A Romance language, Catalan is spoken by about 12 million people. The biggest autonomous nation of Europe, Catalonia (Spain) uses Catalan language as its official language. It is also spoken as a co-official language in the Spanish communities of Balearic and Valencia.
There are two major dialects in Catalonia: Eastern Catalan and Western Catalan.
Catalan developed from Latin on the North and South side of the eastern Pyrenees, and shares roots with other languages in the North of Italy, South of France and Spain. It’s linguistic domain is a culturally rich and active area.
Catalan is a really active language: the editors per speaker ratio inside the Catalan linguistic domain is one of the highest in the world, and the first level Internet domain “.cat” for web sites in Catalan was the first one created for a linguistic community, due to popular request and having into account the high level of activity of Catalan on the Net.
