“At night I read Pompeu Fabra’s Catalan Grammar. It brings to mind a standard European grammar—Augier’s French Grammar, for example—and above all it makes me forget those grisly texts that made high school such a torture. How beautiful a grammar that is clear, simple, precise, and understandable!”

Josep Pla’s opinion of Pompeu Fabra’s Catalan Grammar in The Gray Notebook (1918)

“[...] his whole work as a grammarian and lexicographer is a grandiose, detailed, reasoned proposal to writers and, with them, the cultivated speaking masses: it is they who have the last word. As long as writers know their trade and the speaking masses possess the necessary enlightenment, we should add.”

Carles Riba, in the foreword to the second edition of the General Dictionary of the Catalan Language (1954)

“What does interest mean? “Sentiment that something awakens in us, which moves us to pay special attention to it, to be favourable or unfavourable to it.” I copy this from the Fabra word for word. As always, the Fabra does not let us down: it is concise, complete, spot on.”

Joan Fuster’s opinion on the quality of Pompeu Fabra’s General Dictionary of the Catalan Language (1964)

“His death will signify the disappearance of the most important Catalan of our time. Fabra has been the most important Catalan of our time because he is the only citizen of this country, in these times, who, having proposed to reach a particular public and general goal, succeeded explicitly and indisputably. In this respect, no one else can compare to him.

“[...] Out of the unspeakable, awesome shipwreck [the Civil War], all that remains standing is one work and one figure: the figure and the work of Pompeu Fabra.”

Josep Pla, in his biography of Pompeu Fabra, in Great Men (1969)

“Fabra was also a great scholar, avant la lettre, of language transfer, meaning [...] the influencing process exerted by a socio-politically dominant language over a socio-politically dominated one.”

Xavier Lamuela and Josep Murgades, in Theory of Literary Language According to Fabra (1984)

“Fabra [...] was a competent linguist and a wonderfully able grammarian [...] who cries out to be appreciated according to the value of his ideas. Fabra the engineer [...] never lost sight of the fact that, contrary to what aesthetes and sentimentalists think [...], a language is a functional object, a communication tool.”

Fragments by Gabriel Ferrater on Fabra (1968), included in “Pompeu Fabra’s grammars”, On Language (1990)

“Pompeu Fabra always spoke without any emphasis, in an almost colloquial tone. His expository clarity was absolute, and his scientific rigor, peppered now and then with irony, sometimes even jokes, moulded itself perfectly to his didactic intention. He did not want to shine; he wanted to communicate and persuade. The teacher masked the scholar [...]”

From Alfred Badia to Jordi Mir, in Commemoration of Pompeu Fabra: Fifty Contemporary Testimonies (1998)

“[...] Fabra had a clear vision of the historical evolution of the Catalan language and, unlike others, he knew it was necessary to differentiate evolutive words from learned words borrowed from Latin and Greek [...].”

Gabriel Bibiloni, in Pompeu Fabra and Transfer (1999)

“People spoke Catalan but they didn’t know how to write it. They needed a grammarian.”

Narcís Garolera, in the journal Pompeu Fabra, produced at UPF in 2007 for the 75th anniversary of the General Dictionary of the Catalan Language

“Fabra is a role model and a figure not only of the 20th century, but of our entire history. He was able to create a work that was thought out, structured and produced in an exemplary manner.”

Joan Solà, in the journal Pompeu Fabra, produced at UPF in 2007 for the 75th anniversary of the General Dictionary of the Catalan Language