Studying Catalan: Observations

Studying Catalan, I am becoming aware of the similiraties and differences of it and whether it has more in common with Ibero-Romance (e.g. Spanish, Portuguese) or Gallo-Romance (e.g. French, Occitan). I am discovering, nonetheless, that this language from Southern Spain and France has much in common with Italian as well. There are many things which are found in French and Italian, but not in Spanish. Of these, we ought to mention the partitive article "ne/en", which corresponds to French "en" and Italian "ne". It translates to "of it", and has no direct Spanish equivalent. Also, "pas" can be used for an emphatic negative, much the way as it begun in French (Fr. pas), i.e. no en vull pas » I do not want any of it. The word for 'nothing' is "[no] res", like French "rien". In Catalan, though, unlike French, "rien" as well "pas" have not quite yet acquired full negativity so, generally, they must be accompanied by "no". Another thing which caught my attention were the days of the week. These follow the regular Romance pattern, and like in Italian and French, add "di", i.e. Fr. lundi, mardi, etc.; It. lunedì, martedì, etc. This «di» comes from the latin «die», meaning day. Whereas in French and Italian this is found as a suffix, in Catalan, it is found as a prefix: dilluns, dimarts, dimecres, dijous, divendres.
The subject pronouns are as follows: jo, tu, ell/ella, nosaltres, vosaltres, ells/elles. Here, the feature is shared with Spanish in the first and second person plural where "altres" (e.g. others) is annexed to both "nos" and "vos" (i.e. Spanish "nosotros, vosotros"); this, unlike French "nous, vous", Italian "noi, voi" and Portuguese "nós, vós".
In terms of pronunciation, one of the most noticeable things is the S, which is pronounced much in the same way as the Castillian one, that which many English speakers would confuse with SH as in "show". Also, /z/ has much of a /Z/ (that is, the voiced counterpart to SH) resonance. Unstressed E and A are reduced to a schwa, the neutral sound similar to that in French "pensE" or English "About". Therefore, "sogre" and "sogra" sound the same in Catalan. Untressed O merges with U, i.e. parlo » \parlu\. Another feature is the loss of the final nasal consonant, e.g.: bé » Sp. bien, Fr. bien, Pt. bem; també » Sp. también, Pt. também; fi » Sp. fin, Pt. fim.
Yet another one is the palatization of Latin initial L to LL, e.g: llengua » Latin lĭngŭa, Sp. lengua, Pt. lingua; lloba » Lt. lŭpa, Sp. loba; lluna » Lt. lūna, Sp.\It. luna, Pt. lua, Fr. lune.

It seems as well that spoken Catalan, at least in Catalonia and Valencia, is much influenced, as one might expect, by Castillian in some aspects. Listening to the radio from Catalonia over the internet, I noticed that many people calling the stations began speaking Catalan, and then switched to speaking the dominant language in that country: Castillian. Even then, Catalan, with its big media, regional pride and by being official, has rather a promising a future.