These are findings from the latest annual report - InformeCAT 2016 - into the condition of Catalan in the Balearics. They suggest that the knowledge of the language could be higher than that indicated by the Spanish-speaking census. Specifically, of 242,757 people born elsewhere who now reside in the Balearics, 142,013 know how to speak Catalan and 91,034 can write it.
There are currently more than ten million Catalan speakers in the world. The Balearics is the region in which there is the highest percentage of people who say they understand it - 96.8% - and speak it (80.5%). This refers to the language that is habitually used, i.e. Catalan rather than Castellano.
The report's data is based on the 2014 study of language use by the Plataforma per la Llengua collaboration between the University of the Balearic Islands and the Catalonian government. It also considers the previous government's decision to make Catalan a merit rather than a requirement of working in the public sector. In town halls there were 19 positions of controller and twelve of secretary held by people who were not Catalan speakers.
The president of the Plataforma organisation, Oscar Escuder, says that when there are no barriers to Catalan it has a dynamism which it does not have when the Spanish state attempts "to cut its wings". This dynamism is shown in social networks and by the increase in the adoption of the internet domain .cat.
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The survey is full of half truths. They include "catalan" speakers from Andorra, South of France and even people who live in Sardinia. Re foreigners, they say capacitades, which in plain english means "are able to" not that they actually speak it. I would imagine that a lot of these aforementioned foreigners are the children of inmigrants who are basically forced to speak and write it, as well as the children of EU residents who are obliged to follow the curriculum imposed by the left wing fascists currently in power.
Nonsense, you barely hear Catalan unless you are in the villages. The few occasions I have tried my hand at a few words of Catalan I was called a 'Catalan fill de puta.' Next you will be telling us 90 percent speak fluent Mallorquin, how would you know it is indecipherable...? This sounds like Catalonian propaganda to me.
Catalán ??? - there are no "gats y gossos" here - only "moixos y cans"! And when did you last hear '"si us plau" instead of "per favor"?? .. Well - not even a "per favor" as it happens!