What is the difference between spanish and catalan language?

Question

what makes them different??

Answer 1

On a phonetic level, Spanish has kept the Latin final masculine vowel  -o, whereas Catalan has lost it, like Provençal and French. E.g.: Sp. gobierno, Catalan govern (government). Spanish has diphtongs where Catalan keeps the vowels intact : Sp.bueno, Cat. bo (good). The final feminine -a remains an audible a in Spanish (buena, buenas) whereas in Catalan, it is always pronounced like an -e : bona, bones (good in the feminine).

Most of Catalan vocabulary is common with Provençal, of which it was a dialect until the IX° century. Of course, being of Latin origin like Spanish, Catalan has many things in common, but Spanish has an Arabic element which cannot be found in Catalan, Catalan countries having been too shortly occupied by the Arabs in the Middle Ages. Finally, Spanish has become the official language of the state in the XVI° century, and was enriched by many Greek and Classical Latin words, whereas Catalan was bereft of its written and higher culture until the XIX° century, and was even forbidden during Franco's dictatorship. All that had consequences on the language and its vocabulary.

So Spanish and Catalan are not the same language, and the latter is not a dialect of the former.