🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul28.165924.12845@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
martinn@mksol.dseg.ti.com (niels r martin) writes:
 
>
>As I recall, Catalonia was a state in its own right for quite a while, until    the Castillians took them over in the 17th or 18th century (correct
my
>dates if they are way off--I don't have the references at work)  I suppose that the localpeople woÿ
>uld like to think of themselves as a country--after all many Texans do!
>I also recall driving through Andorra before I was really mindful of the fact   that Catalan was spoken there.  Being fluent in French and able to
get
>by in
>Spanish, I thought that it was interesting that Catalan seemed to be (to the
>outsider) in many instances either a Spaniard spelling French or a Frenchman    tring to spell Spanish.  In any case it was most interesting and
>informative.
>
Actually the Kingdom of Aragon, which included Catalonia and used Catalan
officially, ended with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (who are
are better known in US for having gambled on Columbus), which created the
Kingdom of Spain -- thus late fifteenth century.
 
Those of us who learnt French in school can only have positive feelings for
a language whose word for "five hundred" is /sink sents/ (my pronunciation
is that of Alghero, not of Barcelona.