Overcorrecting toward Artificial Formal Catalan

Careful Catalan is not Catalan with the oldest possible word in every slot. Learners—and sometimes institutions—overcorrect when they avoid an ordinary form merely because it resembles Spanish, expand a simple verb into an administrative locution, insert en or hi as badges of authenticity, or combine features from different regional standards without a stable model. The result can be grammatical yet tonally artificial, or genuinely malformed.

The cure is not blanket informality. It is functional editing: keep a marked form when the genre, meaning, or regional model calls for it; replace it when it adds no precision. For a broad register map, see informal and formal style.

The four-question test

“It sounds more Catalan” is not a grammatical test. A clitic must have a recoverable function; a rare determiner must fit the voice; and regional consistency is a style requirement, not a ranking of varieties.

Common Mistakes

Repairs with the false analogy exposed

1. Marked vocabulary is not automatically better vocabulary

This is a style repair, not a declaration that àdhuc is ungrammatical. Keep it in literary prose or a deliberately elevated argument; choose neutral també in ordinary professional correspondence. The test is whether the marked word contributes a voice the text actually intends.

Both lliuraren and llurs belong to Catalan, but together they are highly marked in this everyday genre. Llur can be useful in formal or literary writing when it clearly prevents possessive ambiguity; it is not a universal upgrade from seu. Likewise, the synthetic past remains living in Valencian and other varieties, so no editor should call it obsolete there merely because Central Catalan normally prefers the periphrastic past.

The false analogy treats uncommon quelcom as a more prestigious version of determiner algun. It can stand alone—cal fer quelcom (formal/literary)—but a following noun needs an actual determiner: algun canvi.

Hom is already an indefinite human subject. If it is chosen, the verb agrees in the third-person singular without impersonal se. Neutral administrative prose will often sound lighter as Cal presentar el formulari abans de divendres.

Standard ambdós informes is possible in formal prose, and neutral tots dos informes is common across registers. The hybrid ambdós dos arises when a learner starts with the marked form and then adds the ordinary numeral for reassurance.

2. Replace inflated locutions with the verb they conceal

The long version is interpretable, but neither procedir a nor efectuar adds timing, agency, or legal force. The deletion test is simple: if the direct verb preserves every relevant condition, prefer it. In genuinely procedural text, procedir a can be justified when it means “move on to the next formally ordered step.”

The repair restores an actor-neutral but concrete verb. Problemàtica and actuació are legitimate nouns; the error lies in stacking abstractions where resoldre and ampliar say what will happen.

Fer avinent is correct formal Catalan and can be appropriate in solemn or legal prose. It does not combine well here with es produirà la realització. The revision keeps the formality while giving the event a direct verb.

3. A clitic needs a job

Learners rightly notice that en is characteristic of Catalan, then sometimes insert it where Spanish or English has no equivalent. Ask “en of what?” Here la proposta is already the subject, and no de + noun or partitive quantity remains.

The finite verb considerem selects the following content clause directly. Hi can replace a complement introduced by a or en—hi pensem from pensem en això—but it cannot be sprinkled before a clause to make the sentence sound idiomatic.

Here n' has a real job: it links les partides to the topical pressupost. The repair removes the duplicated noun phrase, not the clitic. Formal prose often benefits from en and hi precisely when their reference is clear; indiscriminate deletion would be another kind of overcorrection.

4. Choose a regional model; do not manufacture a hybrid

In regional: Valencian, the coherent pair is jo cante, ell canta. The error is not the ending -e itself but assigning it to the wrong person while switching models. Define the document's reference variety, then check the whole paradigm rather than policing isolated forms.

The coherent regional: Balearic alternative is nosaltres cantam ... vosaltres cantau. Neither paradigm is defective. Mixing can be natural in a multilingual community or intentional characterization; it becomes an editing problem only when a single institutional voice promises consistent house style.

The regional: Valencian standard can consistently use li'l enviarem in both clauses. The IEC accepts major regional paradigms, and the AVL codifies Valencian ones; a publication should choose a model appropriate to its readership, not assemble “more authentic” forms from several systems sentence by sentence.

Two rejected forms that can be grammatical with another meaning

An unnecessary pronoun is sometimes not unnecessary at all—it may change what is being quantified or selected.

The first is grammatical informal Catalan with partitive en and a right-dislocated noun phrase. It is not a more formal version of the second. If tres llibres stays as the ordinary direct object, inserting en duplicates the quantified phrase.

With hi, the verb means “think about it,” where hi recovers en això. Without it, pensar denotes the activity more generally. The pronoun is therefore meaningful, not decorative.

Regional legitimacy and contact pressure

Central Catalan is the baseline on this page, but formal Catalan is pluricentric. Valencian jo cante, Balearic nosaltres cantam, Northwestern verb forms, Northern patterns, and Alguerese features are not errors simply because they differ from Barcelona usage. Consult regional standards and apply the chosen model coherently. A real speaker's repertoire may mix forms naturally; consistency demands are strongest in edited institutional documents, weakest in dialogue and personal voice.

Spanish contact can cause genuine calques, yet resemblance to Spanish is not proof of one: cognates and parallel Romance structures may be fully Catalan. English-driven bureaucratic prose also produces noun stacks such as “carry out an implementation,” which can then be translated too literally. Diagnose the structure and genre; do not replace every internationally recognizable word with a rarer synonym.

Final proofreading checklist

• Is any word present chiefly because it looks old, rare, or unlike Spanish? Check whether the genre truly needs its marked register.
• Can procedir a efectuar, dur a terme la realització, or another support-verb chain become one exact verb?
• For every en and hi, can you state the complement, location, source, or quantity it replaces?
• Have a clitic and an overt phrase filled the same role twice?
• Are verb endings, articles, possessives, and clitic combinations coherent within the chosen Central, Valencian, Balearic, Northwestern, Northern, or Alguerese model?
• Is an apparent inconsistency actually quoted speech, characterization, or a meaningful register shift? If so, preserve it.
• Would the revision still sound appropriately formal when read aloud, or has simplification made it casual?
• Does every remaining marked choice contribute precision, legal scope, rhythm, or voice? If not, prefer the living neutral form.

Key Takeaways

Formal Catalan is precise contemporary Catalan, not a collection of maximum-distance-from-Spanish choices. Replace needless archaism and noun-heavy formulas when they contribute no meaning; keep en and hi only when their syntactic role is recoverable; and apply a chosen regional standard coherently. A marked or regional form may be perfectly grammatical in another genre or model, so every correction should name the context as well as the preferred wording.