Northern Catalan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Northern Catalan is an Eastern Catalan dialect mostly spoken in Northern Catalonia, but also extending in the northeast part of Southern Catalonia in a transition zone with Central Catalan.

As an Eastern dialect, schwa is used in substitution of unstressed a and e vowels, and u substitutes unstressed o. It is also the Catalan dialect with less stressed vowels, only five: a, e, i, o, u. There are some stressed o that may change to u (eg. Canigó -> /Canigú/)

As Balearic dialects, final a are not pronounced in those words ending with ia and containing the stress before the penultimate syllable.

Some subdialects keep the typical "lo" article of North-Western Catalan and Occitan language.

There is a huge amount of vocabulary imported from French and Occitan and some grammatical forms such as using the modifier "pas", but not the "no" adverb, in negative sentences, the same as the Occitan language ("pas" is used in other Catalan dialects for emphasising purposes but always with the "no" particle).