Catala – Law to Code

Catala != Catalan

Well, not in Catalan… (It is "català")

Try clicking my "Catala" link and looking at the first sentence. The Catalan word for Catalan is català.

Great. You would know that the accent can completely change the meaning of a word in that language as such an expert.

So we can just say that catala != català

That’s not correct, the accent is simply there to know how to pronounce the word, and while in some specific cases (diacritic accent) it is there to avoid confusion in words that are pronounced the same with different meaning, the presence or lack of accent does not as a rule change the meaning of a word.

In this case, catala and català mean the same thing, one is simply misspelled as all words with the strong syllable being last will always have an accent mark if they end in a vowel.

Your first paragraph insists that "the presence or lack of accent does not as a rule change the meaning of a word." While your second insists that "[the same word without an accent] is simply misspelled as all words with the strong syllable being last will always have an accent mark if they end in a vowel."

But your accent rule also isn't followed by the language you claim uses it as a hard and fast rule: in the case of the single syllable Catalan word ma (my, femenine) and mà (hand). Please square that with your declaration that " all words with the strong syllable being last will always have an accent mark if they end in a vowel." Seemingly ma is breaking your rules, as well as your assertion that missing the accent is only a spelling error. In this, and many other cases, the accent completely changes the meaning of the word which also contradicts your assertion I highlighted in paragraph 1. Maybe "as a rule" isn't the correct phrase given the multitude of words that can change meaning with an accent mark.

The broader thing you missed is that Catala is the last name of a person working on the project, and is not missing an accent. That is how the person's name is spelled. Even in Catalan. Català is a Catalan word refering to a different thing. In this case the accent is incredibly important since it helps us differentiate between a man's name and a language.

In both the figurative and spelling sense we must therefore conclude that, in reality:

Catala != Català

You clearly don’t even speak the language and are just fishing for an argument. I have already explained why your comment is incorrect, have nothing else to say to you on that subject if you insist that the accent mark will completely change the meaning without understanding that the accent in català follows the normal ortographical rules while the accent in mà is diacritic, a special rule that only applies to often monosyllabic words.

mà / ma does not break the general rule because the word does have an accent mark, it just also falls under the diacritic special rule.

On your point about the author’s last name, it’s fair, but also you’re ignoring that the last name comes from the same word and is thus a spelling variation from French/Occitan, further proving your assertion of Catala != Català as wrong.