Catalan Alphabet & Accents

Catalan (català, called valencià in the Valencian Community) is a Romance language written in the ordinary 26-letter Latin alphabet. Its standard spelling is set by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans in Barcelona, and for Valencian by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua. K, W and Y occur in borrowings and their derivatives and in some names; Y also occurs in the digraph ny.

What makes Catalan text look Catalan is a small set of marks: the grave accent on à è ò, the acute on é í ó ú, the diaeresis on ï ü, the cedilla on ç, and the raised dot of l·l. None of them makes a separate letter: in dictionaries à sorts with a and ç with c. Capitals keep their accents, so a sign reads CATALÀ, PLAÇA, COL·LEGI.

Catalan also writes several sounds with two letters: ny as in Catalunya and any (year), the same sound as Spanish ñ; ll as in llengua (language) and Lleida, the sound of lli in million; tx as in cotxe (car); ix and x for the sh sound in caixa; initial x in xocolata is sh in eastern varieties and often /tʃ/ in western ones; and ig at the end of a word as in maig (May).

Catalan accents: à, è or é, ò or ó, í and ú

The accent marks the stressed syllable when the default rules don't predict it (català, música, camió), and on e and o it also shows the vowel's quality. The grave marks an open sound: cafè, perquè, història, això. The acute marks a closed one: també, més, cançó, només. A is always open, so it only ever takes a grave (demà, està), and i and u are always closed, so they only take an acute (així, difícil, ningú). That is why you will never see á, ì or ù in standard Catalan.

Valencian follows its own pronunciation in a group of words, writing é where central Catalan has è: anglés and conéixer in Valencia, anglès and conèixer in Barcelona. Both are correct.

A handful of short words carry a diacritic accent only to tell them apart from a twin: més (more) and mes (month), sí (yes) and si (if), món (world) and mon (my), mà (hand) and ma (my), és (is) and es. The Institut d'Estudis Catalans' 2016 spelling reform cut that list down to fifteen words, so older texts show accents such as dóna (gives) that are now written dona.

Ç, ï, ü and the ela geminada l·l

Ç, the ce trencada (broken c), gives c the s sound before a, o and u and at the end of a word: plaça (square), força (strength), dolç (sweet), feliç (happy), and the most famous one of all, Barça. Before e and i a plain c already sounds like s (cel, ciutat), so ç is not needed there.

The diaeresis does two jobs. On ï (and sometimes ü) it splits two vowels into separate syllables: veïna (neighbour), raïm (grapes), països (countries). On ü after g or q it shows that the u is pronounced: pingüí (penguin), llengües (languages), qüestió (question).

The ela geminada is written l·l, with a raised dot called the punt volat between the two l's. It marks a doubled l, said as one long l, and keeps it apart from the palatal ll: cel·la (cell) against cella (eyebrow). It turns up in many learned words: col·legi (school), il·lusió, intel·ligent, novel·la, paral·lel. The dot is the ordinary middle dot · (U+00B7); a full stop (col.legi), a bullet • or a hyphenation point ‧ are look-alikes that spell-checkers will flag. Unicode also has one-character forms Ŀ ŀ (U+013F, U+0140), kept for compatibility with old character sets; most keyboards, spell-checkers and style guides use l + · + l instead, so pick that unless a system asks for ŀ.

How to type Catalan accents, ç and the l·l dot

Windows: hold Alt and type on the number pad: à 0224, è 0232, é 0233, í 0237, ï 0239, ò 0242, ó 0243, ú 0250, ü 0252, ç 0231, · 0183, and for capitals À 0192, È 0200, É 0201, Í 0205, Ï 0207, Ò 0210, Ó 0211, Ú 0218, Ü 0220, Ç 0199; « 0171 and » 0187. On the United States-International layout type ` then a vowel for à è ò, ' then a vowel for é í ó ú, " then i or u for ï ü, and ' then c for ç.

Spanish keyboard: the layout most people use in Catalonia and Valencia has a key of its own for Ç, dead keys for ` and ´ next to P and Ñ, Shift with the ´ key for ¨, and Shift + 3 for the middle dot ·. Windows and macOS also offer a Catalan input language on that layout.

Mac: hold the letter and pick from the pop-up, or use Option + ` then a vowel for à è ò, Option + E then a vowel for é í ó ú, Option + U then i or u for ï ü, Option + C for ç (Option + Shift + C for Ç) and Option + Shift + 9 for ·. Phones: long-press a, e, i, o, u or c; switch the keyboard language to Catalan for the best suggestions, and copy the · from this page if your keyboard hides it.

HTML: à à, è è, é é, ò ò, ó ó, ï ï, ü ü, ç ç, · ·, « « and » ».

Catalan punctuation: « », the apostrophe and no ¿ ¡

Catalan quotes with the angle quotes « » first and “ ” for a quote inside a quote, then ‘ ’. Dialogue in novels opens with a dash —. Standard Catalan writes questions and exclamations with only the closing ? and !, no opening ¿ or ¡: Com estàs?, Bon dia!

The apostrophe ’ is everywhere, because el, la, de and the pronouns lose their vowel next to another vowel: l’home (the man), l’aigua (the water), d’on (from where), m’agrada (I like it), t’estimo (I love you). Pronouns after a verb join it with a hyphen: menja-ho (eat it), dona-m’ho (give it to me).

Where Catalan is spoken, and its neighbours

CLDR estimates about 8.2 million Catalan speakers, and other counts that include second-language speakers run higher. About 8 million of them live in Spain 🇪🇸: in Catalonia, the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands, where it is co-official with Spanish, and in La Franja, the eastern edge of Aragon. Across the Pyrenees, around 120,000 speak it in Northern Catalonia in France 🇫🇷 (CLDR estimate); in Andorra 🇦🇩, about 44,000, it is the only official language; and around 21,000 speak it in the town of Alghero (l’Alguer) on Sardinia, Italy 🇮🇹. All four pay in euros €, written after the number in Catalan: 20 €, 3,50 €.

The closest relative of Catalan is Occitan, spoken just to the north; it also shares much with Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, and in Alghero it lives alongside Sardinian. See our collections of Occitan, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Galician, Basque and Sardinian letters for their alphabets, and the Spain, Andorra, France and Italy pages for each country's flag and emoji.