Regular use of Catalan drops to 32.6%
The latest official study highlights a gradual decline in habitual use of the language since 2003
The Department of Language Policy and the Institute of Statistics of Catalonia (Idescat) recently presented the results of the fifth edition of the Survey of Language Use among the Population (EULP 2023), an official study carried out every five years that provides information on the use and knowledge of languages in Catalonia.
As is often the case, the glass can be seen as half full in some aspects, and half empty in others. With regard to the former: between 2018 and 2023, a minimum of 117,000 people became frequent users of Catalan. As for the latter: the habitual use of Catalan has shrunk from 46% in 2003 to 36.1% in 2018 to its current 32.6%. The apparent contradiction is justified by demographic flows.
The survey indicates that the number of people who know Catalan has grown in recent years: between 2018 and 2023, Catalan gained 267,600 new users aged 15 and over. This growth occurred in a context of an increase in the population of 398,500 people in the same period. As a result, although the absolute number of people who know Catalan grew, the overall percentage of people who knew the language decreased slightly.
Understand, speak, read
The survey shows an increase in the ability to understand, speak and write in Catalan compared to previous editions, and highlights a broad predisposition to learn or improve knowledge of the language. Currently, 93.4% of the population aged 15 and over understands Catalan, 80.4% can speak it, 84.1% can read it and 65.6% can write it. Despite this increase, the average knowledge of Catalan is still well below the average for Spanish in all age groups: Spanish is understood by 99.6% of the population, 99.2% can speak it, 97.5% can read it and 94.5% know how to write it. According to the study, this difference conditions everyday linguistic uses and highlights the need to continue promoting the knowledge and use of Catalan in all areas.
As for intergenerational transmission, the transmission of Catalan from parents to children increased by more than 7%.
Currently, 30% of the population has Catalan as their only language of identification, compared to the 36.3% recorded in 2018. Similarly, identifying solely with Spanish has fallen from 46.6% to 40.4%. On the other hand, the proportion of people who identify with both Catalan and Spanish increased from 6.9% in 2018 to 14.6% in 2023.
As for habitual language use, Catalan has fallen in the number of speakers from 36.1% to 32.6% in percentage terms, while Spanish has risen slightly in absolute terms.
The survey also analyses linguistic uses in various areas of everyday life. The area where Catalan is most widely used, alone or in combination with other languages, is social relations: nearly 60% of the population speaks Catalan in these contexts.
feature CATALAN LANGUAGE
Vila: “Don’t switch languages”
The Minister of Language Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila, acknowledged that the data “tell us we still have a way to go”, but that it is necessary to “substantially intensify action”, making it clear that it is necessary to “extend language learning, knowledge of the language and opportunities to learn the language”. But also to facilitate the use of Catalan in environments that “are not easy”, to generate social agreements and, above all, to “change dynamics, attitudes and behaviours”. The minister called for a “collective” transformation, but also an individual one, to continue speaking in Catalan and not switch languages. “Individuals need to understand that the main incentive to learn the language is to have someone speak it to you,” he said. “We need to extend the knowledge of the language much further. Therefore, more resources are needed to do more teaching, reinforce learning at school” and speak Catalan with those who do not know it or speak it.
