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						Catalan is a Romance language spoken by some 7 million people in eastern Spain. There are also speakers in France (200,000) and Sardinia (30,000), and it is the official language of Andorra (20,000 speakers). Written evidence of the language dates back to the 12th c. Literature flourished 13th-15th c., but declined after the unification of Spain, until it experienced a revival during the 19th c. Sponsored by regional authorities, today it is gaining ever more importance as a cultural language in the Spanish regions of Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. In Valencia, there has been much controversy over the name of the language, arising from the fact that the term Catalan is used to refer both to the language as a whole and to the written standard used in Catalonia. The regional authorities of Valencia have even sponsored the creation of a separate standard based on the varieties spoken in that region. The language features the traits common to all Romance languages. In particular, it lost noun declension but kept a rich verb system. Being similar to Occitan, its morphology is relatively archaic, and its sound system is more complex than that of (standard) Spanish.
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