Generate Level-Matched Catalan Reading Passages for Your Students

Key Facts About the Catalan Language

Speakers

About 9.2 million speakers in total: roughly 4.1 million native and 5.1 million second-language speakers, according to the Ethnologue figures cited in Wikipedia's Catalan language article.¹

Did you know?

Catalan is the sole official language of Andorra and is co-official with Spanish in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, where it is called Valencian.¹

The main challenge

In Eastern Catalan, unstressed vowels reduce to three sounds: written a and e both become [ə], and o becomes [u]. Learners have to hear past the spelling.²

CEFR exams

• Certificats de català (Generalitat de Catalunya; CEFR A1–C2, from inicial to superior)
• Catalan language certificates (Institut Ramon Llull; CEFR A2–C2)

Where students struggle

• The weak pronouns en and hi stand in for whole phrases: en for quantities and phrases with de (En tinc dues, 'I have two of them'), hi for places and other complements (Hi visc, 'I live there').³

Teaching notes

• Teach the everyday past as the periphrastic form, vaig, vas, va, vam, vau, van plus an infinitive (vaig anar, 'I went'): most dialects use it in place of the simple past.⁴

Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_phonology
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_personal_pronouns
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_grammar

About the Catalan language

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_orthography
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_grammar
4. https://wals.info/valuesets/81A-ctl

Catalan reading proficiency benchmarks (CEFR & Generalitat de Catalunya)

Stichos levels are modelled on the Council of Europe’s CEFR reading descriptors; A0 roughly corresponds to the CEFR’s Pre-A1 band. The Generalitat de Catalunya names its official Catalan certificates after the same levels, shown in brackets; the Institut Ramon Llull offers A2 to C2 abroad. Stichos does not test or certify.

Reference corpora

The Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) maintains a large historical corpus of written Catalan.¹

• CTILC: The Corpus textual informatitzat de la llengua catalana, begun in 1985 by Joaquim Rafel i Fontanals, holds more than 100 million words from over 7,200 works published between 1833 and 2022.¹
• First version: Between 1985 and 1997 the IEC built a first version of the corpus, with more than 52 million words from texts published between 1833 and 1988.¹
• Standard: Stichos writes Catalan readers in standard Central Catalan and avoids strongly regional or archaic forms. Requests use si us plau, never the Castilianism per favor.

1. https://ctilc.iec.cat/scripts/IniPresentacio.asp

Readability design principles

We found no readability formula calibrated specifically for Catalan.

• Easy-to-read books: The Generalitat lists lectura fàcil titles, adapted in wording, illustration and layout, for people starting to learn the language.¹
• Stichos: Stichos controls difficulty with level-by-level grammar rules and sentence-length limits. At A0 a sentence has at most five words and no conjunctions; A1 allows one, i.

1. https://llengua.gencat.cat/ca/serveis/aprendre_catala/a-catalunya/llegiu_i_parleu_programa/lectura-facil/

Script & grammar scaffolding

• Tenses: A0 and A1 use only the present indicative (present d’indicatiu), and A1 states plans in the present (Demà quedem). A2 adds the periphrastic past (passat perifràstic, vaig plus the infinitive), the passat compost and the imperfet. The future, the conditional and the present subjunctive open at B1, the imperfect subjunctive at B2, and the literary simple past (passat simple) at C1.
• Weak pronouns: Object pronouns go before a conjugated verb (li diu, ho fa) and attach with a hyphen or apostrophe after infinitives, gerunds and affirmative imperatives (dir-li, fent-ho).
• Imperatives: At A0 commands appear only in fixed formulas such as Té / Tingui (“here you are”). A1 allows five informal imperatives: mira, vine, agafa, espera and seu.
• Register: Informal tu is the default; formal vostè, with third-person verbs, is kept for professional or deferential settings.

Related academic & framework resources

• The CEFR Levels (Council of Europe): The Council of Europe’s description of the six common reference levels, A1 to C2.
• Certificats de català (Generalitat de Catalunya): The Catalan government’s official certificates, from inicial (A1) to superior (C2).
• Catalan Language Certificates (Institut Ramon Llull): Certificates from A2 to C2 for learners outside the Catalan-speaking area, with a table of CEFR equivalences.
• CTILC (Institut d’Estudis Catalans): The IEC’s presentation of the corpus: its history, size and the period it covers.
• Lectura fàcil (Llengua catalana): The Generalitat’s list of easy-to-read books for beginning learners of Catalan.

Frequently Asked Questions for Catalan Tutors

What is included in the free preview right now?

You can try a live A0 or A1 story directly on this page with tap-to-translate words and line-by-line translations in your students' own language. When you join the Reading List, you also receive 3 sample stories as a downloadable PDF.

Which levels will Educator Studio support when it launches?

At launch, Educator Studio covers every level from A0 up through B2. You will be able to select any topic and turn specific tenses on or off to ensure the passage stays within what your class has learned.

How will I share created texts with my students?

At launch, you can generate a story and share it with your students using a web link. There is no limit on how many share links you can create.

Do my students need to create an account to read shared texts?

No, your students can open any shared story link directly in their web browser without an account. They will be invited to make a free account if they want to save their stories and saved words, but it is optional.

How does audio listening work for my students?

At launch, students reading a shared text can tap any word to hear a standard computer pronunciation. If you choose the Premium Audio add-on at launch, it unlocks natural-sounding voices, full story narration with distinct voices for different dialogue speakers, and MP3 audio exports for you and your students.

Can I adjust the text or grammar before sending a story to my class?

Yes. At launch, you can edit any sentence or translation prior to sharing a story. You can also paste a custom word list for the system to include, or lock the reader to guided, assisted, or solo glossing modes.

How reliable is the AI grammar and level matching?

Stories are written by AI and automatically checked against the grammar and vocabulary rules for that level. Because this check is automated rather than handled by a human editor, occasional errors can occur, so you should review each text before passing it to students.

What should I know about teaching regional Catalan features?

Catalan has roughly 9.2 million speakers total, including 4.1 million native and 5.1 million second-language speakers, cited in Wikipedia from Ethnologue. It is the sole official language of Andorra and co-official in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and the Valencian Community (where it is known as Valencian). In Eastern Catalan, unstressed written 'a' and 'e' reduce to [ə], while 'o' becomes [u], so students must learn to listen past spelling. Additionally, remember to introduce the weak pronouns 'en' (for quantities and 'de' phrases like 'En tinc dues') and 'hi' (for places like 'Hi visc'), as well as the everyday periphrastic past using 'vaig', 'vas', 'va', 'vam', 'vau', 'van' plus an infinitive ('vaig anar').