Catalan/Introducció
Welcome!
[edit | edit source]Welcome to the WikiBooks Catalan course.
Method
[edit | edit source]This book presents simple bilingual texts with Catalan on the left, English on the right. Beneath the Catalan text is a phonetic transcription of the words with the stressed syllable in bold. A literal translation of the English can be found in parenthesis (like this) where the Catalan does not map well to English. You will sometimes see superscript numbers like this1 - these are notes that can be found just below the bilingual text. Example below:
| català | English |
|---|---|
| Hola! D'on ets?1 ɔlə! don ets? |
Hello! Where are you from? (from-where you-are?) |
NOTES
1: ets means you are when speaking informally to peers and people younger than you.
This book focuses on learning by input rather than learning by rote. This means, in practice:
- Lessons are short.
- Chunks of language, rather than individual words, are the focus.
- Verb conjugation is slowly and unevenly exposed.
- Explicit grammar is kept to a minimum except when it clarifies.
How to Use This Book
[edit | edit source]- Aim for one lesson at day.
- If audio is available, you should listen to the dialogue a few times without reading along to see how much you understand. At first, this will likely be zero, but you can get a sense for the rhythm of the language. Later, you will notice words that you don't understand. This is fine.
- Listen and read the Catalan text at the same time. Catalan has silent letters, usually at the end of a word. See if you notice them, then check against the phonetic transcription.
- When you find a word you don't know, make a guess and then check the English translation to see if you were right.
- Practice reading the lines of text, one at a time, after the speaker. Notice intonation differences for questions, or when the speaker pauses (or doesn't).
- Finally, try the translation exercises. The answers are found on the same page.
Other things to try:
- Oral change up: If the sentence reads "I am from Barcelona", try changing it, orally to "Are you from Barcelona?".
- Make flashcards for words that you struggle with.
- The next day1, listen to the audio recording and transcribe it. Check your transcription against the Catalan text.
- Copy the English text to a notebook. The next day, attempt to translate it into Catalan. Check your translation.
1: Spacing out your learning is more effective than doing it all in the same day. This is called recall practice.
More Resources
[edit | edit source]The Catalan language is spoken by approximately 12 million people. For more information see: [1]
For learning resources on the internet see:
- Enciclopèdia.cat [2], el teu portal del coneixement en llengua catalana. (Your web portal to the Catalan language knowledge)
- Gran diccionari de la llengua catalana [3]
- English-Catalan dictionary [4] [Dictionary stats (last updated 20th January 2014)
- Catalan verb conjugations [5], [6]
- Consorsi per a la normalització lingüística [7]