Catalan is spoken, in Spain, in the provinces of Gerona, Lérida, Barcelona, Tarragona, Castellón, Valencia, Alicante, and the Balearic Islands; in France, in nearly the whole of the Pyrénées-Orientales; and in parts of Cuba and Argentina. It originated in Catalonia, a region in Northeast Spain.
Catalan has a character as distinctive as that of Castilian Spanish , Portuguese , and Galician. Catalan has the following characteristics: the pronunciation of band v has not merged; the voiced s sound; ais retained in unstressed final vowels while other vowels are dropped; the Latin au is changed to o (as in Castilian); final dental sounds are vocalised; and the original pronunciation of the Latin uis retained in words where French and Occitan (Provençal) use ü.
| Name | Where spoken | Language Family | How many (000s) |
| Catalan | NE Spain, France (Rousillon), Andorra, NW Brazil | Indo-European (Romance) | 5-7m |
Table source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, David Ctystal, Cambridge University Press
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