Question about the Catalan for Spanish speakers course

[EricGoodem]

I'm too impatient to wait for a Catalan for English speakers course so I'm doing the Catalan for Spanish speakers course (not as hard as I was worried it would be but a challenge nonetheless). I'm noticing that Spanish and Catalan are stunningly different. Is that the result of the course selectively focusing on vocabulary where Spanish and Catalan differ the most, or are the two languages just that incredibly different from each other? If there are plans for a Catalan for English speakers course, will it include a lot of terms that the Catalan for Spanish speakers course doesn't?

[asfarer]

We need to consider that Catalan and Spanish (as French, Portuguese or Italian), come from Latin, so they have the same grammar and mostly the same roots for the words. However, of course, they are two different languages, and we didn't focuse on different vocabulary, it's just that "mesa" is in Spanish and "taula" in Catalan, we can't do anything, they are just different words.

We didn't think yet about the Catalan cours to englishspeakers, so I can't answer you.

[chilvence]

I actually like the Catalan for Spanish course, it is teaching me Catalan while at the same time slapping me in the face for my bad Spanish :)

[PedroTecla]

I think it's important that you have not only Spanish in mind, but also French, when learning Catalan vocabulary. Just like in the example asfarer gave, "mesa" in Spanish is "taula" in Catalan, which is closer to "table" in French. Same for "llet" which I find is closer to "lait" than to "leche", for example.

[clnoy]

You should also understand that Catalan has a strong Occitan influence because of its geographical position.

According to the dialect continuum, Catalan is the language that links Spanish to Occitan as you can see in the image below.

[eino81]

I also do the Catalan in Spanish, learning two languages at the same time. For me Catalan seems to be (or it reminds me) sometimes closer to Italian, see: formatge - formaggio (Sp. queso) or sento - sento (Sp. oigo), of course these are only just examples. Sometimes the sentence is the same as in Spanish, word-by-word... But of course I am in the very beginning.

[EricGoodem]

Gràcies per les respostes! I can definitely see the resemblances to French and Italian. The most striking feature to me is the extent to which Catalan prefers to end words with consonants rather than nouns - something that makes it sound quite different from Spanish and Italian. And some of the vocabulary, like "gos" for dog seems to be unique.

[PakoCxerp]

Spanish is an ibero-romanic language (as portuguese) and catalan is a galo-romanic language (as french)