Is Catalan closer to Portuguese or Italian?

[aimar]

Seeing as Catalunya is roughly equidistant from both countries.
I'm waiting for Comte Arnau's answer mostly.

[Guapo]

Spanish

[Comte Arnau]

Seeing as Catalunya is roughly equidistant from both countries.
I'm waiting for Comte Arnau's answer mostly.

Interesting question, as the typical one has always been between Spanish and French. I'll try to be short but clarifying.

First of all, on answering to this I'll be dealing with the Standard of Portugal, the Standard of Catalonia&Andorra and Standard Italian.
Secondly, as it's obvious that the three of them are relatively close since the three are Romance, I'll focus on the differential elements, mainly in phonology and vocabulary, as the grammar is pretty much similar in the three, despite some important differences in the verbal and clitic systems.

In phonology,
-Italian is 'clear-sounding', basically with the seven typical pan-Romance vowels, as well as with typical pan-Romance consonant sounds
-Portuguese is 'obscure-sounding', like French, with a complex vowel range, uvular sounds, a dark l and a lot of syncopation.
-Catalan is more obscure-sounding than Italian, because of the presence of schwas, dark l's and some syncopation, yet far from being as obscure as Portuguese. Moreover, Catalan has a system of affricates similar to that of Italian. Western Catalan (as in the Valencian standard) would be even closer to the Italian phonology.

So IMO, Catalan's phonology, while darker than the Italian-Spanish group, is closer to it than to the even darker Portuguese-French group. I'd graphically represent it like this:



Regarding vocabulary, as usual, I'd refer to the study of the most basic differential core, which offers a series of percentages. Catalan is closer to the Gallo-Romance area, but other than that, Catalan is still closer to the Italian core than to the Ibero-Romance one. (There is a conservative/divergent Portuguese-Spanish lexical core that is a real differential wall with Catalan-French-Italian, even after centuries of Ibero-Romance influence on Catalan)

Coincidences in the basic differencial core:
33,3 % ..... Catalan-Italian
21,0 % ..... Catalan-Portuguese

In this graphic I'm following the distances in the percentages with regard to the other languages for Portuguese, Italian and Catalan. Notice how even Portuguese vocabulary itself is somewhat closer to Italian than to Catalan, probably due to the Italian Standard being a wide composite with a very central position in Romanceland.



However, we must also take into account that both Catalan and Portuguese share traits common to the Western ones, like plurals in -s or devoicing of p,t,k into b,d,g, so many of the pan-Romance solutions will coincide in Portuguese and Catalan and be slightly different in Italian. On the other hand, most of the Italian influences into Iberia had entered via Catalan (like Humanism or Renaissance) due to both geographical and historical reasons.

In a general conclusion, though, trying to answer the original question by objective parametres, the three languages have a clearly distinct position in the Romance sphere, but in a bipartite picture, Catalan would figure closer to Italian than to Portuguese. I don't know if you somehow expected this or not, but feel free to pose any more questions.

[kkk77]

Well, Italia is closer to France than Portugal is. On the other hand Portugal is closer to Spain.

syncopation

What's that?

Why is French more obscure than Portuguese?

[Comte Arnau]

Well, Italia is closer to France than Portugal is. On the other hand Portugal is closer to Spain.

Romania is farther from Portugal than from Italy and yet many lexical solutions coincide with the West Iberian ones, as the periphery tends to be more conservative in certain aspects.

'table'
Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish < MENSA
Catalan, French, Italian < TABULA

'boil'
Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish < FERVERE
Catalan, French, Italian < BULLIRE

'shoulder'
Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish < UMERU
Catalan, French, Italian < SPATULA

etc.

What's that?

A particular pattern in the intonation in which the flow of the sentence looks like having series of cuts.

Why is French more obscure than Portuguese?

Because to the obscure phonetic elements we should add the biggest erosion of words in a Romance language. In other words, Portuguese GATU is less obscure than French SHA, specially when we want to relate it to the original CAT(T)U.

[Xochi]

Vocabulary: It's closer to Italian. Blau/Blu/azul, formatge/formaggio/quijo etc
Grammar: It's closer to Italian. Italian and Catalan use l'amore / l'amor. Portuguese does not: o amor etc
Phonology: It's closer to Italian with features shared with Portuguese such as the dark L, uvular sounds etc.