Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Valencian

Total speakers: 2,559,418 (2021)
Country usage: Spain

Background information

Valencian, a Romance language, is the Valencian Community’s own historical language, where it coexists with Spanish or Castilian. It is used on public regional television and radio and is present in the educational system. A total of 50.6% of the population speak it (2,559,418), and 75.8% understand it perfectly or moderately well (3,834,069). In certain current contexts, Spanish has become to act as the dominant language in social use. However, during the Middle Ages, the Valencians created literature of note, thanks to writers such as Ausiàs March, Joanot Martorell and Isabel de Villena. It was the only official language until the beginning of 18th-century. During the 19th-century Renaissance, other interesting works were produced by authors in Valencian. The recovery of the Valencian language, particularly with the advent of democracy in the final quarter of the 20th-century, consolidated it in the field of education. Today, Valencian is used by a numerous cluster of writers in many cultural facets, such as song and theater.

The Valencian Language Academy (AVL), as the official language institution of the Valencian Regional Government, considers that our language is also spoken, in different varieties, in the autonomous communities of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, the French department of the Eastern Pyrenees, the Principality of Andorra, the eastern strip of the autonomous community of Aragon and the Sardinian city of Alghero —locations where it is given the name of Catalan. For this reason, far from portraying a fragmented picture of a linguistic system shared by Valencians with other territories, the denomination of Valencian, or the Valencian language or tongue, should be accepted by one and all as the traditional, historical, legal, and statutory language of the region, and, therefore, as the most proper name within the institutional framework. Our Academy’s work has resulted in two essential tools for our linguistic model: the Valencian Normative Dictionary and the Valencian Normative Grammar. Today, the sense of identity of the Valencian people in relation to their language is high, but proactive policies are still needed to make it more well-known and further promote its social use.