Or rather, “How I taught myself Catalan in under a year”

So I’ve gotten a bunch of people (like my entire list of followers, heh) who have asked me how I started learning Catalan.  How I did it, sometimes why I did it, and all that.  And I’ve written nice long responses to them.  But because now people want me to get all really specific about what I used to do it, so I figured I’d compile a list of resources I used to learn.  But before I start, I want to make a few things clear, and I’ll put them in bold so you can’t miss it.

1. Catalan is a language.  It’s a real language that people actually speak in everyday life.  It has its slang and its colloquialisms.  It has its dialects and accents, so you should really keep that in mind when you start.  The Catalan spoken in Andorra is different from the Catalan in Mallorca, which is different from the Catalan in Barcelona, which is different from the Catalan in L’Alguer, which is different from the Catalan spoken in Valencia.

2. Catalan is a hard language.  I’m going to come out and say that if you’re having trouble with Spanish, Catalan is not going to be any easier.  At all.  You’ll probably want to end up tearing your hair out at some point because if Spanish doesn’t make sense to you, Catalan will make even less sense.  It’s not easy.  The verbs are complicated, the sentence structure is complicated, the grammar in general is complicated.  And so is the pronunciation, regardless of the accent.  Do not go into this thinking it’ll be easy.

3. Learning a language by yourself is never recommended (unless you’re using a program like Rosetta Stone, and even then, it’s a great idea to have other resources to back that up).  Mostly because one of the things a classroom setting gives you is a chance to use the language, even if it is strictly in a classroom setting.  You also have a teacher there to give you feedback and correct your mistakes.  If you’re an autodidact (i.e. self-taught), you’re going to commit even more mistakes and they’ll probably stay with you for much longer than if you were to take a class.  However, given that Catalan is offered in very few schools to learn and the fact that outside of Europe few people even know it exists, learning by yourself is really the best you can do.  But it’s not recommended.

4. Finally (and I feel weird putting this in here, but it needs to be said), just because you know someone (namely me) who taught herself, it doesn’t mean you’ll achieve the same results.  I managed it because I had a lot of time on my hands,  a heavy background in languages (I’m fluent in Spanish and have studied French for 9 years, and I’ve studied a few others), and I was able to get creative in looking for resources and using them.  I also know how I learn languages; I know how my brain works, which helped immensely.

Now that that’s done, we can start.

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