Which has more vocabulary, Spanish or Catalan?

[xander]

[dart]

Spanish. It also has more speakers, and more literature.

[Penny]

Vocabulary? They're probably about the same. Spanish is far more widely spoken than Catalan, though, so unless you're wanting to tour Barcelona you're better off sticking with Castillian Spanish (castellano, the variety the Spanish conquistadors brought to the New World in the 1500s).

As far as Catalan goes, it's similar to Spanish, but in some ways is actually more like French (if you know both languages it'll be a cinch to learn)

[Xinoxano]

Catalan has around 8 million speakers and Spanish 300 million, but this obviously does not affect the number of words of a language, as anybody should be aware of.

We should take a very good dictionary of both languages and see which one has more vocabulary, but that should be more or less the same.

Catalan is official in some parts (Catalonia and its capital Barcelona, Balearic Islands, Valencia, where it is called Valencian) and has grammar, literature, translated books into Catalan of all genres and from all languages, encyclopaedia, scientific books, newspapers, magazines, software programmes, Facebook, Twitter, TV channels in Catalan, radio stations, etc,etc, so it is like any other language. Catalan is the language used at school, high-school and universitites in Catalonia and the official language of the local and autonomous administration (Spanish is also offficial).