry name will usually begin with a lower case letter. In particular, Catalan, unlike English, does not capitalise nouns of language or nationality: the Catalan for “Catalan” is català, with a lower case c. Commonly capitalisation occurs in proper nouns referring to a singular entity such persons, places or often institutions, but not for an nouns referring to an abstract concept or group entities such as an ethnicity or language. The word is an exception.

Diacritics: Catalan uses five diacritics: the acute accent (accent tancat or accent agut, é, í, ó, ú), the grave accent (accent obert or accent greu, à, è, ò), the dieresis (dièresi, ï, ü), the cedilla (ce trencada, ç) and the centered dot (ela geminada, l·l). These should always be included. Relatedly, Catalan does not ever use the letter ñ, for which the sound is systematically written as ny.

The essentials

 * 1) Language header. Lets you know the language of the word in question (== Catalan ==). It is almost always in a level two heading (see How to edit a page for some basic terminology we use). When there is more than one language header on a page, the languages should appear in alphabetical order with Translingual and English gven priority. For Valencian words, see “Regional forms” below.
 * 2) Part of speech header. May be a misnomer, but it seemed to make sense when it was first chosen. It is the key descriptor for the grammatical function of the term in question (such as ‘noun’, ‘verb’, etc.). The definitions themselves come within its scope. This header is most frequently in a level three heading, and a page may have more than one for a single language.
 * 3) Inflection line. This is the line immediately following the part of speech header. In the simpleest entries, this will be the entry name in bold, followed by gender and number (for nouns and adjectives). Advanced users should make use of the standard inflection templates provided.
 * 4) Definitions or Translations. These appear as a numbered list in the part of speech section immediately following the inflection line, though it is a good idea to include a blank line in between for ease of editing.

A very simple example
This is a simple entry for the word política, and shows the most fundamental elements of an article:


 * 1) the word’s language (as a level 2 heading);
 * 2) its part of speech or “type” (as a level 3 header);
 * 3) the inflection word itself (using the correct inflection template or the word in bold letters);
 * 4) a definition (preceded by “#”, which causes automatic numbering);
 * 5) links in the definition or translation for key words.

This example can be copied and used to start an article or section of an article.

Noun

 * 1) politics
 * 2) policy

Preferred order of sections
The part of speech section will often include simple translation(s) into English in place of definitions, but there may be subsections.

Following is the preferred sequence for these standard sections:

==Catalan== ===Alternative forms=== ===Etymology=== ===Pronunciation=== ===Noun=== (Or: Verb, Adjective, Adverb, etc.) ====Usage notes==== ====Quotations==== ====Synonyms==== ====Antonyms==== ====Conjugation==== (Note: Only for verb entries) ====Related terms==== ====Derived terms==== ===See also=== ===References===

Please note that the Noun header is only one possible part of speech that may appear as the header. If the entry being created is for a Catalan verb, then “Verb” should appear in place of the word “Noun” in the example above.

Templates
It is encouraged to use sort=(the page name without diacritics) in headword-line templates. This keeps pages listed in categories in the correct alphabetical order. For example, :.

Regional forms
The “standard” form of Catalan is settled by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans as a language academy. It is usually taken to be the dialect known as Central Catalan or Eastern Catalan, traditionally spoken in the region of Barcelona (and others) and used by the Generalitat de Catalunya (as well as at least two-thirds of Catalan speakers). Apart from this, there are four major dialect groups within the Catalan “linguistic system”.

A large majority of words are written identically in all major forms of Catalan, and for this reason alone it makes sense to treat them as a single language system in a dictionary such as Wiktionary. Where regional forms exist for a given word, the simplest solution is to include an “Alternative forms” section immediately below the language header, as in the example for below:

Etymology
From, feminine of.

Noun

 * 1) A personal opinion.

Eastern and Western
For general considerations, scholars distingish two main dialect groups: Eastern and Western. Eastern Catalan includes Central Catalan (eastern Catalonia), Balearic, Northern Catalan (Pyrénées-Orientales and frontier parts of Catalonia) and Algherese. Western Catalan includes Valencian and North-western Catalan (Andorra, western Catalonia and Aragon).

The most notorious feature is reduction of unstressed vowels in Eastern Catalan, not produced in Western Catalan.

Valencian
Valencian is the llengua pròpia of the Valencian Community. It is the form which is used institutionally by the Generalitat Valenciana, and is overseen by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL). It has a slightly different orthography from Central Catalan, known as the Normes de Castelló (1932), although most words are written identically in the two forms (c.f. US English and British English). A second orthography, known as the Normes del Puig, has had official usage in the recent past but is currently less used.

The question as to whether Valencian is a distinct language from Catalan has been the subject of intense (and occasionally violent) political debate. The consensus among academic linguists, supported by the AVL itself, is that Valencian and Central Catalan are two dialects of the same “linguistic system”. This views has been supported by the Spanish courts, in so far as they have insisted only mutual recognition of certificates of linguistic ability issued by the two autonomous communities.

North-western Catalan
North-western Catalan is the dialect spoken around Lleida and Tortosa. It has similarities with Valencian (vocabulary, declension, pronunciation, etc) forming the main Western group, but with its own particulaties. It follows the orthography standard of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans.

Balearic
Balearic is the term generally used to refer to the dialects used in the Balearic Islands. While each of the islands has a distinct dialect, there are sufficient similarities between them (and common distinctions from other forms of Catalan) to make it convenient to discuss them together. This dialect is included in the Eastern Catalan group, but, like Valencian, has its own traits and is usually considered a dialect apart.

The Government of the Balearic Islands is committed to preserving and promoting the specificities of the Catalan spoken on its territory, in which it is advised by the University of the Balearic Islands that follows the standard of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans.

Northern Catalan
Rossellonese (rossellonès) is the name traditionally given to the dialect spoken in the region of Norther Catalonia, now the most part of French département des Pyrénées-Orientales. In despite of the old name it is better to call it Northern Catalan, since it is spoken in all Northern Catalonia, not only in the Rosselló district.

Algherese
Algherese (alguerès) is used for the dialect spoken in Alghero, a city from the island of Sardinia.

Notating pronunciation
When notating the pronunciation of Catalan words, the priority is to notate the standard pronunciation of the word. For his purpose, is useful to follow the ''Proposta d’estàndard oral de la llengua catalana. I. Fonètica '' (http://publicacions.iec.cat/repository/pdf/00000062/00000072.pdf) of the IEC (Institute of Catalan Studies), always choosing the options relating to Central or Eastern Catalan. See for examples of how the IPA can be used to represent the sounds of Catalan.

Pronunciation


If necessary, more than one pronunciation can be notated, but each of them must be marked, and the first of them must be the standard pronunciation. For example:

Pronunciation


Since Valencian has its own standard (and its own academy), Valencian pronunciation can be also notated under the standard Catalan pronunciation. For this purpose, is useful to follow the Estàndard oral valencià (http://www.avl.gva.es/PDF/Diccionari/Oral.pdf) of the AVL (Valencian Academy of Language).

For different dialects, the terms recommended are the following:

Pronunciation

 * (if necessary, the name of the island)
 * (for Northern Catalonia)
 * (too for north-occidental, since includes all the occidental dialect)
 * (too for north-occidental, since includes all the occidental dialect)
 * (too for north-occidental, since includes all the occidental dialect)

Categories

 * Category:Catalan language
 * Part of speech categories
 * Category:Catalan abbreviations
 * Category:Catalan adjectives
 * Category:Catalan adjective forms
 * Category:Catalan adverbs
 * Category:Catalan conjunctions
 * Category:Catalan interjections
 * Category:Catalan nouns
 * Category:Catalan noun forms
 * Category:Catalan prefixes
 * Category:Catalan prepositions
 * Category:Catalan preposition contractions
 * Category:Catalan pronouns
 * Category:Catalan suffixes
 * Category:Catalan verbs
 * Category:Catalan verb forms
 * Regional form categories
 * Category:Regional Catalan
 * Category:Balearic Catalan
 * Category:Eastern Catalan
 * Category:Mallorcan Catalan
 * Category:Valencian
 * Template categories
 * Category:Catalan templates
 * Category:Catalan conjugation-table templates

Letters
Catalan uses these letters: