Catalan
Catalan is a member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. It is spoken by some eleven million people, most of them in Catalonia (an autonomous region in Spain), but also in Valencia, the Balearic Islands, the country of Andorra--where it is the official language, the old French province of Roussillon and in the town of Alghero, on the Italian island of Sardinia. Like the other Romance languages, Catalan is descended from Latin. It is the original language of the inhabitants of a territory encompassing parts of present day Spain, Andorra, France and the Italian island of Sardinia and became consolidated as a language between the 8th and 9th centuries, with the first written records dating back to the 11th and 12th centuries. It was later expanded through territorial conquest towards Mallorca (off the coast of NE Spain) and Valencia in eastern Spain. Catalan is the medium of a noteworthy literature, whose golden age lasted from the 14th to the 15th century. In 1714, Phillip V of Spain, with the decree of Nova Planta, banished the Catalan language from Spain. Nevertheless, it has managed to survive, and today, has been restored as Catalonia's own official language, along with Spanish.
Sources:
Encyclopedia.com
Sustance.com
Learncatalan.html
Information on writing system:
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