QUOTE(Roccobot @ Aug 5 2005, 14:55)
WOW!! I didn't know that there was people in Italy speaking Catalan! I'm very interested in these communities that preserve a minority language in a country where the official one is different, and I also love such geographic/linguistic particularities... For the city of Alghero (Sardinia), italian peopla can read
this: it's very interesting. I have learned that the sardinian Catalan spoken in Alghero is a sort of ancient Catalan, which was spoken in Catalunya between XIV and XVII centuries!!!
Well, I think than Catalan is official (in some way) in l'Alguer (Catalan name for Alghero), as well as Sardinian (another romance language, different from italian) is spoken in the whole island. Anyway, I may be wrong.
About the Catalan they speak, it's true that is not like the one we speak at Catalunya or at PaÃs Valencià , but it was on those centuries. After the XVII century, Spanish kings loose Napols Kingdom, and Catalan spoken in l'Alguer start to be a little bit different, but without making it another language. Nowadays, most of the people from l'Alguer doesn't have Catalan as their first language, but a lot of people older than 30 can speak it.
QUOTE(Roccobot)
I also have a question for
xavivars:
I visited Catalunya, Andorra and south-western France last year, and I heard Catalan for the very first time... before that, I thought that Castiglian was the only language of Spain... But in Andorra-La-Vella I found many people speaking portuguese!! Do you know why that language is spoken there?
Well, Castiglian is the only language oficial in whole Spain. But there are other languages spoken in parts of Spain (some of them are officials, and others not).
http://en.wikipedia.org/Spain#Languages
Catalan (more info http://en.wikipedia.org/Catalan_language) is spoken in what we say Catalan Countries: Catalunya, PaÃs Valencià , Illes Balears and Franja de Ponent (in Aragó).
Euskara (basque) (more info http://en.wikipedia.org/Basque_language) is spoken in the Bask Country or Euskadi and in Navarra.
Galician (more info http://en.wikipedia.org/Galician_language) (wich some people think that is a dialect of Portuguese) in Galicia.
Occitan (aranés) (more info http://en.wikipedia.org/Aranese) is spoken in Valh d'Aran.
There are other languages that are not official (you can read more about them at Spanish Languages
The reason you listened Portuguese in Andorra la Vella is the same that you could listen Italian in London: there is a lot of people from one contry (Portugal or Italy) living in another country (Andorra or UK). But in Andorra only Catalan is official.
QUOTE(Roccobot)
Another question, and this is pretty crazy: if I desired to localize an extension in my town dialect (in Romagna district every town or village has its own...), must I invent an abbreviation like rg-RC ("Romagnolo-Riccione")???? And is there a way to install such an extension on my italian Firefox? [
Notice, specially for italian members: this is only for fun, without exxagerated local pride or regionalistic intent]
Well, if it's just for you, it doesn't matter, but if you plan to release it, you have to be aware that it can make errors. At the moment, only languages that are into the Language List and countries into the Countries List should be used.
We had a proble while translating Mozilla because we used ca-CA (Catalan - Catalonia), but it made some conflicts in some Linux distributions (CA is already used for Canada), and because some people didn't want ca-ES, we start using ca-AD.
So be carefull if you plan to use codes that are not accepted: using them on Linux may cause problems
