Valencian language

Valencian
valencià
Pronunciation	[valensiˈa]
Native to	Spain
Region	Valencia, Murcia (Carche) See also geographic distribution of Catalan
Native speakers	2.4 million (2004)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Gallo-Romance Occitano-Romance Catalan Western Catalan Valencian
Writing system	Catalan orthography (Latin script)
Official status
Official language in	In Spain: Valencia
Regulated by	Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None

Valencian (/vəˈlɛnsiən/ or /vəˈlɛnʃən/; endonym: valencià, valenciano, llengua valenciana, or idioma valencià) is the variety of Catalan as spoken in the Valencian Community, Spain. In the Valencian Community, Valencian is the traditional language and is co-official with Spanish. It is often considered a distinct language from Catalan by people from the Valencian Community; however, linguists consider it a dialect of Catalan. A standardized form exists, based on the Southern Valencian dialect.

Valencian belongs to the Western group of Catalan dialects. Under the Valencian Statute of Autonomy, the Valencian Academy of the Language (Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, AVL) has been established as its regulator. The AVL considers Catalan and Valencian to be simply two names for the same language.

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.

Official status

The official status of Valencian is regulated by the Spanish Constitution and the Valencian Statute of Autonomy, together with the Law of Use and Education of Valencian.

Article 6 of the Valencian Statute of Autonomy sets the legal status of Valencian, providing that:

• The official language of the Valencian Community is Valencian.
• Valencian is official within the Valencian Community, along with Spanish, which is the official language nationwide. Everyone shall have the right to know it and use it, and receive education in Valencian.
• No one can be discriminated against by reason of their language.
• Special protection and respect shall be given to the recuperation of Valencian.
• The Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua shall be the normative institution of the Valencian language.

The Law of Use and Education of Valencian develops this frame work, 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 not one of the recognized languages of the European Union (24 official and 26 minority languages).

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 (its inland part and areas in the extreme south as well), 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

Knowledge of Valencian according to the 2001 census. Note that the light green areas inland and in the southernmost part are not historically Valencian speaking (large).

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 collects 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%

For ability:

• 48.5% answered they speak Valencian "perfectly" or "quite well" (54.3% in the Valencian-speaking areas and 10% in the Castilian-speaking areas)
• 26.2% answered they write Valencian "perfectly" or "quite well" (29.5% in the Valencian-speaking areas and 5.8% in the Castilian-speaking areas)

The survey shows that, although Valencian is still the common language in many areas in the Valencian Community, where slightly more than half of the Valencian population are able to speak it, most Valencians do not usually speak in Valencian in their social relations. The statistics hide the fact that in the areas where the language is still strong, most people use Valencian in preference to Castilian in all everyday situations.

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. Note also that 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

Main article: Phonology of Catalan–Valencian–Balearic

Vowels

Vowels of Valencian, from Saborit Villar (2009:23)

Vowels of Valencian

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Close-mid	e	o
Near-open / Open	ɛ̞	ɔ̞
	a

• Valencian has a system of seven stressed vowels /a/, /e/, /ɛ/, /i/, /o/, /ɔ/, and /u/
  • The vowels /i/ (i.e. [ɪ̝]) and /u/ ([ʊ̝]) are more open and centralised than in Castilian.
  • The vowel /e/ is retracted and /o/ is advanced both in stressed and unstressed syllables. /e/ and /o/ can be realised as mid vowels in some cases. This occurs more often with /o/.
  • The so-called "open vowels" (vocals obertes), /ɛ/ and /ɔ/, are generally as low as /a/ in most Valencian dialects. The phonetic realisations of /ɛ/ approaches [æ] (as in American English land) and /ɔ/ is as open as [ɒ] (as in traditional RP dog). This feature is also found in Balearic.
    • /ɛ/ is slightly more open and centralised before liquids /l, r/ and in monosyllabics.
    • /ɔ/ is retracted in most cases. In some dialects (including Balearic) /ɔ/ can be unrounded like in American English.
  • The vowel /a/ is slightly more fronted and closed than in Central Catalan (but less fronted and closed than in Majorcan). The precise phonetic realsation of the vowel /a/ in Valencian is [ɐ ~ ä], this vowel is subject to assimilation in many instances.
    • /a/ can be retracted in contact with velar consonants, and fronted in contact with palatals.
    • Final unstressed /a/ may have the following values: [ɜ̞ ~ ɞ̞ ~ ɐ̞], depending on the preceding sounds and/or dialect, e.g. taula [ˈtɑ̟ʊ̯ɫɜ̞] ~ [ˈtɑ̟ʊ̯ɫɞ̞] ~ [ˈtɑ̟ʊ̯ɫɐ̞] '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 /o/ and /ɔ/ are realised as /u/ ([ʊ̞]) before labial consonants (e.g. coberts [kʊ̞ˈbæ̠ɾ̥(t)s̠] 'cutlery'), before a stressed syllable with a high vowel (e.g. sospira [s̠ʊ̞s̠ˈpɪ̝ɾɐ̞] or [s̠ʊ̞s̠ˈpɪ̝ɾɛ̞̈] 'he/she sighs'), in contact with palatal consonants (e.g. Josep [dʑʊ̞ˈz̠ɛ̞p] 'Joseph') and in monosyllabic clitics (e.g. mon [mʊ̞n] 'my') (note also in many colloquial speeches initial unstressed /o ~ ɔ/ are often reduced to [ʌ̞̈ʊ̯] or [ɐ̞ʊ̯] (also [ʊ̞] in fewer cases), such as olor [ʌ̞̈ʊ̯ˈɫö̞ɾ̥]) 'smell (n)'). Similarly, unstressed /e/, and /ɛ/ are realised as /a/ ([æ̞]) in contact with palatals, approximants or before certain sounds (e.g. eixam [æ̞̈jˈɕæ̞m] 'swarm', clevill [kɫæ̞̈ˈv̞ɪ̝l̠ʲ] 'crevice', terròs [t̪æ̞̈ˈrɔ̞̈s̠] 'clod',) and ([ʌ̞̈] or [ɐ̞])) in fewer cases near velars (e.g. enclusa [ʌ̞̈ŋˈkɫu̞z̠ʌ̞̈] or [ʌ̞̈ŋˈkɫʊ̝z̠ɛ̞̈] 'anvil'). Likewise, unstressed /e ~ ɛ/ merges with /i/ ([ɪ̞]) in contact with palatal consonants (e.g. genoll [dʑɪ̞ˈnö̞l̠ʲ] 'knee'), and especially in lexical derivation with the suffix -ixement (e.g. coneixement [ko̟ne̠jɕɪ̞ˈme̠n̪t̪] 'knowledge'). In the Standard all these reductions are accepted (/e, ɛ/ → [ɪ̞] is only accepted in words with the suffix -ixement).
  • Many Valencian subdialects, especially Southern Valencian, feature some sort of vowel harmony (harmonia vocàlica). This process is normally progressive (i.e. preceding vowels affect those pronounced afterwards) over the last unstressed vowel of a word; e.g. hora /ˈɔɾa/ > [ˈɔ̞ɾɔ̞̈] 'hour'. However, there are cases where regressive metaphony occurs over pretonic vowels; e.g. tovallola /tovaˈʎɔla/ > [t̪ɔ̞̈v̞ɔ̞̈ˈl̠ʲɔ̞ɫɔ̞̈] 'towel', afecta /aˈfɛkta/ > [ɛ̞̈ˈfɛ̞kt̪ɛ̞̈] 'affects'. Vowel harmony differs greatly from dialect to dialect, while many subvarieties alternate [ɛ̞̈] and [ɔ̞̈], according to the previous stressed vowel (e.g. terra [ˈt̪ɛ̞rɛ̞̈] 'Earth, land' and dona [ˈd̪ɔ̞nɔ̞̈] 'woman'); others will favor just one realisation (either [ɛ̞̈] in all, or some, instances; or [ɔ̞̈]), thus, terra and dona can be pronounced [ˈt̪ɛ̞rɛ̞̈] and [ˈd̪ɔ̞nɛ̞̈] (by those who favour [ɛ̞̈]) or [ˈt̪ɛ̞rɔ̞̈] and [ˈd̪ɔ̞nɔ̞̈] (by those who favour [ɔ̞̈]).
    • In a wider sense, vowel harmony can occur in further instances, due to different processes involving palatalisation, velarisarion and labialisation
  • An epethentic vowel (usually pronounced [ɐ] or [ɜ], but transcribed here as [ə]) may be inserted in some environments in the coda in some accents:
    • Eh tu! Vine ací [ˈe̠ː ˈt̪u̞ː‿ə̯ | ˈvi̞ne̠ ɐ̞ˈs̠i̞ː‿ə̯] "Hey you! Come here".

Main vocalic allophones

Phoneme	Phone / Allophone	Usage	Example
/a/	[ɐ̞] / [ɐ] [a̝] / [æ̞̈] [ɑ̝] / [ʌ̞̈] [ɛ̞̈ ~ ɔ̞̈] / [æ̞̈] / [ʌ̞̈]	- Found in most instances - Before/after palatals (*) - Before/after velars - Final unstressed syllables (vowel harmony) (*)	mà llamp poal terra / dona
/ɛ/	[ɛ̞] [æ̠]	- Found in most cases (*) - Before liquids and in monosyllabic terms	tesi set
/e/	[e̠] / [e̞] [æ̞̈] [ʌ̞̈] [ɪ̞]	- Found in most instances - Found in some unstressed syllables near palatals or approximants (vowel harmony) (*) - Found in fewer cases in some unstressed syllables near velars (vowel harmony) (*) - Found in the suffix -ixement, dial. also in contact with palatals (*)	sec eixam entenc naixement
/i/	[i̞] / [ɪ̝] [j]	- Found in most instances - Unstressed position before/after vowels	sis iogurt
/ɔ/	[ɔ̞]	- Found in most cases (*)	dona poc
/o/	[o̟] [o̞] [ʊ̞]	- 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
/u/	[u̞] / [ʊ̝] [w]	- Found in most instances - Unstressed position before/after vowels	suc meua

Consonants

Consonants of Valencian

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Dental/ Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Nasal		m				n		ɲ		(ŋ)
Stop	p	b			t	d			k	ɡ
Affricate					ts	dz	tʃ	dʒ
Fricative			f	v	s	z	ʃ	(ʒ)
Approximant								j		w
Lateral						l		ʎ
Flap						ɾ
Trill						r

• The voiced stops /d, ɡ/ are lenited to [ð, ɣ] after a continuant, i.e. a vowel or any type of consonant other than a stop or nasal (exceptions include /d/ after lateral consonants). These sounds are realised as plosives in the coda in standard Valencian.
  • /b/ can also be lenited in betacist dialects
  • /d/ is often elided between vowels following a stressed syllable (found notably in feminine participles); e.g. fideuà [fɪ̝ð̞e̠ˈwɑ̟ː] ( < fideuada) ' fideuà'.
  • Initial and post-nasal /g/ can be lenited in many accents.
  • Unlike other Catalan dialects, /bl/ and /ɡl/ never geminate or fortify in intervocalic position (e.g. poble [ˈpɔ̞̈bɫe̠] 'village').
• The historical labiodental fricative /v/ survives in most traditional subdialects, including the standard, but merger with /b/ is now dominant in Central and some Northern Valencian subvarieties.
• Valencian has preserved in most of its subvarieties the mediaeval voiced alveolo-palatal affricate /dʒ/ (similar to the j in English "jeep") in contexts where other modern dialects have developed fricative consonants /ʒ/ (like the si in English "vision"); this is a feature shared with modern Ribagorçan. The presence of /dʒ/ for /ʒ/ in Valencian reflects the historical change /ʒ/ > /dʒ/ and the failure for /dʒ/ to become /ʒ/ (a feature shared with Occitan and standard Italian). Nonetheless, the fricative [ʒ] (or more precisely [ɕ̬]) may appear as a voiced allophone of /ʃ/ before vowels and voiced consonants; e.g. peix al forn [ˈpe̠jɕ̬ ɑ̝̈ɫ ˈfö̞ɾn] 'oven fish' (literally 'fish to the oven').
• Deaffrication of /dz/ in verbs ending in -itzar; e.g. analitzar [ɐ̞nɑ̝̈ɫɪ̝ˈz̠ɑ̟ɾ̥] 'to analise'.
• Most Valencian subdialects preserve final stops in clusters (e.g. /mp/, /nt/, /nk/ ([ŋk]), and /lt/): camp [ˈkɑ̟mp] (a feature shared with modern Balearic).
• /l/ is normally velarised [lˠ] ([ɫ]), although some modern dialects ignore this. /l/ is especially dark in stressed syllables or before labial consonants.
  • /l/ is velarised and labio-palatalised [lˠᶣ] before palatalised or velarised vowels: l'únic [ˈɫᶣʊ̞nɪ̝k].
  • /l/ is generally dropped in the word altre ([ˈɐ̞t̪ɾe̠] 'other'), as well as in derived terms. In Standard Valencian it is always pronounced.
• Valencian is the only modern variant that pronounces etymological final [ɾ] in all contexts, although this cannot be generalised since there are Valencian subvarieties which do not pronounce the final [ɾ] or only pronounce it in some contexts. Despite this, there are some cases of final /ɾ/ elision in Valencian such as diners ([d̪ɪ̝ˈne̠s̠] 'money').

Morphology

• The present first-person singular of verbs differs from Central Catalan; e.g. -ar infinitive: parlar 'to speak' gives parle 'I speak' as opposed to parlo, -re infinitive: batre 'to beat' gives bat 'I beat' as opposed to bato, -er infinitive: témer 'to fear' give tem 'I fear' as opposed to temo, and -ir infinitive: sentir 'to feel' gives sent (pronounced [ˈs̠e̠ŋk] in colloquial Valencian) 'I feel' as opposed to sento (all those forms without final -o are more akin to mediaeval Catalan and contemporary Balearic Catalan), and inchoative -ir verbs: patir 'to suffer' gives patisc or patesc ('I suffer') as opposed to pateixo.
• Present subjunctive is more akin to mediaeval Catalan and Spanish; -ar infinitives end ⟨e⟩, -re, -er and -ir verbs end in ⟨a⟩ (in contemporary Central Catalan present subjunctive ends in ⟨i⟩).
• An exclusive feature of Valencian is the subjunctive imperfect morpheme -ra: que ell vinguera ('that he might come').
• Valencian has -i- as theme vowel for inchoative verbs of the third conjugation; e.g. servix ('s/he serves'), like North-Western Catalan. Although, again, this cannot be generalized since there are Valencian subdialects that utilize -ei-, e.g. serveix.
• In Valencian the simple past tense (e.g. cantà 'he sang') is more frequently used in speech than in Central Catalan, where the periphrastic past (e.g. va cantar 'he sang') 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 ('to be'), ets ('you are'), has been replaced by eres in colloquial speech.

Clitics

• In general, use of modern forms of the determinate article (el, els 'the') and the third-person unstressed object pronouns (el, els 'him, them'), though some subdialects (for instance the one spoken in Vinaròs area) preserve etymological forms lo, los as in Lleida. For the other unstressed object pronouns, etymological old forms (me, te, se, ne, mos, vos...) can be found, depending on places, in conjunction with the more modern reinforced ones (em, et, es, en, ens, us...).
  • Several variations for nosaltres, vosaltres ('we, you'): mosatros, moatros, natros; vosatros, voatros, vatros; also for the weak form mos/-mos instead of standard ens/-nos ('us').
• The adverbial pronoun hi ('there') is almost never used in speech and is replaced by other pronouns. The adverbial pronoun en ('him/her/them/it') is used less than in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.
• Combined weak clitics with li ('him/her/it') preserve the li, whereas in Central Catalan it is replaced by hi. For example, the combination li + el gives li'l in Valencian (l'hi in Central Catalan).
• The weak pronoun ho ('it') is pronounced as [ew] more often than in other dialects, especially when coming after another pronoun (e.g. m'ho dóna [mew ˈðona], dóna-m'ho [ˈdonamew] 's/he gives it to me'). However, when preceding a verb on its own it is pronounced as [u]: ho dóna [u ˈðona] 's/he gives it'. Moreover, after a verb ending in a vowel it is pronounced as [w] (e.g. dóna-ho [ˈdonaw] 'you give it'); while, when following a verb ending with a consonant it is pronounced as [o]: donar-ho [doˈnaɾo] 'to give it'.
• The personal pronoun jo ('I') and the adverb ja ('already') are not pronounced according to the spelling, but to the etymology ([ˈjɔ] and [ˈja], instead of /ˈ(d)ʒɔ/ and /ˈ(d)ʒa/). Similar pronunciations can be heard in North-Western Catalan and Ibizan.
• The preposition amb ('with') merges with en ('in') in most Valencian subdialects.
• Valencian preserves the mediaeval system of demonstratives with three different levels of demonstrative precision (este or aquest/açò/ací, eixe or aqueix/això/ahí, aquell/allò/allí or allà, where "aquest" and "aqueix" are almost never used) (feature shared with modern Ribagorçan and Tortosí).

Vocabulary

Different spelling of words with the same etymology

• Cardinal numbers (8, 19, 68, 200, 1 000 000): Huit, dèneu, seixanta-huit (pronounced 'xixanta-huit'), dos-cents, milió (pronounced 'milló') for vuit, dinou, seixanta-vuit, dues-centes, milió, although dos-centes is also found outside Valencian and in many regions of Catalonia seixanta is pronounced [ʃi'ʃanta], as in Valencian.
• Meua, teua, seua for meva, teva, seva, a feature shared with North-Western Catalan.
• Hui for avui.
• Ordinal numbers (5th, 6th, 20th): quint, sext, vigèsim for cinquè, sisè, vintè, although the former are also found outside Valencian: la quinta columna, el vigèsim regiment.

Different choice of words

• For example, "please" in Catalonia is usually si us plau or sisplau, which is close to the French s'il vous plaît; In Valencian per favor is more common, which is closer to the Spanish por favor, although per favor is used in all the Catalan-speaking areas.

Some other features, such as the use of molt de or the lack of hom or geminate l, are often given as examples of differences between Valencian varieties and other forms of the language. However, these are actually differences between colloquial and literary language and, again, may not apply to specific sub-dialects. Northern and southern variants of Valencian share more features with western Catalan (Lower Ebro river area for instance) than with central Valencian. Thus, some of the features listed previously do not apply to them.

Varieties of Valencian

Standard Valencian

The Academy of Valencian Studies (Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, AVL), 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 (Institut d'Estudis Catalans, IEC), used in Catalonia, with a few adaptations. This standard roughly follows the Rules of Castellón (Normes de Castellón) 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

Subdialects of Valencian

• Transitional Valencian (valencià de transició or tortosí): spoken only in the northernmost areas of the province of Castellón in towns like Benicarló or Vinaròs, the area of Matarranya in Aragon (province of Teruel), and a southern border area of Catalonia surrounding Tortosa, in the province of Tarragona.
  • Word-initial and postconsonantal /dʒ/ (Catalan /ʒ/ and /dʒ/~/ʒ/) alternates with [(j)ʒ] intervocalically; e.g. joc [ˈdʒɔk] 'game', but pitjor [piˈʒo] 'worse', boja [ˈbɔjʒa] 'crazy' (Standard Valencian /ˈdʒɔk/, /piˈdʒoɾ/; /ˈbɔdʒa/; Standard Catalan /ˈʒɔk/, /piˈdʒo/ and /ˈbɔʒə/).
  • Final ⟨r⟩ [ɾ] isn't pronounced in infinitives; e.g. cantar [kanˈta] (instead of /kanˈtaɾ/) 'to sing'.
  • Archaic articles lo, los ('the') are used instead of el, els; e.g. lo xic 'the boy', los hòmens 'the men'.
• Northern Valencian (valencià septentrional or castellonenc): spoken in an area surrounding the city of Castellón de la Plana.
  • Use of [e] sound instead of standard ⟨a⟩ /a/ in the third person singular of most verbs; e.g. (ell) cantava [ˈkantave] (instead of /kanˈtava/) 'he sang'. Thus, Northern Valencian dialects contrast forms like (jo) cantava [kanˈtava] 'I sang' with (ell) cantava [kanˈtave] 'he sang', but merges (jo) cante [ˈkante] 'I sing' with (ell) canta [ˈkante] 'he sings'.
  • Palatalization of ⟨ts⟩ /ts/ > [tʃ] and ⟨tz⟩ /dz/ > [dʒ]; e.g. pots /ˈpots/ > [ˈpotʃ] 'cans, jars, you can', dotze /ˈdodze/ > [ˈdodʒe] 'twelve'.
  • Depalatalization of /ʃ/ to [sʲ]; e.g. caixa [ˈkajʃa] > [ˈkajsʲa] 'box'.
• Central Valencian (valencià central or apitxat), spoken in Valencia city and its area, but not used as standard by the Valencian media.
  • Sibilant merger: all voiced sibilants get unvoiced (/dʒ/ > [tʃ], /dz/ > [ts], /z/ > [s]); that is, apitxat pronounces casa [ˈkasa] ('house') and joc [ˈtʃɔk] ('game'), where other Valencians would pronounce /ˈkaza/ and /ˈdʒɔk/ (feature shared with Ribagorçan).
  • Betacism, that is the merge of /v/ into /b/; e.g. viu [ˈbiw] (instead of /ˈviw/) 'he lives'.
  • Fortition (gemination) and vocalisation of final consonants; nit [ˈnitːë] (instead of /ˈnit/) 'night'.
  • It preserves the strong simple past, which has been substituted by an analytic past (periphrastic past) with vadere + infinitive in the rest of modern Catalan and Valencian variants. For example, aní instead of vaig anar 'I went'.
• Southern Valencian (valencià meridional): 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 ⟨e⟩ [ɛ] or ⟨o⟩ [ɔ] if the final vowel is an unstressed -⟨a⟩ or -⟨e⟩; e.g. terra [ˈtɛrɛ] ('earth, land'), dona [ˈdɔnɔ] ('woman').
  • This subdialect retain geminate consonants (⟨tl⟩ /lː/ and ⟨tn⟩ /nː/); e.g. guatla [ˈɡwalːa] 'quail', cotna [ˈkonːa] 'rind'.
  • Weak pronouns are "reinforced" in front of the verb (em, en, et, es, etc.) contrary to other subdialects which maintains "full form" (me, ne, te, se, etc.).
• Alicante Valencian (valencià alacantí): spoken in the southern half of the province of Alicante, and the area of Carche in Murcia.
  • Intervocalic /d/ elision in most instances; e.g. roda [ˈrɔa] 'wheel', nadal [naˈal] 'Christmas'.
  • Yod is not pronounced in ⟨ix⟩ /jʃ/ > [ʃ]; e.g. caixa [ˈkaʃa] 'box'.
  • Final ⟨r⟩ isn't pronounced in infinitives; e.g. cantar [kanˈta] '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 (from azul) instead of blau (or atzur) 'blue', llimpiar (from limpiar) instead of netejar 'to clean' or sacar (from sacar) instead of traure 'take out'.

Authors and literature

Middle Ages

Misteri d'Elx (c. 1350). Liturgical drama. Listed as Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

Renaissance

Ausiàs March (Gandia, 1400 – Valencia, March 3, 1459). Poet, widely read in renaissance Europe.

Joanot Martorell (Gandia, 1413–1468). Knight and the author of the novel Tirant lo Blanch.

Isabel de Villena (Valencia, 1430–1490). Religious poetess.

Joan Roís de Corella (Gandia or Valencia, 1435 – Valencia, 1497). Knight and poet.

Obres e trobes en lahors de la Verge Maria (1474) 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

Main article: Ràdio Televisió Valenciana

Employees demonstrate in front of the RTVV headquarters in Burjassot the day of its closure

Until its dissolution on November 2013, the public-service Ràdio Televisió Valenciana (RTVV) was the main broadcaster of radio and television in Valencian language. The Generalitat Valenciana constituted it in 1984 in order to guarantee the freedom of information of the Valencian people in their own language.

Prior to its dissolution, the administration of RTVV under the People's Party (PP) 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 (also from PP) 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 organized 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.

Linguistic controversy

Further information: Valencian language controversy, Language secessionism, Blaverism, and Anti-Catalanism

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 Academy of Language (Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, AVL) declares the linguistic unity between Valencian and Catalan varieties.

[T]he historical patrimonial language of the Valencian people, from a philological standpoint, is the same shared by the autonomous communinites of Catalonia and Balearic islands, and Principality of Andorra. Additionally, it is the patrimonial historical language of other territories of the ancient Crown of Aragon [...] The different varieties of these territories constitute a language, that is, a "linguistic system" [...] From this group of varieties, Valencian has the same hierarchy and dignity as any other dialectal modality of that linguistic system [...]

— Ruling of the Valencian Language Academy of 9 February 2005, extract of point 1.

Valencian is classified as a Western dialect, along with the North-Western varieties spoken in Western Catalonia (Province of Lleida and most of the Province of Tarragona). The various forms of Catalan and Valencian are mutually intelligible (ranging from 90% to 95%)

The AVL, created by the Valencian parliament, is in charge of dictating the official rules governing the use of Valencian, and its standard is based on the Rules of Castellón (Normes de Castelló). Currently, everyone who writes in Valencian uses this standard, except the Royal Academy of Valencian Culture (Acadèmia de Cultura Valenciana, RACV), which uses for Valencian an independent standard.

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 indicates that younger generations educated in Valencian are much less likely to hold these views. A minority of Valencian scholars active in fields other than linguistics defends the position of the Royal Academy of Valencian Culture (Acadèmia de Cultura Valenciana, RACV), which uses for Valencian a standard independent from Catalan.

This clash of opinions has sparked much controversy. For example, during the drafting of the European Constitution in 2004, the Spanish government supplied the European Union with translations of the text into Basque, Galician, Catalan, and Valencian, but the latter two were identical.

See also

• Pluricentric language
• Valencian Sign Language
• Che (interjection)#Other uses (spelled xe in Modern Valencian)
• Similar linguistic controversies:
  • Names given to the Spanish language
  • Moldovan language
  • Occitan language
  • Serbo-Croatian
  • Comparison of American and British English
  • Comparison of Afrikaans and Dutch

Bibliography

• Colomina i Castanyer, Jordi, (1995). Els valencians i la llengua normativa. Textos universitaris. Alicante: Institut de Cultura "Juan Gil-Albert". ISBN 84-7784-178-0.
• Costa Carreras, Joan; Yates, Alan (2009). The Architect of Modern Catalan: Selected Writings/Pompeu Fabra (1868–1948). Instutut d'Estudis Catalans & Universitat Pompeu Fabra & Jonh Benjamins B.V. pp. 6–7. ISBN 978 90 272 3264 9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Garcia Moya, Ricart (1942), Diccionari Històric del Idioma Valencià Modern, Valencia 2006, ISBN 84-934687-5-4
• Guinot, Enric (1999). Els fundadors del Regne de València. Edicions 3i4, Valencia 1999. ISBN 84-7502-592-7
• Lledó, Miquel Àngel (2011). "26. The Independent Standardization of Valencia: From Official Use to Underground Resistance". Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity : The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts (Volume 2). New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 336–348. ISBN 978-0-19-539245-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Feldhausen, Ingo (2010). Sentential Form and Prosodic Structure of Catalan. John Benjamins B.V. ISBN 978 90 272 5551 8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)Salvador i Gimeno, Carles (1951). Gramàtica valenciana. Associació Cultural Lo Rat Penat. Valencia 1995. ISBN 84-85211-71-5 .
• Saborit Villar, Josep (2009), Millorem la pronúncia, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
• Salvador i Gimeno, Carles (1963). Valencians i la llengua autòctona durant els segles XVI, XVII i XVIII. Institució Alfons el Magnànim. Valencia. ISBN 84-370-5334-X.
• Sanchis i Guarner, Manuel (1934, 1967). La llengua dels valencians. Edicions 3i4, Valencia 2005. ISBN 84-7502-082-8 .
• Ubieto Arteta, Antonio (1923, 1990), Orígenes del Reino de Valencia. Zaragoza 1979, ISBN 84-7013-154-0.
• Valor i Vives, Enric (1973). Curs mitjà de gramàtica catalana, referida especialment al País Valencià. Grog Editions, Valencia 1999. ISBN 84-85211-45-6 .
• Puerto Ferre, Teresa y Culla Hernandez, Joan Ignaci. Cronología Histórica de la Lengua Valenciana. Diputación de Valencia. Valencia. 2007. ISBN 978-84-7795-470-5.
• Puerto Ferre, Teresa. Lengua Valenciana una lengua suplantada. Diputación de Valencia. Valencia. 2006. ISBN 84-7795-406-2.
• Wheeler, Max; Yates, Alan; Dols, Nicolau (1999), Catalan: A Comprehensive Grammar, London: Routledge
• Wheeler, Max (2003). "5. Catalan". The Romance Languages. London: Routledge. pp. 170–208. ISBN 0-415-16417-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wheeler, Max (2005). The Phonology Of Catalan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-19-925814-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wheeler, Max H. (2006), "Catalan", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Elsevier, ISBN 978-0-08-044299-0 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
• Valencian dictionary
• Institut Joan Lluís Vives
• Royal Academy of Valencian Culture

Documents

• Disputing theories about Valencian origin Template:Es icon
• The origins and evolution of language secessionism in Valencia. An analysis from the transition period until today Template:En icon
• Article from El País (25 October 2005) regarding report on use of Valencian published by Servei d’Investicació i Estudis Sociolinguístics Template:Es icon
• Basic introduction to the Valencian Language Template:En icon