• by about ten million people
• in 4 European states
• across an area covering about 60,000 square kilometres or 23,250 square miles

Most Catalan speakers are (at least) bilingual and Catalan co-exists with three other important European languages —Spanish, French and Italian.

The Catalan Language and its Linguistic Domain

Catalan is an elegant and beautiful language and has long and significant literary and cultural history.

It is a member of the family of Romance languages, and derives from Latin, like French, Spanish, Italian, Galician, Portuguese, Rumanian and Occitane. As a result it has characteristics in common with the Iberian Romance Languages (Castilian, Galician, Portugese) and has close links with Occitan, the language of the South of France.

The formation of the Catalan language was a long process which culminated in the the 7th to 9th centuries, when the language spoken in this part of the Iberian Peninsula was by then quite distinctive from the Latin spoken during Roman times.

Catalan is spoken in the following areas:

• The old Principality of Catalonia, which, since 1977, has had its own autonomous government, the Generalitat de Catalunya. This corresponds to the Spanish provinces of Barcelona, Girona, Lleida and Tarragona.
• The old Kingdom of Valencia (consisting of the Spanish provinces of València, Castelló and Alacant)
• A strip of eastern Aragón.
• The Balearic islands (Mallorca, Menorca, and Eïvissa [Ibiza])

[Within the Spanish territories mentioned, Catalan has joint official status with Spanish]

• The Co-Principality of Andorra, where Catalan is the only official language. However, Spanish and French are also spoken and widely understood.
• The French province of Rosselló, the Department des Pyrénées Orientales (also known as Catalunya Nord)
• The city of Alguer (Alghero) in Sardinia, Italy.