El català més català

[muckefuck]

A discussion of the relationship between Spanish and Catalan reminded me of a list I'd seen in The Romance languages (Oxford, 1988) of the core distinctive vocabulary of Catalan. Max Wheeler took a list of the 800 most common words based on vocabulary counts done by Josep Llobera [El català bàsic (Barcelona, 1968)], pared away the 4/5ths that were not "etymological distinct from their most likely Spanish translation", and then went on to weed out those which were not etymologically distinct from their most likely translation in French, Italian, or Occitan. The result is a list of 52 words.

I thought it would be fun to take about half of these, search for or contstruct phrases and short sentences incorporating them, and then post those here to see what sense speakers of other Romance languages could make of them, if any. Keep in mind that none of these words are in any way obscure; they are neither slang nor literary, but in current ordinary use. The snippets come from a variety of sources, including the titles of books and TV programmes, as well as poetry and song lyrics. I've purposely kept them short since more context would make them easier to guess. Have at it!

1. VESPRES TANCAT
2. Aixeca'm més amunt.
3. No hi ha cap forat a la butxaca.
4. La gent duu barret.
5. El meu avi va cridar el capellà.
6. L'aigua es treia amb una galleda.
7. Mitjons bruts o pitjor que han perdut la parella.
8. Renta-ho amb un raspall tou.
9. Aquest noi m'estima molt.
10. El paleta s'ha endut el tros de fusta.
11. Gos dolent!
12. Grills esmolen ganivets a trenc de por.
13. És només soroll.
14. No els hi agrada gens ni mica.
15. Fins aviat!

Comments

[tisoi.livejournal.com]

Ahhh.. what a good idea!

BTW shouldn't #5 be "...va cridar al capellà"?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Crec que no perquè no hi ha un "a personal" amb el complement directe en català. A més, vet aquí el exemple relevant del GREC: cridar 2 tr 1 Invitar (algú) a venir, especialment pronunciant el seu nom. Cridar el metge. T'han cridat al telèfon. [èmfasi meu]

[tisoi.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok. Bueno, no parlava del "a personal" castellà sinò de l'objecte indirecte. Creia que "cridar" significava "gritar" (to yell - My grandpa yelled at the priest) però vaig oblidar que vol dir "llamar" (to call).

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Catalan is just Castilian spoken with an odd accent, so your list must be lots of made-up words!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm nothing if not inventive, gell?

Xs make everthing better!

[bunj.livejournal.com]

"butxaca" is my new word for the day. It looks so cool that I was disappointed at it's prosaic definition (I looked it up, so sue me). I was hoping for an obscure local animal or insult or something. But I guess that's the point of the list - to show how Catalan spices up everyday words with Xs and diacriticals.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Did you have a guess at the translation of the whole sentence?

If you love them Xs, you'll love the Catalan word for "net" in Catalan, xarxa, but my favourite Catalan double-x word is Xauxa "Cockaigne". Can't think of a triple-x one offhand, but I might be able to scrounge one up.

xarxa

[ursine1.livejournal.com]

I see the use of xarxa a lot here. But usually in the context of "association" or "group" rather than "tennis net".

Carles