Catalan orthography

This article covers the Orthography of Catalan, a Romance language. The Catalan alphabet is adapted from the Latin alphabet.

Letter	Name	Pronunciation	example
A a	a	/a/	sac	'sack'
B b	be	/b/	biga	'beam'
C c	ce	/k/	casa	'house'
ç	ce trencada	/s/	Renaixença	'Renaissance'
D d	de	/d/	dalla	'scythe'
E e	e	/ɛ/, /e/	cec, sec	'blind', 'dry'
F f	efa	/f/	fosc	'dark'
G g	ge	/g/, /(d)ʑ/	gasa	'lint'
H h	hac	Ø	haver	'possession'
I i	i	/i/	ric	'I laugh'
J j	jota	/ʑ/	ajut	'help'
K k	ke	/k/	karate
L l	ela	/l/ /ʎ/	pala, palla''	'shovel’, 'straw'
M m	ema	/m/	mama	'mum'
N n	ena	/n/	mana	'he commands'
O o	o	/ɔ/, /o/	soc sóc	'log', 'I am'
P p	pe	/p/	piga	'speck'
Q q	cu	/k/	obliquar
R r	erre	/ɾ/, /r/	cera, serra	'wax', 'saw'
S s	esse	/s/, /z/	passar, pesar	'to pass', 'to weigh'
T t	te	/t/	talla	'size'
U u	u	/u/	suc	'juice'
V v	ve baixa	/b/, /v/	envejar	'to envy'
W w	ve doble
X x	ics, xeix	/ɕ/, /ks/, /ɡz/	xoc, expressió	'shock', 'expression'
Y y	i grega
Z z	zeta	/z/	zero

Other conventions

Catalan also possesses digraphs:

represents /tɕ/ after a vowel : puig
represents /ɕ/ after a vowel : mateix
represents /dʑ/ : prometatge
represents /tɕ/ at the ends of words and /dʑ/ otherwise : corretja
represents /tɕ/ : despatx
(ela geminada) represents /ll/ (distinguishing it from , which represents /ʎ/) : anul·lar
represents /ɲ/ : any

Catalan also uses the acute accent (é, í, ó, ú) to mark stressed high vowels and the grave accent (à, è, ò) to mark stressed low vowels :

If a diaeresis appears over the i or u of what would otherwise be a descending diphthong, the diphthong is broken into a hiatus :

In addition to this, ü represents /w/ between /g/ and a front vowel (which would otherwise be pronounced as a soft g :