Catalan at source is probably as different to Spanish as French or Italian are. But probably, centuries of stronger influence have induced more similarities: most people in Catalonia are bilingual.

Especially for those who don't speak either:

Spanish: "Hay muchas cosas", "Tenemos una vez" French: "Il y a beaucoup des choses", "Nous avons une fois" Catalan: "N'hi ha moltes coses", "Tenim una vegada" Italian: "Ci sono molte cose", "Abbiamo una volta"

I think it's a quite representative example of the kind of differences & similarities.

"Hi ha moltes coses". That "N'" is a common error. That "Tenemos una vez"/"Tenim una vegada"/etc. doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, but it's technically correct.

Portuguese: "Há muitas coisas", "Temos uma vez"

I'm Portuguese. I'm fluent in French, and minimally capable in Italian. Without formally studying Spanish, I can understand spoken and written Spanish, as well speak it (albeit poorly). I can't understand most words in spoken Catalan, and can't speak it altogether.

Catalan is a close enough language that I can understand its written form, but it is not as close to Spanish as Spanish is to Portuguese.

> It is a bold exaggeration to say that catalan is as different from spanish as portuguese or french.

Sources? Being a lazy guy, I turned to wikipedia [1], where it explicitly says:

> Despite being mostly situated in the Iberian Peninsula, the Catalan vocabulary exhibits marked lexical differences with Ibero-Romance (Spanish and Portuguese), instead showing general affinity towards the Gallo-Romance group.

The Gallo-Romance group includes French and Italian.

About regions where valencian was never spoken and forced into schools, what is your point exactly? I just said that valencian usage is becoming less frequent lately, and the numbers support this affirmation. Are you trying to say that, with the current laws, the language can not become extinct? Then I may agree with you, but laws can be (and have been) changed...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language (lexical comparison section)

Edit: missing link.

Just because it has (obvious french) Gallo-Romance influences, doesn't mean it's less similar to spanish than poruguese.

My point is that you're complaining that it's being used less, while it's actually being forced onto places where it simply has never been used.

I reply here because I can't reply to the below comment.

The claim in wikipedia says that it has more general affinity to the gallo-romance group than to the ibero-romance group. I may be wrong, but I read that as "it is more similar to french/italian than to spanish/portuguese".

Also, I'm not complaining about anything (and I couldn't care less about wheter valencian becomes extinct or not). I was just refuting the op affirmation statement that "You will mainly hear Catalan in the streets of Valencia, not Castillian Spanish".

>* The claim in wikipedia says that it has more general affinity to the gallo-romance group than to the ibero-romance group. I may be wrong, but I read that as "it is more similar to french/italian than to spanish/portuguese".*

There might be a terminology mismatch here and you are talking about different things.

Perhaps the core language (syntactic structure, regular verb conjugation patterns, core words) is very like Spanish and that comment on Wikipedia is referring many non-core words in the common vocabulary being pulled from languages common in other neighbouring areas.

Caveat: I am no linguist nor do I speak anything much other than Correct English and American English.

"It is a bold exaggeration to say that catalan is as different from spanish as portuguese or french."

What?