Catalan pronunciation for Spanish speakers

[muckefuck]

1. Vowel system Catalan has a seven-vowel system, with two more distinctive vowels than Spanish. e and o each exist in an open and a close variety. The open versions are similar to the Standard English "short vowels" in bed and off, respectively. The close versions are like the Spanish vowels in eso.
2. Diphthongs Catalan has a lot falling diphthongs ending in /w/. Except for au, there are no equivalents in Spanish. eu is like Spanish au, but with a different vowel--either open or close e (depending on the word) followed by a short u sound. Catalan ou sounds a lot like English owe.
3. Palatals From the point of view of a Spanish speaker, Catalan is lleísta. ll is never pronounced like y. Most guides will tell you that it's pronounced "like the 'll' in million" and while this isn't strictly accurate, it's close enough for government work. Note that it has this sound in every position, even at the end of a word like ocell. The same is true of ny, which is the equivalent of Spanish ñ.
4. Sibilants Catalan is seseante; "soft" c is always [s], never "lisped". Furthermore, where Spanish has only /s/, Catalan has both /s/ and /z/. The letter s is pronounced [z] between voiced sounds. To show the /s/ sound between vowels, Catalans write ss or ç.
5. Shibilants and affricates Catalan lacks the sound of Spanish jota. j and "soft" g are pronounced as in French genre or rouge. Catalan also has a voiced affricate like English j which is written either tj or tg, depending (e.g. pitjor, Sitges). It has a sound like English sh which is written (i)x and one like English or Spanish ch which is usually written tx (or, at the end of some words, ig, e.g. roig, vaig.) Lastly, it has a sound like the ds in English bids which is written tz.
6. Silent letters Catalan has a number of silent letters in final position. t is generally silent after n, but reappears in front of a vowel. r is dropped in many words. It's silent in infinitives except when clitic pronouns follow. Other consonants may be devoiced finally, e.g. bard rhymes with art.
7. Liaison Like French, Catalan has many vowel and consonant liaisons. In addition to the ones already mentioned (e.g. vaig canta(r) vs. cantar-hi), /s/ often becomes [z] before voiced sounds (e.g. pel[z] ulls. When two like vowels come together, one is deleted, e.g. que elegant, pronounced as if quelegan.
8. Velarisation One feature of Catalan is strikingly similar to English: After vowels, /l/ is "dark" or velarised. If you pronounce Catalan pèl just like English pell, you'll actually be quite close to the true pronunciation.
9. Stress In general, the same stress-placement rules apply. The biggest exceptions I can think of are words ending in -n (stressed on the final syllable except when it is -en, e.g. Duran vs. duren) and those ending in -ia. In Catalan, the i is assumed stressed unless there's an accent elsewhere on the word (e.g. glòria). Actually, I think this goes for all two-vowel finals (e.g. seminua, canteu, etc.).
10. Vowel reduction Catalan has a seven-vowel system only for the stressed vowels. For unstressed vowels, there number of distinctions varies from five to three. At the very least, the distinction between open and close vowels is lost. In Eastern Catalan (including the pronunciation of Barcelona), o falls together with u and e with a. Thus, paramà and per amar sound the same, as do ollal and ullal.

Now practice along with me: Setze jutges d'un jutjat mengen el fetge d'un penjat. "Sixteen judges from a tribunal eat the liver of a hanged man."

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I don't see how this is supposed to help me with my German.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Patience, my dear! You'll get yours.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

This was really informative -- thank you!

<bookmarks>

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

De res! To make it more useful, I've expanded it and added some more technical vocab. (It was originally written for a teenager in California with no real command of linguistics jargon.)

And Also Don't Forget:

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Catalan needs update
Catalan needs us
Catalan needs to do a nice little jump
Catalan needs a final heavy syllable to have final stress
Catalan needs your help again
Catalan needs kdelibs
Catalan needs it even more

"E neutra"

[(Anonymous)]

You put it very well, but forgot about an eight vowel.

I am talking about the " e neutra", that intermediate sound between /a/ and /e/ that I believe is called /schwa/ in English.

It is the way an unstressed "a" or "e" is pronounced in the Oriental (so numerically predominant) dialects. Consider these two examples: "casa","Pere". Both second vowels are pronounced exactly the same, and very differently from the first vowel in each case.

Thank you anyway for your very useful summary

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

True, I said "In Eastern Catalan (including the pronunciation of Barcelona), [unstressed] o falls together with u and e with a," but I didn't say anything about the quality of those unstressed vowels. It's true that unstressed e/a is realised as a shwa for most oriental speakers.

However, phonemically most varieties of Eastern Catalan still only distinguish seven tonic vowels. The main exceptions are found in the Balearic Islands, where many speakers have a stressed central vowel in such words as pera and veure. I'm trying to keep the guidelines simple, though, so I can't mention every possible variation out there--no matter how interesting I may think it is!