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In brief

Catalan retakes first place as mother tongue in Andorra

Spanish had held top position for a quarter of a century, according to surveys

 
Mother tongue per year of survey.
Mother tongue per year of survey. Author: Govern d'Andorra.
Catalan is now the mother tongue of 44.1% of the Andorran population over 14 years of age, which makes it the main first language in the Pyrenean country, ahead of Spanish, which has a share of 40.3%. Since the end of the last century until now, Spanish had held the first place: in 2018, for example, 43.2% of Andorrans had it as their mother tongue, while only 35.7% had Catalan.

These data are contained in the survey “Knowledge and linguistic uses of the population of Andorra,” which the Andorran government unveiled last week. The fieldwork was carried out between May and June 2022 with a sample of 747 telephone surveys.

In this new survey, Portuguese (13.5%), French (10%), and English (3%) are placed behind Catalan and Spanish.

Catalan is the language mainly used by 63.7% of those surveyed; Spanish stands at 48.6%, while Portuguese and French are at around 6% each.

The survey includes data on which languages are used in different contexts. According to the study, 39.4% of Andorrans who have children only speak Catalan with them, while another 9.9% use both Catalan and Spanish. Of that same group, only 30% use exclusively Catalan with their parents —another 4% speak both Catalan and Spanish with them. The data suggest that, within the group of people with children, an increase in the generational transmission of Catalan has happened.

All the data can be found in this link.