Catalan alphabet
Catalan alphabet is The Catalan Latin alphabet, 35 letters. 27 letters: the Latin alphabet plus ç — and unstressed vowels that refuse to sound the way they are written. The characters are grouped: signs of its own, five vowels — eight sounds, the letters that mislead. Below is a table with sound and a breakdown by groups.
Signs of its own
ç is the only letter with a cedilla, l·l the only mid-word dot. The combinations are not letters, but no menu can be read without them.
Five vowels — eight sounds
The main difficulty of Catalan is not the letters but that unstressed vowels lose themselves: a and e merge into one muffled sound, o turns into u. This is the norm, and it is how you recognize a native speaker.
The letters that mislead
Here Catalan parts ways both with Spanish and with what the eye expects: j is a zh, s between vowels is a z, a final r goes silent.
- H hsilenthac
- J jzhjota
- G gg before a, o, u; zh before e and ige
- V vv (sounds almost like b)uve baixa
- B bb; sounds like p at the end of a wordbe alta
- C ck; s before e and ice
- Q qk (always with a silent u)cu
- S ss; z between vowelsesse
- Ss sss (always voiceless)essa doble
- R rr; usually silent at the end of a worderre
- Rr rra rolled r (between vowels)erra doble
- Z zzzeta
- Y yy or ee (loanwords only)i grega
Read exactly as they look
Nothing to learn here: the sound is exactly the one you expect.
What to know about this Latin script
There are 27 letters: the Latin alphabet plus ç. The course follows the central norm (Barcelona, Girona): that is what radio and television speak, and what schools teach. The Valencian norm (AVL) is spelled the same way; only a handful of words and some stress marks part ways. Written stress is marked with the acute (á, é, í, ó, ú) and the grave (à, è, ò) — these are not separate letters, just notes about where the stress falls or which of the two e-sounds is open.
Test yourself
Five characters at random. No need to answer aloud — just pick; the answer appears at once.
- Which character reads as “ah; unstressed — a muffled "uh"”?
Vowel reduction is not an accent but the norm: casa sounds like "KAH-zuh"
- Which character reads as “s (always)”?
The only letter with a cedilla: caça is "hunting", comença is "it begins". It sounds like c before e/i but can turn up anywhere
- Which character reads as “f”?
An ordinary f
- Which character reads as “ee”?
A clean ee; on its own, the word i means "and"
- Which character reads as “l”?
A light l, thinner than the dark l at the end of English "full"
How to learn letters so they stay
You cannot learn a table by staring at it. What works: see a character, try to recall its sound, get it wrong, see the right answer — and come back to that character in a day, not in an hour.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
That is why the alphabet in the app is learned a few characters at a time, not all at once: nobody holds 35 signs in one sitting.
Frequently asked
How many letters in the Catalan alphabet?
35 letters — The Catalan Latin alphabet. The characters have capital and small forms.
Can I listen to how the Catalan letters sound?
Not yet: we have no recordings for this script. That is why there is no sound button either — it would be silent.
How long does it take to learn the Catalan alphabet?
A few characters a day — one to two weeks, if you come back to what you covered. The whole alphabet crammed in an evening is remembered for an evening: without reviews the next day and three days later, the characters are almost entirely gone.
Where to start: letters or words?
Both at once: you can already read this script, so a separate letters course is not needed — a reference table is enough.