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Old Catalan, also known as Medieval Catalan, is the modern denomination for Romance varieties that during the Middle Ages were spoken in territories that spanned roughly the territories of the Principality of Catalonia, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and the island of Sardinia; all of them then part of the Crown of Aragon. These varieties were part of a dialect continuum with what today is called Old Occitan that reached the Loire Valley in the north and Northern Italy in the east. Consequently, Old Catalan can be considered a dialect group of Old Occitan,Tomás Arias, Javier. Elementos de lingüística contrastiva en aragonés: estudio de algunas afinidades con gascón, catalán y otros romances (Thesis). University of Barcelona, 8 July 2016. or be classified as an Occitano-Romance variety side by side with Old Occitan (also known as Old Provençal).
The modern separation of Catalan and Occitan should not be confused with a clear separation between the languages in the mindset of their speakers historically. From the 8th century to the 13th century, there was no clear sociolinguistic distinction between Occitania and Catalonia. For instance, the Provence troubadour, Albertet de Sestaró, says: "Monks, tell me which according to your knowledge are better: the French or the Catalans? And here I shall put Gascony, Provence, Limousin, Auvergne and Viennois while there shall be the land of the two kings." (Monges, causetz, segons vostre siensa qual valon mais, catalan ho francés?/ E met de sai Guascuenha e Proensa/ E lemozí, alvernh’ e vianés/ E de lai met la terra dels dos reis.) In Marseille, a typical Provençal song is called "Catalan song". Moreover, the dialects of Modern Catalan were still considered to be part of the same language as the dialects of Occitan in the 19th century, when Catalans still could call their language Llengua llemosina, using the name of the Limousin dialect as a metonymy for Occitan.
| +Consonants of Old Catalan ! colspan=2 rowspan=2 | ! rowspan=2Labial consonant ! rowspan=2 | Dental consonant/ Alveolar ! rowspan=2 | Palatal ! colspan=2 | Velar consonant |
Around the 12th century, word-initial became , but it continued to be spelled as until the 15th century, when it was replaced by the modern spelling.
Latin words with would also come to be pronounced just like in Spanish language, but and unlike Spanish language could also appear word-finally.
began to merge into in some dialects around the 14th century, a process called [[betacism]]. Now, the distinction is maintained only in Valencia, the [[Balearic Islands]], and towns in southern [[Tarragona]].
Also due to final-obstruent devoicing, word-final instances of /dʒ/ would devoice to /tʃ/ (such as final -: puig 'hill', mig 'half'). Other instances of /tʃ/ (mostly borrowed non-native), came to be spelled with the rather different spelling: fletxa 'arrow' (< Old French fleche, now flèche), botxí 'executioner' ( < Old French bouchier 'butcher'), caputxa 'hood' (< Italian language cappuccio), butxaca 'pocket' ( < obscure) and remain with such spelling to this day.
The phoneme /ʃ/, which would initially only appear in intervocalic and word-final positions, would almost unanimously originate from instances of /ks/ (Latin ), */sts/ (Latin ), */ksts/ (Latin ), */ks/ from /ps/ (Latin ) and more rarely from palatalized /ss/. Due to the abundance of the first group of words, the spelling would be adopted for /ʃ/, including in intervocalic instances (like in Portuguese but unlike Catalan language which spells such instances with ). Later /ʃ/ would also appear at word-initial position from palatalized /s/.
Non-geminated intervocalic /s/ was voiced and gave the original /z/ sound (later would also merge with the latter sound). Geminated intervocalic instances of , as in , would result in /s/, a spelling still retained to this day.
| +Vowels of Old Catalan ! | ! Front vowel ! Central vowel ! Back vowel |
In Modern Central Catalan (and in the eastern half of the island of Menorca and most towns of Ibiza including Ibiza City), stressed has been fronted to , thus partially inverting the original Proto-Romance distribution still found in Italian and Portuguese. Balearic Islands varieties (such as Majorcan, Minorcan in the western half of the island of Menorca and Ibizan in Sant Antoni de Portmany) still keep stressed .
It is assumed that during the preliterary period, all Catalan dialects featured a weak realization of the pretonic vowels. Around the 13th century, pretonic and began to be confused in writing in the Eastern Catalan dialects, and the confusion later spread to all unstressed instances of and , a process that was almost complete by the 15th century.
Final post-tonic were lost during the formation of Catalan. According to some historic studies, (1984). 9788472562356, Curial Edicions Catalanes. ISBN 9788472562356 final nasals were velarised and assimilated before being lost in Modern Catalan: pan → → ( pa 'bread').
This phenomenon gained momentum with the separation of the County of Barcelona from the Carolingian Empire in 988 AD. By the 9th century, the Christian rulers occupied the northern parts of present-day Catalonia, usually termed "Old Catalonia", and during the 11th and 12th centuries they expanded their domains to the region north of the Ebro river, a land known as "New Catalonia". During the 13th century, the Catalans expanded to the Land of Valencia and across to the Balearic Islands and Alghero in Sardinia.
According to historian Jaime Villanueva (1756–1824), the first attested Catalan sentence is thought to be found in an 8th-century manuscript from Ripoll that has since been lost. It was a whimsical note in 10th- or early 11th-century calligraphy: Magister meus no vol que em miras novel ("my master does not want you to watch me, newbie").
During the 11th century, several feudal documents (especially oaths and complaints) written in macaronic Latin began to exhibit elements of Catalan, with proper names or even sentences in Romance. Of special historical and linguistic importance is the Memorial of Complaints of Ponç I Memorial de greuges de Ponç I, comte d'Empúries, contra Jofre, comte de Rosselló (–1060), featuring whole sentences in Romance. By the end of the 11th century, documents written completely or mostly in Catalan begin to appear, like the Complaints of Guitard Isarn, Lord of Caboet (–1095), or The Oath of peace and truce of count Pere Ramon (1098). Catalan shares many features with Gallo-Romance languages, which are mostly located in France and Northern Italy. Old Catalan diverged from Old Occitan between the 11th and 14th centuries.
By the 15th century, the city of Valencia had become the center of social and cultural dynamism, and Catalan was present all over the Mediterranean world. The belief that political splendor was correlated with linguistic consolidation was voiced through the Royal Chancery, which promoted a highly standardized language.
The outstanding novel of chivalry Tirant lo Blanc (1490), by Joanot Martorell, shows the transition from medieval to Renaissance values, something than can also be seen in the works of Bernat Metge and Andreu Febrer. During this period, Catalan was what Costa Carreras terms "one of the 'great languages' of medieval Europe". The flowering of the Renaissance was closely associated with the advent of the printing press, and the first book produced with movable type in the Iberian Peninsula was printed in Valencia in 1474: Trobes en llaors de la Verge maria ("Poems of praise of the Virgin Mary").
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