Valencian language
Valencian or Valencian language is the official, historical and traditional name used in the Valencian Community, and extra-officially in the El Carche comarca in Murcia, to refer to the Romance language also known as Catalan. The Valencian Community's 1982 Statute of Autonomy and the Spanish Constitution officially recognise Valencian as the regional language.
As a glottonym, it is used for referring either to the language as a whole or to the Valencian specific linguistic forms. According to philological studies, the varieties of this language spoken in the Valencian Community and El Carche cannot be considered a dialect restricted to these borders: the several [|dialects of Valencian] belong to the Western group of Catalan dialects. Valencian displays transitional features between Ibero-Romance languages and Gallo-Romance languages. Its similarity with Occitan has led many authors to group it under the Occitano-Romance languages.
There is a [|political controversy within the Valencian Community] regarding its status as a glottonym or as a language on its own, since official reports show that slightly more than half of the people in the Valencian Community consider it as a separate language, different from Catalan, although the same studies show that this percentage decreases dramatically among younger generations and people with higher studies. According to the 2006 Statute of Autonomy Valencian is regulated by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, by means of the Castelló rules, which adapt the Catalan orthography to the Valencian idiosyncrasies. Due to not having been officially recognised for a long time, the number of speakers has severely decreased, and the influence of Spanish has led to the adoption of a huge amount of loanwords.
Some of the most important works of Valencian literature experienced a golden age during the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Important works include Joanot Martorell's chivalric romance Tirant lo Blanch, and Ausiàs March's poetry. The first book produced with movable type in the Iberian Peninsula was printed in the Valencian variety. The earliest recorded chess game with modern rules for moves of the queen and bishop was in the Valencian poem Scachs d'amor.
Official status
The official status of Valencian is regulated by the Spanish Constitution and the Valencian Statute of Autonomy, together with the :ca:Llei d'Ús i Ensenyament del Valencià|Law of Use and Education of Valencian.Article 6 of the Valencian Statute of Autonomy sets the legal status of Valencian, providing that:
The :ca:Llei d'Ús i Ensenyament del Valencià|Law of Use and Education of Valencian develops this framework, providing for implementation of a bilingual educational system, and regulating the use of Valencian in the public administration and judiciary system, where citizens can freely use it when acting before both.
Valencian is recognised under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages as "Valencian".
Distribution and usage
Distribution
Valencian is not spoken all over the Valencian Community. Roughly a quarter of its territory, equivalent to 10% of the population, is traditionally Castilian-speaking only, whereas Valencian is spoken to varying degrees elsewhere.Additionally, it is also spoken by a reduced number of people in Carche, a rural area in the Region of Murcia adjoining the Valencian Community; nevertheless Valencian does not have any official recognition in this area. Although the Valencian language was an important part of the history of this zone, nowadays only about 600 people are able to speak Valencian in the area of Carche.
Knowledge and usage
In 2010 the Generalitat Valenciana published a study, Knowledge and Social use of Valencian, which included a survey sampling more than 6,600 people in the provinces of Castellón, Valencia, and Alicante. The survey simply collected the answers of respondents and did not include any testing or verification. The results were:Valencian was the language "always, generally, or most commonly used":
- at home: 31.6%
- with friends: 28.0%
- in internal business relations: 24.7%
- 48.5% answered they speak Valencian "perfectly" or "quite well"
- 26.2% answered they write Valencian "perfectly" or "quite well"
Moreover, according to a survey in 2008, there is a downward trend in everyday Valencian users. The lowest numbers are in the major cities of Valencia and Alicante, where the percentage of everyday speakers is in single figures. All in all, in the 1993–2006 period, the number of speakers fell by 10 per cent. One of the factors cited is the increase in the numbers of immigrants from other countries, who tend to favour using Spanish over local languages; accordingly, the number of residents who claim no understanding of Valencian sharply increased. One curiosity in the heartlands mentioned above, is that most of the children of immigrants go to public school and are therefore taught in Valencian and are far more comfortable speaking this with their friends. However, some children of Valencian speakers go to private schools run by the Church where the curriculum is in Castilian and consequently this becomes their preferred language.
Features of Valencian
Note that this is a list of features of the main forms of Valencian as a group of dialectal varieties that differ from those of other Catalan dialects, particularly from the Central variety of the language. For more general information on the features of Valencian, see Catalan language. There is a great deal of variety within the Valencian Community, and by no means do the features below apply to every local version.Phonology
Vowels
- Valencian has a system of seven stressed vowels.
- * The vowels and are more open and centralised than in Castilian.
- * The vowel is retracted and is advanced both in stressed and unstressed syllables. and can be realised as mid vowels in some cases. This occurs more often with.
- * The so-called "open vowels", and, are generally as low as in most Valencian dialects. The phonetic realisations of approaches and is as open as . This feature is also found in Balearic.
- ** is slightly more open and centralised before liquids and in monosyllabics.
- ** is most often a back vowel. In some dialects it can be unrounded like in American English.
- * The vowel is slightly more fronted and closed than in Central Catalan. The precise phonetic realisation of the vowel in Valencian is, this vowel is subject to assimilation in many instances.
- ** can be retracted in contact with velar consonants, and fronted in contact with palatals.
- ** Final unstressed may be, depending on the preceding sounds and/or dialect, e.g. taula 'table'.
- * All vowels are phonetically nasalised between nasal consonants or when preceding a syllable-final nasal.
- * Vowels can be lengthened in some contexts.
- While unstressed vowels are more stable than in Eastern Catalan dialects, there are many cases where they merge
- * In some Valencian subvarieties, unstressed and are realised as before labial consonants, before a stressed syllable with a high vowel, in contact with palatal consonants and in monosyllabic clitics 'smell. Similarly, unstressed, and are realised as in contact with palatals, approximants or before certain sounds and ) in fewer cases near velars. Likewise, unstressed merges with in contact with palatal consonants, and especially in lexical derivation with the suffix -ixement to -iximent.
- * Many Valencian subdialects, especially Southern Valencian, feature some sort of vowel harmony. This process is normally progressive over the last unstressed vowel of a word; e.g. hora > 'hour'. However, there are cases where regressive metaphony occurs over pretonic vowels; e.g. tovallola > 'towel', afecta > 'affects'. Vowel harmony differs greatly from dialect to dialect, while many subvarieties alternate and, according to the previous stressed vowel ; others will favor just one realisation, thus, terra and dona can be pronounced and or and .
- ** In a wider sense, vowel harmony can occur in further instances, due to different processes involving palatalisation, velarisarion and labialisation.
- *An epethentic vowel may be inserted in some environments in the coda in some accents:
- ** Eh tu! Vine ací "Hey you! Come here".
| Phoneme | Phone / Allophone | Usage | Example |
| / / / | – Found in most instances – Before/after palatals – Before/after velars – Final unstressed syllables | mà llamp poal terra / dona | |
| | – Found in most cases – Before liquids and in monosyllabic terms | tesi set | |
| / | – Found in most instances – Found in some unstressed syllables near palatals or approximants – Found in fewer cases in some unstressed syllables near velars – Found in the suffix -ixement, dial. also in contact with palatals. | sec eixam entenc naixement | |
| / | – Found in most instances – Unstressed position before/after vowels | sis iogurt | |
| – Found in most cases | dona poc | ||
| | – Found in most instances – Found in final stressed syllables, especially in the suffix -dor – Unstressed position before labials or in contact with palatals | molt cançó Josep | |
| / | – Found in most instances – Unstressed position before/after vowels | suc meua |
Consonants
- The voiced stops are lenited to approximants after a continuant, i.e. a vowel or any type of consonant other than a stop or nasal. These sounds are realised as voiceless plosives in the coda in standard Valencian.
- * can also be lenited in betacist dialects.
- * is often elided between vowels following a stressed syllable ; e.g. fideuà ' fideuà'.
- * Unlike other Catalan dialects, the clusters and never geminate or fortify in intervocalic position.
- The velar stops, are fronted to pre-velar position before front vowels.
- Valencian has preserved in most of its subvarieties the mediaeval voiced alveolo-palatal affricate in contexts where other modern dialects have developed fricative consonants ; this is a feature shared with modern Ribagorçan. Nonetheless, the fricative may appear as a voiced allophone of before vowels and voiced consonants; e.g. peix al forn 'oven fish'.
- occurs in Balearic, Alguerese, standard Valencian and some areas in southern Catalonia. It has merged with elsewhere.
- Deaffrication of in verbs ending in -itzar; e.g. analitzar 'to analise'.
- Most subvarieties of Valencian preserve final stops in clusters : camp . Dialectally, all final clusters can be simplified.
- is normally velarised, save for some dialects.
- * is generally dropped in the word altre, as well as in derived terms.
Morphology
- The present first-person singular of verbs differs from Central Catalan. All those forms without final -o are more akin to mediaeval Catalan and contemporary Balearic Catalan.
- Present subjunctive is more akin to mediaeval Catalan and Spanish; -ar infinitives end, -re, -er and -ir verbs end in .
- An exclusive feature of Valencian is the subjunctive imperfect morpheme -ra: que ell vinguera.
- Valencian has -i- as theme vowel for inchoative verbs of the third conjugation; e.g. servix, like North-Western Catalan. Although, again, this cannot be generalised since there are Valencian subdialects that utilize -ei-, e.g. serveix.
- In Valencian the simple past tense is more frequently used in speech than in Central Catalan, where the periphrastic past is prevailing and the simple past mostly appears in written language. The same, however, may be said of the Balearic dialects.
- The second-person singular of the present tense of the verb ser, ets, has been replaced by eres in colloquial speech.
- In general, use of modern forms of the determinate article and the third-person unstressed object pronouns, though some subdialects preserve etymological forms ', ' as in Lleida. For the other unstressed object pronouns, etymological old forms can be found, depending on places, in conjunction with the more modern reinforced ones.
- * Several variations for ', ' : mosatros, moatros, natros; vosatros, voatros, vatros; also for the weak form mos/-mos instead of standard ens/-nos.
- The adverbial pronoun ' is almost never used in speech and is replaced by other pronouns. The adverbial pronoun ' is used less than in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.
- Combined weak clitics with ' preserve the li, whereas in Central Catalan it is replaced by hi. For example, the combination li + el gives li'l in Valencian.
- The weak pronoun ' is pronounced as more often than in other dialects, especially when coming after another pronoun. However, when preceding a verb on its own it is pronounced as : ho dóna 's/he gives it'. Moreover, after a verb ending in a vowel it is pronounced as ; while, when following a verb ending with a consonant it is pronounced as : donar-ho 'to give it'.
- The personal pronoun ' and the adverb ' are not pronounced according to the spelling, but to the etymology. Similar pronunciations can be heard in North-Western Catalan and Ibizan.
- The preposition ' merges with ' in most Valencian subdialects.
- Valencian preserves the mediaeval system of demonstratives with three different levels of demonstrative precision .
Vocabulary
Below are a selection of words which differ or have different forms in Standard Valencian and Catalan. In many cases, both standards include this variation in their respective dictionaries, but differ as to what form is considered primary. In other cases, Valencian includes colloquial forms not present in the IEC standard. Primary forms in each standard are shown in bold. Words in brackets are present in the standard in question, but differ in meaning from how the cognate is used in the other standard.
| Standard Valencian | Standard Catalan | English |
| així, aixina | així | like this |
| bresquilla, préssec | préssec, | peach |
| creïlla, patata | patata, creïlla | potato |
| dènou, dèneu, dinou | dinou, dènou | nineteen |
| dos, dues | dues, dos | two |
| eixe, aqueix | aqueix, eixe | that |
| eixir, sortir | sortir, eixir | to exit, leave |
| engrunsadora, gronxador, gronxadora | gronxador, gronxadora | swing |
| espill, mirall | mirall, espill | mirror |
| este, aquest | aquest, este | this |
| estrela, estel, estrella | estel, estrela, estrella | star |
| hòmens, homes | homes | men |
| hui, avui | avui, hui | today |
| huit, vuit | vuit, huit | eight |
| lluny, llunt | lluny | far |
| meló d'alger, meló d'aigua, síndria | síndria, meló d'aigua, meló d'Alger | watermelon |
| meua, meva teua, teva seua, seva | meva, meua teva, teua seva, seua | my, mine your his/her/its |
| mitat, meitat | meitat, mitat | half |
| palometa, papallona | papallona, palometa | butterfly |
| per favor | si us plau, per favor | please |
| periodista, periodiste | periodista | journalist |
| polp, pop | pop, polp | octopus |
| quint, cinqué | cinquè, quint | fifth |
| rabosa, guineu | guineu, rabosa | fox |
| roín, dolent | dolent, | bad, evil |
| roig, vermell | vermell, roig | red |
| sext, sisé | sisè, sext | sixth |
| tindre, tenir | tenir, tindre | to have |
| tomaca, tomàquet, tomata | tomàquet, tomaca, tomata | tomato |
| vacacions, vacances | vacances, vacacions | holidays |
| veure, vore | veure | to see |
| vindre, venir | venir, vindre | to come |
| xicotet, petit | petit, xicotet | small |
Varieties of Valencian
Standard Valencian
The Academy of Valencian Studies, established by law in 1998 by the Valencian autonomous government and constituted in 2001, is in charge of dictating the official rules governing the use of Valencian. Currently, the majority of people who write in Valencian use this standard.Standard Valencian is based on the standard of the Institute of Catalan Studies, used in Catalonia, with a few adaptations. This standard roughly follows the Rules of Castelló from 1932, a set of othographic guidelines regarded as a compromise between the essence and style of Pompeu Fabra's guidelines, but also allowing the use of Valencian idiosyncrasies.
Valencian subdialects
- Transitional Valencian : spoken only in the northernmost areas of the province of Castellón in towns like Benicarló or Vinaròs, the area of Matarranya in Aragon, and a southern border area of Catalonia surrounding Tortosa, in the province of Tarragona.
- * Word-initial and postconsonantal alternates with intervocalically; e.g. joc 'game', but pitjor 'worse', boja 'crazy'.
- * Final isn't pronounced in infinitives; e.g. cantar 'to sing'.
- * Archaic articles lo, los are used instead of el, els; e.g. lo xic 'the boy', los hòmens 'the men'.
- Northern Valencian : spoken in an area surrounding the city of Castellón de la Plana.
- * Use of sound instead of standard in the third person singular of most verbs; e.g. cantava 'he sang'. Thus, Northern Valencian dialects contrast forms like cantava 'I sang' with cantava 'he sang', but merges cante 'I sing' with canta 'he sings'.
- * Palatalization of and ; e.g. pots 'cans, jars, you can', dotze 'twelve'.
- * Depalatalization of to ; e.g. caixa 'box'.
- Central Valencian, spoken in Valencia city and its area, but not used as standard by the Valencian media.
- * Sibilant merger: all voiced sibilants are devoiced ; that is, apitxat pronounces casa and joc , where other Valencians would pronounce and .
- * Betacism, that is the merge of into ; e.g. viu 'he lives'.
- * Fortition and vocalisation of final consonants; nit 'night'.
- * It preserves the strong simple past, which has been substituted by an analytic past with + infinitive in the rest of modern Catalan and Valencian variants. For example, aní instead of vaig anar 'I went'.
- Southern Valencian : spoken in the contiguous comarques located in the southernmost part of the Valencia province and the northernmost part in the province of Alicante. This subdialect is considered as Standard Valencian.
- * Vowel harmony: the final syllable of a disyllabic word adopts a preceding open or if the final vowel is an unstressed - or -; e.g. terra , dona .
- * This subdialect retain geminate consonants ; e.g. guatla 'quail', cotna 'rind'.
- * Weak pronouns are "reinforced" in front of the verb contrary to other subdialects which maintains "full form".
- Alicante Valencian : spoken in the southern half of the province of Alicante, and the area of Carche in Murcia.
- * Intervocalic elision in most instances; e.g. roda 'wheel', nadal 'Christmas'.
- * Yod is not pronounced in ; e.g. caixa 'box'.
- * Final isn't pronounced in infinitives; e.g. cantar 'to sing'.
- * There are some archaisms like: ans instead of abans 'before', manco instead of menys 'less', dintre instead of dins 'into' or devers instead of cap a 'towards'.
- * There are more interferences with Spanish than other dialects: assul instead of blau 'blue', llimpiar instead of netejar 'to clean' or sacar instead of traure 'take out'.
Authors and literature
Middle Ages
- Misteri d'Elx. Liturgical drama. Listed as Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
Renaissance
- Ausiàs March. Poet, widely read in renaissance Europe.
- Joanot Martorell. Knight and the author of the novel Tirant lo Blanch.
- Isabel de Villena. Religious poet.
- Joan Roís de Corella. Knight and poet.
- Obres e trobes en lahors de la Verge Maria The first book printed in Spain. It is the compendium of a religious poetry contest held that year in the town of Valencia.
Media in Valencian
Prior to its dissolution, the administration of RTVV under the People's Party had been controversial due to accusations of ideological manipulation and lack of plurality. The news broadcast was accused of giving marginal coverage of the Valencia Metro derailment in 2006 and the indictment of President de la Generalitat Francisco Camps in the Gürtel scandal in 2009. Supervisors appointed by the PP were accused of sexual harassment.
In face of an increasing debt due to excessive expenditure by the PP, RTVV announced in 2012 a plan to shed 70% of its labour. The plan was nullified on 5 November 2013 by the National Court after trade unions appealed against it. On that same day, the President de la Generalitat Alberto Fabra announced RTVV would be closed, claiming that reinstating the employees was untenable. On 27 November, the legislative assembly passed the dissolution of RTVV and employees organised to take control of the broadcast, starting a campaign against the PP. Nou TV's last broadcast ended abruptly when Spanish police pulled the plug at 12:19 on 29 November 2013.
Having lost all revenues from advertisements and facing high costs from the termination of hundreds of contracts, critics question whether the closure of RTVV has improved the financial situation of the Generalitat, and point out to plans to benefit private-owned media. Currently, the availability of media in the Valencian language is extremely limited. All the other autonomous communities in Spain, including the monolingual ones, have public-service broadcasters, with the Valencian Community being the only exception despite being the fourth most populated.
In July 2016 a new public corporation, Valencian Media Corporation, was launched in substitution of RTVV. It manages and controls several public media in the Valencian Community, including the television channel À Punt, which started broadcasting in June 2018.
Politico-Linguistic controversy
Linguists, including Valencian scholars, deal with Catalan and Valencian as the same language. The official regulating body of the language of the Valencian community, the Valencian Language Academy considers Valencian and Catalan to be two names for the same language.The AVL was established in 1998 by the PP-UV government of Eduardo Zaplana. According to El País, Jordi Pujol, then president of Catalonia and of the CiU, negotiated with Zaplana in 1996 to ensure the linguistic unity of Catalan in exchange for CiU support of the appointment of José María Aznar as Prime Minister of Spain. Zaplana has denied this, claiming that "ever, never, was I able to negotiate that which is not negotiable, neither that which is not in the negotiating scope of a politician. That is, the unity of the language".
The AVL orthography is based on the Normes de Castelló, a set of rules for writing Valencian established in 1932. A rival set of rules, called Normes del Puig, were established in 1979 by the association RACV, which considers itself a rival language academy to the AVL, and promotes an alternative orthography. Compared to Standard Valencian, this orthography excludes many words not traditionally used in the Valencian Country, and also prefers spellings such as ⟨ch⟩ for /tʃ/ and ⟨y⟩ for /j/.
Valencian is classified as a Western dialect, along with the North-Western varieties spoken in Western Catalonia. The various forms of Catalan and Valencian are mutually intelligible
Despite the position of the official organizations, an opinion poll carried out between 2001 and 2004 showed that the majority of the Valencian people consider Valencian different from Catalan: this position is promoted by people who do not use Valencian regularly. Furthermore, the data indicate that younger people educated in Valencian are much less likely to hold these views. According to an official poll in 2014, 52% of Valencians considered Valencian to be a language different from Catalan, while 41% considered the languages to be the same. This poll showed significant differences regarding age and level of education, with a majority of those aged 18–24 and those with a higher education considering Valencian to be the same language as Catalan. This can be compared to those aged 65 and above and those with only primary education, where the same view has its lowest support.
The ambiguity regarding the term Valencian and its relation to Catalan has sometimes led to confusion and controversy. In 2004, during the drafting of the European Constitution, the regional governments of Spain where a language other than Spanish is co-official were asked to submit translations into the relevant language in question. Since different names are used in Catalonia and in the Valencian Community, the two regions each provided one version, which were identical to each other.