Annotated Advanced Essay | Catalan Grammar

At C2, a strong essay controls how claims are introduced, limited, resumed, and revised across sentences. This original (formal/academic) essay discusses the pace of public life, but its main lesson is how nominalization, hedging, anaphora, and sentence rhythm turn propositions into an argument.

Complete original essay

El dret a una ciutat que no ens faci córrer
1. Mesurar una ciutat només per la rapidesa amb què permet travessar-la equival a confondre la mobilitat amb la qualitat de vida.
2. Certament, la reducció dels temps de desplaçament pot ampliar l'accés a la feina, als estudis i als serveis; ara bé, quan l'acceleració esdevé l'únic criteri d'eficiència, tot allò que no produeix un rendiment immediat —seure en una plaça, saludar un veí o acompanyar una criatura— corre el risc de ser tractat com una nosa.
3. Aquesta subordinació de l'experiència urbana al rellotge no és pas inevitable, encara que sovint es presenti com una conseqüència neutra de la modernització.
4. N'hi ha prou amb comparar barris semblants per constatar que l'amplada de les voreres, la freqüència del transport públic i la proximitat dels equipaments no tan sols condicionen quant triguem a arribar-hi, sinó també qui pot fer-ho sense cansament, por o dependència.
5. Dit d'una altra manera, la lentitud no constitueix necessàriament el contrari del progrés: en determinades circumstàncies, pot ser-ne una condició, perquè una ciutat habitable ha de deixar temps perquè hi apareguin relacions que no han estat programades.
6. Això no implica idealitzar els trajectes llargs ni negar que moltes persones necessiten connexions més ràpides; implica, més aviat, rebutjar que aquesta necessitat justifiqui l'expulsió sistemàtica de qualsevol pausa de l'espai compartit.
7. Potser caldria, doncs, avaluar les polítiques urbanes no només segons els minuts que estalvien, sinó també segons les possibilitats de trobada, autonomia i cura que generen.
8. Si acceptéssim aquest desplaçament de perspectiva, deixaríem de preguntar-nos exclusivament com podem arribar abans i començaríem a preguntar-nos quina mena de vida fa possible el camí.

The essay is original. Its plaça, municipal transport, and shared space evoke Catalan civic discourse without treating them as uniquely Catalan. The measured stance suits a reflective essay or humanities paper: crafted rather than conversational, not bureaucratic.

Idiomatic English translation

The right to a city that does not make us rush
1. Measuring a city solely by how quickly it allows us to cross it amounts to confusing mobility with quality of life.
2. Admittedly, reducing travel times can broaden access to work, education, and services; however, when acceleration becomes the sole criterion of efficiency, everything that produces no immediate return—sitting in a square, greeting a neighbor, or accompanying a child—risks being treated as a nuisance.
3. This subordination of urban experience to the clock is by no means inevitable, although it is often presented as a neutral consequence of modernization.
4. One need only compare similar neighborhoods to see that the width of sidewalks, the frequency of public transport, and the proximity of facilities determine not only how long it takes us to get there, but also who can do so without fatigue, fear, or dependence.
5. In other words, slowness is not necessarily the opposite of progress: in certain circumstances it may be a condition for it, because a livable city must leave time for unplanned relationships to emerge.
6. This does not mean idealizing long journeys or denying that many people need faster connections; rather, it means rejecting the idea that this need justifies systematically driving every pause out of shared space.
7. Perhaps, then, urban policies should be assessed not only by the minutes they save, but also by the possibilities for encounter, autonomy, and care that they create.
8. If we accepted this shift in perspective, we would stop asking ourselves only how we can arrive sooner and begin asking what kind of life the journey makes possible.

The translation is intentionally idiomatic. For example, n'hi ha prou amb becomes “one need only,” not the literal “there is enough of it,” and potser caldria becomes “perhaps … should,” preserving the hedge rather than mechanically reproducing the conditional.

Read-aloud version

Slashes mark short information-group boundaries; double slashes mark the main rhetorical turn. Do not pause at every comma mechanically: keep a preposition with its complement and let the contrastive connectors carry the structure.

Mesurar una ciutat / només per la rapidesa amb què permet travessar-la / equival a confondre la mobilitat / amb la qualitat de vida. // Certament, / la reducció dels temps de desplaçament / pot ampliar l'accés a la feina, als estudis i als serveis; // ara bé, / quan l'acceleració esdevé l'únic criteri d'eficiència, / tot allò que no produeix un rendiment immediat / corre el risc de ser tractat com una nosa. // Potser caldria, doncs, / avaluar les polítiques urbanes / no només segons els minuts que estalvien, / sinó també segons les possibilitats de trobada, autonomia i cura / que generen.

Use a steady (formal) delivery. Give certament a concessive, not triumphant, contour; lower the pitch slightly before ara bé; and keep no només … sinó també as one balanced frame. Central Catalan vowel reduction is a pronunciation baseline, not a requirement for speakers using another consistent Catalan model.

Numbered annotations

1. An infinitive clause turns an action into the topic

Sentence 1 begins with mesurar, whose infinitive clause functions as the grammatical subject of equival. English can do this with an -ing clause, but Catalan readily uses a bare infinitive to package a whole activity as a discussable entity. The adverb només narrows the criterion, while amb què is a prepositional relative: the city's speed is the means with which it permits crossing.

Mesurar l'èxit només pel nombre de visites equival a ignorar la qualitat de l'experiència.

Measuring success only by the number of visits amounts to ignoring the quality of the experience.

The omitted subject of permet travessar-la is recovered from una ciutat. The weak pronoun -la refers to that same city as the object of travessar. English repeats “it”; Catalan maintains the reference compactly through a null subject plus a clitic.

2. Concede, then delimit

Certament grants a valid point before ara bé limits its reach. This is not indecision: a layered argument can accept X while rejecting the inference from X to Y. The nominalizations reducció, accés, acceleració and rendiment compress processes into entities that can be compared.

Certament, la reforma simplifica el tràmit; ara bé, no resol la desigualtat d'accés.

Admittedly, the reform simplifies the procedure; however, it does not solve unequal access.

The em-dash list gives concrete meaning to the abstract tot allò que no produeix un rendiment immediat. Córrer el risc de selects an infinitive, and ser tractat is a passive chosen because the affected activity matters more than any particular agent.

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A nominalization is useful when the argument must refer back to a process, compare it, or qualify it. If every verb becomes a noun, however, the prose grows heavy. Sentence 2 restores movement with esdevé, produeix and corre.

3. Anaphora makes a judgment contestable

Aquesta subordinació condenses the relation described in sentence 2 and turns it into the topic of sentence 3. The demonstrative does real discourse work: it tells the reader exactly what is being evaluated. No és pas strengthens the negation in a controlled way; pas here is standard and emphatic, though its frequency varies regionally.

Aquesta reducció del debat a dues opcions no és pas innocent.

This reduction of the debate to two options is by no means innocent.

Encara que sovint es presenti uses the subjunctive to background the presentation rather than assert it as an independent fact; an indicative would explicitly endorse it as observed information. The passive es presenti leaves the presenters generic. English does not mark this stance contrast morphologically.

4. A long sentence is held together by parallel frames

N'hi ha prou amb is an idiomatic existential expression: en resumes an implicit quantity and hi ha supplies the existential frame. Learn it as a unit. The sentence then balances no tan sols … sinó també, with two coordinated embedded questions: quant triguem and qui pot fer-ho. The pronoun hi in arribar-hi resumes the relevant destination; ho in fer-ho resumes the act of arriving.

N'hi ha prou amb observar qui hi entra i qui en queda fora per entendre el problema.

One need only observe who enters and who is left out to understand the problem.

The long sentence remains readable because its architecture is parallel. Length itself is not advanced style; controlled dependency is.

5–6. Reformulation, qualification, and reference chains

Dit d'una altra manera announces a reformulation rather than a new premise. Pot ser-ne una condició contains en, referring back to del progrés: literally, slowness can be “a condition of it.” Repeating del progrés would be correct but less cohesive.

La discrepància no impedeix l'acord; en pot ser, de fet, una condició.

Disagreement does not prevent agreement; it can, in fact, be a condition for it.

Sentence 6 prevents overinterpretation through the repeated no implica … implica frame. The demonstrative això resumes the entire proposal, not a single noun. Més aviat corrects the reader's possible inference without sounding combative.

Això no implica renunciar a l'objectiu; implica, més aviat, revisar els mitjans.

That does not mean abandoning the goal; rather, it means revising the means.

7–8. Hedging leads to a counterfactual close

Potser caldria combines an epistemic adverb with a conditional. The result is a proposal offered for consideration, not a timid withdrawal. Doncs marks the conclusion licensed by the preceding argument. The correlative no només … sinó també balances efficiency against social value.

Potser caldria, doncs, distingir entre el cost visible i el que assumeix la comunitat.

Perhaps, then, we should distinguish between the visible cost and the cost borne by the community.

The final sentence uses si + imperfect subjunctive followed by the conditional: si acceptéssim … deixaríem … començaríem. The writer imagines a change of perspective and derives its consequences. The reflexive plural preguntar-nos includes writer and reader, softening the exhortation through shared responsibility.

Si canviéssim la pregunta, deixaríem de confondre rapidesa i eficàcia.

If we changed the question, we would stop confusing speed with effectiveness.

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English often tolerates repeated nouns where Catalan prefers a managed chain of aquesta subordinació → això → aquesta necessitat → aquest desplaçament. A good reference chain alternates explicit noun phrases and pronouns so that cohesion never becomes ambiguity.

From draft to polished prose

Compare three revisions. The first is grammatical but conversational; the second over-nominalizes; the third preserves both precision and movement.

Version	Sentence	Effect
Conversational	Volem anar més de pressa, però això també porta problemes.	Clear, but problemes and això are too vague for a C2 argument.
Overloaded	L'acceleració de la mobilitat comporta la producció d'una problematització de l'habitabilitat.	Nominal density hides who experiences what; problematització adds no useful precision.
Revised	L'acceleració dels desplaçaments pot reduir el temps de viatge, però també pot empobrir l'experiència de l'espai compartit.	Parallel verbs make the trade-off explicit while two justified nominalizations name the topic.

Revision should therefore test each abstraction: does it create a stable concept for later reference, or merely disguise a simpler verb? Also check whether a long sentence contains visible signposts. A semicolon in sentence 2 works because certament and ara bé identify the two argumentative halves.

Comprehension checks

What limited benefit does sentence 2 concede before the counterargument?
What does aquesta subordinació summarize in sentence 3?
Identify the destinations or propositions resumed by hi, ho, and en in sentence 4 or 5.
Why does es presenti appear in the subjunctive?
Does the author claim that slower transport is always better? Quote the language that blocks that reading.
What change in evaluation does sentence 7 propose?

Transformation exercises

Replace Dit d'una altra manera with another reformulation marker while preserving the register.
Rewrite sentence 3 with an explicit agent for es presenti; explain how assigning responsibility changes the argument.
Split sentence 4 into two sentences without losing the no tan sols … sinó també contrast.
Turn la reducció dels temps de desplaçament into a finite clause beginning que es redueixin… and compare the information structure.
Rewrite the final counterfactual as a direct recommendation, then explain why the original hedging is rhetorically different.

Common Mistakes

❌ Aquesta política consisteix de reduir els trajectes.

Incorrect — consistir never selects de here; before an infinitive, formal Catalan prefers a, while en is used before a noun phrase.

✅ Aquesta política consisteix a reduir els trajectes sense excloure ningú.

This policy consists in reducing travel times without excluding anyone.

⚠️ Encara que es presenta com a neutral, la mesura té conseqüències.

Possible when the presentation is asserted as a fact, but it misses the intended nonassertive concessive stance.

✅ Encara que es presenti com a neutral, la mesura té conseqüències distributives.

Although it is presented as neutral, the measure has distributive consequences.

❌ Si acceptaríem aquest criteri, canviaríem les prioritats.

Incorrect — the si-clause cannot use the conditional in this counterfactual pattern.

✅ Si acceptéssim aquest criteri, canviaríem les prioritats.

If we accepted this criterion, we would change our priorities.

⚠️ La rapidesa pot ser una condició del progrés, però la lentitud també pot ser una condició del progrés.

Grammatical but stylistically clumsy — the repeated complement should be resumed when its reference is clear.

✅ La rapidesa pot afavorir el progrés, però la lentitud també en pot ser una condició.

Speed can favor progress, but slowness can also be a condition for it.

Key Takeaways

Advanced prose is organized by argumentative relations: concession, limitation, reformulation, qualification, and conclusion.
Nominalizations create stable concepts, but finite verbs keep prose readable and assign responsibility.
Aquesta subordinació, això, hi, ho, and en form reference chains across clauses; translate their discourse function, not their surface form.
Long sentences need parallel syntax and visible connectors, not merely commas.
Potser caldria and the counterfactual close express calibrated commitment. Hedging can make a claim more exact, not weaker.
The essay uses broadly shared contemporary standard Catalan. Follow one pronunciation model consistently and label genuine regional alternatives rather than mixing them invisibly.

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