Indo-European · ISO 639-3 cat · ca
Catalan Language català
Catalan is an Indo-European language spoken by about 8.5 million people in 4 countries. It is an official language of Andorra. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Catalan is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Catalan
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Italic
- Latino-Faliscan
- Latinic
- Imperial Latin
- Romance
- Italo-Western Romance
- Western Romance
- Shifted Western Romance
- Southwestern Shifted Romance
- Catalan
Writing system
Latin script
Related languages
About the Catalan language
Catalan (català) is spoken by about 8.5 million people, which makes it the 139th most spoken language in the world — just behind Twi (9.0 million) and ahead of Sichuan Yi (8.4 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Southwestern Shifted Romance group within the Italic branch.
Where is Catalan spoken?
Catalan is used in 4 countries. The largest communities live in Spain (8.0 million), France (116,236), Andorra (43,538) and Italy (21,337). More than half of the population speaks it in Andorra — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Catalan: Spain 17% (8.0 million), France 0.2% (116,236), Andorra 51% (43,538) and Italy <0.1% (21,337).
Catalan is an official language in 1 country: Andorra. It also has regional official status in Spain.
Writing system and status
Catalan is written in the Latin script. Glottolog classifies it as threatened, meaning fewer children learn it than in the past.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Occitan (post 1500), Asturian, Papiamento and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 ca, ISO 639-3 cat.
Frequently asked questions about Catalan
How many people speak Catalan?
Where is Catalan spoken?
In which countries is Catalan an official language?
What language family does Catalan belong to?
What is Catalan called in Catalan?
Is Catalan an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.