by Jaeha Jang (Yale Daily News)
This coming fall, Yalies will have the chance to take Catalan language courses.
The Department of Spanish and Portuguese will offer “Elementary Catalan I” in fall 2026 and “Elementary Catalan II” in spring 2027, according to senior lector Lourdes Sabé, the program’s coordinator, who will also be teaching the courses. Professors told the News that offering Catalan, which is spoken in eastern Spain, Andorra and parts of France and Italy, will allow students to better understand the region’s culture and history.
“I truly believe that offering Catalan shows that we recognize the linguistic diversity of the Iberian Peninsula,” Aurélie Vialette, the director of undergraduate studies for Spanish, wrote in an email to the News. “Catalonia has a rich culture, and we hope to create interest in our students not only for the language but also for the history, literature, cinema, music, architecture, and in general Catalonia’s incredible cultural contribution to the world.”
Alongside Spanish, Catalan is the official language of three autonomous regions in Spain: Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia.
Sabé wrote in an email to the News that whether a student is interested in the arts, literature, history, politics, cultural studies, Romance language or other fields, the new Catalan program will provide them “an opportunity to grasp a culture in its entirety.”
Sabé added that although Catalan courses have been offered on occasion at Yale, there has been no official program despite student interest. After identifying student interest and receiving departmental support, Sabé wrote, she wrote a proposal that was then approved by the Language Study Committee and the Teaching Resource Advisory Committee.
Adam Stein, a program manager for Yale’s Directed Independent Language Study program, wrote in an email to the News that there has been “consistent interest” in Catalan through the program in recent years.
In addition to the Catalan-speaking region’s cultural importance, Sabé wrote, “its recent history as the most entrepreneurial region in Spain and a focal point of European economic activity” also means that offering Catalan has “practical value” for Yale and its students.
“Having Catalan offered in our department will open students’ horizon for sure,” Vialette wrote. “Each time a new language is taught at Yale it is an open door to new knowledge for the students.”
History professor Paul Freedman, whose research interests include the history of Catalonia, wrote in an email to the News that the popularity of Barcelona, which is located in Catalonia, and the architecture of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, as well as the region’s prominent cuisine and long history of literature, “make the language important within a European context, if under-appreciated.”
“As someone who has devoted much of his research to Catalan history this means a lot because of the prominence of Catalan culture and the need to know some Catalan in order to understand it,” Freedman wrote.
Sabé added that Yale’s Catalan courses will also be offered to students at Cornell through the Shared Course Initiative, which, according to Yale’s website, allows students at Columbia, Cornell and Yale to share classes in “less commonly taught languages” through videoconferencing.
Yale’s offering of Catalan through the initiative is “important to maintain Yale’s commitment to diversity and inclusion” and “will strengthen the ties between Yale and the other SCI universities, which share the goal that teaching vulnerable linguistic communities helps promote linguistic diversity and understanding of global perspectives,” Sabé wrote.
Pol Berger Romeu ’26 wrote in an email to the News that he was “really excited” to hear about the new program. His mother’s family is from Catalonia, and he grew up speaking Catalan, he wrote.
“I strongly believe that Catalan culture is incredibly rich and actually quite different from the general Spanish culture that most students know,” Romeu wrote. “I love the idea of there being an opportunity for the student body to learn more about a part of the world that is so important to me.”
Myroslav Bur ’28 wrote in an email to the News that he is “truly excited that Catalan will be offered at Yale.” He wrote that it is important to consider the history of “small European nations,” including Catalonia.
“As a Ukrainian, whose culture and language have long been under pressure from Russia, I deeply believe in the importance of linguistic sovereignty for each nation,” he added.
Bur also wrote that it’s important for students to support the preservation of cultures and languages while traveling.
“For example, as an American tourist, you could choose to speak basic Catalan instead of Spanish when interacting with people on the streets of Barcelona,” he wrote. “CTLN 1100 would be very helpful for that!”
Last fall, the University started offering its first Filipino language courses after years of student advocacy.
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Students can contact Lourdes Sabé with questions about the new Catalan program.
See the article in the Yale Daily News: