 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Languages of Andorra" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Languages of Andorra | |
|---|---|
| Official | Catalan |
| Foreign | Spanish andFrench |
| Signed | Catalan Sign LanguageSpanish Sign LanguageFrench Sign Language |
| Keyboard layout | |
The national language ofAndorra isCatalan, aRomance language in theWestern Romance group, spoken by over 9 million people in nearby regions ofSpain andFrance. While Catalan is the only official language,Spanish is particularly widespread, andFrench andPortuguese are also commonly spoken due toimmigration and geographic proximity. Most residents of Andorra aremultilingual, typically speaking Catalan and theirnative language, as a significant portion of the population was born outside the country.[1]
| Language | At home | Outside home | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2018 | 2022 | 2018[2] | 2022 | |
| Catalan | 39.5% | 35.7% | 44% | 55.2% | 63.7% |
| Spanish | 43.8% | 43.2% | 40.3% | 37.1% | 48.6% |
| Portuguese | 18.6% | 17.1% | 13.5% | 3.8% | 6.6% |
| French | 9.7% | 8.9% | 10% | 2.2% | 5.7% |
| Others | 9% | 6.8% | 9.8% | 1.5% - 10% | 4.9% |
| Source: Coneixements i Usos Lingüístics de la Població d'Andorra (1995–2022)[3][4][5] | |||||
Catalan is the only official language of Andorra.[6][7] It is also the historical and traditional language of the country used by government, television, radio, and other national media and is the main language of all the people living in the territory of Andorran nationality, who constitute 44% of the total population.[5]The local dialect isNorthwestern Catalan.
TheGovernment of Andorra has recently begun enforcing the learning and use of the language within the immigrant labour force as a means to fully apply the constitution and overcome the issue of people living in a country without knowing its official language. Despite heavy tourism from Spanish-speakers from Spain, both public and private signage in Andorra is mostly monolingual in Catalan.[8]
Andorra is the only country in which Catalan is the sole official language[9] and the only country in which Catalan has official status in all of its territory.
Spanish is the most important language in Andorra after Catalan. It is the main language of about 70% ofSpanish national immigrants. Most of them came to the country between 1955 and 1985.[citation needed]
Since then, Spanish has become the second most used language of the population living in the country,[10] and moreover is the dominant language of communication amongst people of different linguistic backgrounds, thus triggering recent government efforts to promote more general and universal use of Catalan.[8]
In the past there was sizeable Portuguese immigration to Andorra; the number of Portuguese nationals with residence in the country peaked in 2008, with 13,794 people, that is, 16.3% of the total population.[11]
The nearby border withFrance, the reduced tax-free cost of living, and job opportunities in the thriving tourist industry have resulted in 7% of the country's total population being French nationals, mainly immigrants fromFrancophone Africa.[12][full citation needed] It is the main language of communication next to Catalan inPas de la Casa on the French border.[8]
As with Spanish, children can be taught at school in the French language, if parents so choose.
