Colloquial Catalan

A Complete Course for Beginners

Alexander Ibarz, Toni Ibarz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317306726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Langue espagnole

Colloquial Catalan provides a step-by-step course in Catalan as it is written and spoken today. Combining a user-friendly approach with a thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Catalan in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required.

Key features include:

• progressive coverage of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills

• structured, jargon-free explanations of grammar

• an extensive range of focused and stimulating exercises

• realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of scenarios

• useful vocabulary lists throughout the text

• additional resources available at the back of the book, including a full answer key, a grammar summary and bilingual glossaries

Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Catalan will be an indispensable resource both for independent learners and students taking courses in Catalan.

Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

1 Benvinguda i benvingut!

Welcome!

In this unit you will learn about:

• Meeting and greeting people
• The present tense of ser ‘to be’
• Subject pronouns: T, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, etc.
• Personal articles
• Tu and vostè
• The gender of nouns and adjectives

Welcome (benvinguda or benvingut) to our Catalan course! Our journey begins, like so many, at the airport, a typical place for meetings and greetings. At first you will be dealing with familiar situations and you may be able to make out the gist of the conversations in the opening dialogues, and perhaps even identify some words.

Throughout the course, we strongly recommend that you listen to the audio before looking at the text of the dialogue. In this way you will soon be able to cope with real situations in which Catalan is used. In such situations you will be talking to people without any written support, so start as you mean to finish!

Dialogue 1 (Audio 1: 7)

Rachel and Sara meet for the first time at Barcelona airport. Sara tries to find out if she is talking to the right person and welcomes Rachel to Barcelona.

• Listen carefully to the audio twice and see how much you can recognise.

PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM	La companyia Air Litoral anuncia l'arribada del vol AL673, procedent de Paris.
SARA	Perdona, ets la Rachel?
RACHEL	Sí, sóc la Rachel Woodhouse.
SARA	Hola, jo sóc la Sara Font.
RACHEL	Encantada.
SARA	Igualment. Benvinguda a Barcelona.
RACHEL	Gràcies.

Vocabulary

l'arribada (f.)	arrival
del vol	of the flight
hola	hello
perdona	excuse me
ets	are you
sí	yes
sóc	I am
encantat, -da	delighted/pleased to meet you
igualment	so am I/equally
benvingut, -da	welcome
a	to
gràcies	thank you

From now on, to help focus on comprehension whilst you listen to the audio, dialogues will often be preceded by questions or other activities. In most cases the answers can be checked when you look at the written version of the dialogue. The language points belonging to this dialogue will be explained after the next dialogue; now go straight on to Dialogue 2.

Dialogue 2 (Audio 1: 8)

Two travellers, senyora Mata and Rosa Garcia, are met by a hotel representative (representant), senyor Massip, who mistakes senyora Mata for Rosa Garcia. As in Dialogue 1, listen to this dialogue twice before looking at the text.

• What's the name of the hotel?

REPRESENTANT	Hola, bon dia. Vostè és la senyora Garcia?
SENYORA MATA	No, la senyora Garcia és ella, jo sóc la senyora Mata. I vostè qui és?
REPRESENTANT	Jo sóc el senyor Massip de l'Hotel Central.
SENYORA MATA	Molt de gust.
REPRESENTANT	Encantat.
SENYORA MATA	Rosa, el senyor Massip de l'Hotel Central.
ROSA GARCIA	Encantada.
REPRESENTANT	Molt de gust.

Vocabulary

bon dia

good day, good m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Pronunciation guide
• 1 Benvinguda i benvingut! Welcome!
• 2 Com es diu? What is your name?
• 3 Un cafè, sisplau: A coffee, please
• 4 Què vols? What would you like?
• 5 Vols el meu mòbil? Do you want my mobile?
• 6 La meva família: My family
• 7 Perdoni, on és l'Hotel Miramar? Excuse me, where is the Miramar Hotel?
• 8 Quina és la teva adreça? Whats your address?
• 9 Tot passejant per la Rambla: A walk down the Ramblas
• 10 Al Mercat de la Boqueria: At the Boqueria fresh food market
• 11 Com els vol? How do you like them?
• 12 Al restaurant Planelles: At Planelles restaurant
• 13 La vida diària: Daily life
• 14 Què has fet avui? What have you done today?
• 15 La sobretaula: After dinner talk
• 16 Què vas fer? What did you do?
• 17 Quin temps farà? What will the weather be like?
• 18 Em podria donar informació? Could you give me some information, please?
• 19 El transport públic: Public transport
• 20 Festa major!
• Grammar reference and verb tables
• Key to exercises
• Catalan-English glossary
• English-Catalan glossary
• Index