Sardinian language

Sardinian
Sardu, Limba / Lingua Sarda
Native to	Italy
Region	Sardinia
Native speakers	~1 million (1993–2007)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Sardinian
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Italy Sardinia
Regulated by	Limba Sarda Comuna code
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sc
ISO 639-2	srd
ISO 639-3	srd – inclusive code Individual codes: sro – Campidanese dialect src – Logudorese dialect
Glottolog	sard1257[2]
Linguasphere	51-AAA-s +(Corso-Sardinian) 51-AAA-pd & -pe
Languages and dialects of Sardinia. Sardinian is yellow (Logudorese) and orange (Campidanese).

Sardinian (sardu, limba sarda, lingua sarda) or Sard is the primary indigenous Romance language spoken on most of the island of Sardinia (Italy). Of the Romance languages, it is considered the closest to Latin.^[3] However, it also incorporates a Pre-Latin (Paleo-Sardinian, or Nuragic, and Punic) substratum,^[4] and a Catalan, Spanish and Italian superstratum due to the past political membership of the island, first gravitating towards the Hispanic sphere of influence and later towards the Italian one.

Sardinian consists of two varieties, each with its own literature:^[5][6] Campidanese and Logudorese, spoken respectively in the southern half and in the north-central part of Sardinia. Some attempts have been made to introduce a standardized writing system by combining the two Sardinian varieties, like the LSU (Limba Sarda Unificada, "Unified Sardinian Language") and LSC (Limba Sarda Comuna, "Common Sardinian Language"),^[7] but they have not been generally acknowledged by native speakers.^[8][9]

In 1997 Sardinian, along with other languages spoken in Sardinia, was recognized by a regional law; since 1999, Sardinian is also one of the twelve "historical language minorities" of Italy and protected as such by the national Law 482.^[10] However, the language is in retreat and UNESCO classifies both main varieties as "definitely endangered";^[11] although an estimated 68.4 percent of the islanders have a good oral command of Sardinian.^[12] Italian is displacing it nonetheless in many cases, and language ability among children has been estimated to have dropped in fact to around 13 percent.^[13][14]

Overview

Now the question arises as to whether Sardinian is to be considered a dialect or a language in its own right. Politically speaking,^[15] it is clearly one of the many dialects of Italy, just like the Serbo-Croatian and the Albanian spoken in various villages of Calabria and Sicily. However, from a linguistic point of view, that is a different question. It can be said that Sardinian has no relationship whatsoever with any dialect of mainland Italy; it is an archaic Romance speech with its own distinctive characteristics, showing a very original vocabulary in addition to morphology and syntax rather different from the Italian dialects.^[16]

— Max Leopold Wagner, La lingua sarda, 1951 – Ilisso, pp. 90–91

Sardinian is considered the most conservative Romance language,^[17] and its substratum (Paleo-Sardinian or Nuragic) has also been researched. A 1949 study by Italian-American linguist Mario Pei, analyzing the degree of difference from a language's parent (Latin, in the case of Romance languages) by comparing phonology, inflection, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation, indicated the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater the distance from Latin):^[18] Sardinian 8%, Italian 12%, Spanish 20%, Romanian 23.5%, Occitan 25%, Portuguese 31%, and French 44%. For example, Latin "Pone mihi tres panes in bertula" (put three loaves of bread [from home] in the bag for me) would be the very similar "Ponemi tres panes in bertula" in Sardinian.^[19]

Chart of Romance languages based on structural and comparative criteria (not on socio-functional ones). Koryakov (2001) ascribes Sardinian to the separated Island Romance branch of the Romance languages, along with old Corsican.^[20]

Compared to the mainland Italian lects, Sardinian is virtually incomprehensible for Italians, being actually an autonomous linguistic group.^[21][22]

History

Sardinia's relative isolation from mainland Europe encouraged the development of a Romance language preserving traces of its indigenous, pre-Roman language(s). The language is posited to have substratal influences from Paleo-Sardinian language, which some scholars have linked to Basque^[23] and Etruscan.^[24] Adstratal influences include Catalan, Spanish, and Italian. The situation of Sardinian language with regard to the politically dominant ones did not change until the 1950s.^[25][26]

Origins, Prenuragic and Nuragic era

The origins of the Paleo-Sardinian language are currently not known. Research has attempted to discover obscure, indigenous, pre-Romance roots; the root s(a)rd, present in many place names and denoting the island's people, is reportedly from Sherden (one of the Sea Peoples), although this assertion is quite debated.

In 1984, Massimo Pittau said he found in the Etruscan language the etymology of many Latin words after comparing it with the Nuragic language(s).^[24] Etruscan elements, formerly considered originating in Latin, would indicate a connection between the ancient Sardinian culture and the Etruscans. According to Pittau, the Etruscan and Nuragic language(s) are descended from Lydian (and therefore Indo-European) as a consequence of contact with Etruscans and other Tyrrhenians from Sardis described by Herodotus.^[24] Although Pittau suggests that the Tirrenii landed in Sardinia and the Etruscans landed in modern Tuscany, his views are not shared by most Etruscologists.

According to Alberto Areddu^[27] the Sherden were of Illyrian origin, on the basis of some lexical elements, unanimously acknowledged as belonging to the indigenous Substrate. Areddu asserts that in ancient Sardinia, especially in the most interior area (Barbagia and Ogliastra), the locals supposedly spoke a particular branch of Indo-European. There are in fact some correspondences, both formal and semantic, with the few testimonies of Illyrian (or Thracian) languages, and above all with their linguistical continuer, Albanian. He finds such correlations: sard. eni, enis, eniu 'yew' = alb. enjë 'yew'; sard. urtzula 'clematis' = alb. urth 'ivy'; sard. rethi 'tendril' = alb. rrypthi 'tendril'.^[28] Recently he also discovered important correlations with the balcanic bird world.^[29]

According to Bertoldi and Terracini, Paleo-Sardinian has similarities with the Iberic languages and Siculian; for example, the suffix ara in proparoxytones indicated the plural. Terracini proposed the same for suffixes in -/àna/, -/ànna/, -/énna/, -/ònna/ + /r/ + a paragogic vowel (such as the toponym Bunnànnaru). Rohlfs, Butler and Craddock add the suffix -/ini/ (such as the toponym Barùmini) as a unique element of Paleo-Sardinian. Suffixes in /a, e, o, u/ + -rr- found a correspondence in north Africa (Terracini), in Iberia (Blasco Ferrer) and in southern Italy and Gascony (Rohlfs), with a closer relationship to Basque (Wagner and Hubschmid). However, these early links to a Basque precursor have been questioned by some Basque linguists.^[30] According to Terracini, suffixes in -/ài/, -/éi/, -/òi/, and -/ùi/ are common to Paleo-Sardinian and northern African languages. Pittau emphasized that this concerns terms originally ending in an accented vowel, with an attached paragogic vowel; the suffix resisted Latinization in some place names, which show a Latin body and a Nuragic suffix. According to Bertoldi, some toponyms ending in -/ài/ and -/asài/ indicated an Anatolic influence. The suffix -/aiko/, widely used in Iberia and possibly of Celtic origin, and the ethnic suffix in -/itanos/ and -/etanos/ (for example, the Sardinian Sulcitanos) have also been noted as Paleo-Sardinian elements (Terracini, Ribezzo, Wagner, Hubschmid and Faust).

Linguists Blasco Ferrer (2009, 2010) and Morvan (2009) have attempted to revive a theoretical connection with Basque by linking words such as Sardinian ospile "fresh grazing for cattle" and Basque ozpil; Sardinian arrotzeri "vagabond" and Basque arrotz "stranger"; Gallurese (South Corsican and North Sardinian) zerru "pig" and Basque zerri. Genetic data on the distribution of HLA antigens have suggested a common origin for the Basques and Sardinians.^[31]

Since the Neolithic period, some degree of variance across the island's regions is also attested. The Arzachena culture, for instance, suggests a link between the northernmost Sardinian region (Gallura) and southern Corsica that finds further confirmation in the Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder. There are also some stylistic differences between north and south Nuragic Sardinia, which may indicate the existence of two other tribal groups (Balares and Ilienses) mentioned by the same Roman author. According to the archeologist Giovanni Ugas,^[32] these peoples may have in fact played an important role in shaping the current regional linguistic differences of the island.

Roman period

Although Roman domination, which began in 238 BC, brought Latin to Sardinia, it was unable to completely supplant the pre-Roman Sardinian languages, including Punic, which continued to be spoken until the second century AD. Some obscure Nuragic roots remained unchanged, and in many cases the Latin accepted local roots (like nur, which makes its appearance in nuraghe, Nùgoro and many other toponyms). Barbagia, the mountainous central region of the island, derives its name from the Latin Barbaria, because its people refused cultural and linguistic assimilation for a long time: 50% of toponyms of central Sardinia are actually not related to any known language.^[33] Besides the place names, on the island there are still a few names of plants, animals and geological formations directly traceable to the ancient Nuragic era.^[34] Cicero called the Sardinian rebels latrones mastrucati ("thieves with rough wool cloaks") to emphasize Roman superiority.^[35]

During the long Roman domination Latin gradually become however the speech of the majority of the inhabitants of the island.^[36] As a result of this process of romanization the Sardinian language is today classified as a Romance or neo-Latin one, with phonetic and morphological features resembling Old Latin. Some linguists assert that modern Sardinian, being part of the Island Romance group,^[20] was the first language to split off from the others evolving from Latin, called Continental Romance.

At that time, the only literature being produced in Sardinia was mostly in Latin: the native (Paleo-Sardinian) and non-native (Punic) pre-Roman languages were then already extinct (the last Punic inscription in Bithia, southern Sardinia, is from the second or third century A.D.^[37]). Some engraved poems in ancient Greek and Latin (the two most prestigious languages in the Roman Empire^[38]) can be spotted in Cagliari's Cave of the Viper ( Grutta 'e sa Pibera in Sardinian, Grotta della Vipera in Italian, Cripta Serpentum in Latin), a burial monument built by Lucius Cassius Philippus (a Roman who had been exiled to Sardinia) in remembrance of his dead spouse Atilia Pomptilla. We also have some religious works by Saints Lucifer and Eusebius, both from Caralis (Cagliari).

Although Sardinia was culturally influenced and politically ruled by the Byzantine Empire for almost five centuries, Greek did not enter its language except for some ritual or formal expressions in Sardinian using Greek structure and, sometimes, Greek alphabet.^[39][40] Evidence for this is found in the condaghes, the first written documents in Sardinian. From the long Byzantine era there are only a few entries but they already provide a glimpse of the sociolinguistical situation on the island in which, in addition to the community's everyday Neo-Latin language, Greek was also spoken by the ruling classes.^[41] Some toponyms, such as Jerzu (thought to derive from the Greek khérsos, "untilled" and the personal names Mikhaleis, Konstantine and Basilis) demonstrate Greek influence.^[41]

As the Muslims conquered southern Italy and Sicily, communications broke down between Constantinople and Sardinia, whose districts became progressively more autonomous from the Byzantine oecumene (Greek: οἰκουμένη). Sardinia was then brought back to the Latin cultural sphere.

Giudicati period

Sardinian was the first Romance language to gain official status, being used by the Giudicati, four Byzantine districts often quarreling with each other that became independent political entities after the Arab expansion in the Mediterranean cut the ties between the island and Byzantium. Sardinian had a greater number of archaisms and Latinisms than the present language does. Comparing the documents from the Giudicato of Cagliari to those from the Torres' and Gallura's one, Sardinian language displays already a certain range of dialectal variation.^[26] A special position is occupied by the Giudicato of Arborea, the last Sardinian kingdom to fall to foreign powers, in which a transitional dialect was spoken. The Carta de Logu of the Kingdom of Arborea, one of the first constitutions in history drawn up in 1355–1376 by Marianus IV and the Lady Judge (judikessa in Sardinian, giudicessa in Italian) Eleanor, was originally written in such intermediate variety and would remain in force until 1827.^[42][43] It is presumed the Arborean judges attempted to unify the two main Sardinian dialects in order to gain legitimacy and be therefore entitled to rule the entire island.^[44]

Dante Alighieri wrote in his 1302–05 essay De vulgari eloquentia that he would except Sardinians, saying they were not Italians (Latii) and had no vulgar language of their own, resorting to aping Latin instead.^{[45][46][47][48]}

Dante's view has been dismissed, because Sardinian evolved enough to be unintelligible to non-islanders: a popular 12th-century verse from the poem Domna, tant vos ai preiada quotes the provençal troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, saying No t'intend plui d'un Toesco / o Sardo o Barbarì ("I don't understand you any more than I understand a German / or a Sardinian or a Berber");^[49][50][51] the Tuscan poet Fazio degli Uberti refers to the Sardinians in his poem Dittamondo as una gente che niuno non la intende / né essi sanno quel ch'altri pispiglia ("a people that no one is able to understand / nor do they come to a knowledge of what other peoples say").^[52][48] The Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, who lived in Palermo, Sicily at the court of King Roger II, wrote in his work "Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq fi'khtiraq al-'afaq" ("The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands" or, simply, "The book of Roger") that "Sardinia is large, mountainous, poorly provided with water, two hundred and eighty miles long and one hundred and eighty long from west to east. [...] Sardinians are ethnically Rum Afāriqah (Latins of Africa) like Berbers; they shun contacts with all the other Rum (Latin) nations and are people of purpose and valiant that never leave the arms".^[53][54]

Sardinian-language statutes of Sassari from the 13th–14th centuries

The literature of this period primarily consists of legal documents, besides the aforementioned Carta de Logu. The first document containing Sardinian elements is a 1063 donation to the abbey of Montecassino signed by Barisone I of Torres.^[55] Other documents are the Carta Volgare (1070–1080) in Campidanese, the 1080 Logudorese Privilege,^[56] the 1089 Donation of Torchitorio (in the Marseille archives),^[57] the 1190–1206 Marsellaise Chart (in Campidanese)^[58] and an 1173 communication between the Bishop Bernardo of Civita and Benedetto, who oversaw the Opera del Duomo in Pisa.^[59] The Statutes of Sassari are written in Logudorese.^[60]

Aragonese period – Catalan influence

The 1297 feoffment of Sardinia by Pope Boniface VIII led to the creation of the Aragonese Kingdom of Sardinia and a long period of war between the Aragonese and Sardinians, ending with a Catalan victory at Sanluri in 1409 and the renunciation of any succession right signed by William III of Narbonne in 1420.^[61] During this period the clergy adopted Catalan as their primary language, relegating Sardinian to a secondary status. According to attorney Sigismondo Arquer (Cagliari, 1530 – Toledo, 4 giugno 1571), author of Sardiniae brevis historia et descriptio in Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia Universalis, Sardinian prevailed in rural areas and Catalan was spoken in the cities, where the ruling class eventually became bilingual in both languages; Alghero is still a Catalan-speaking enclave on Sardinia to this day.^[62]

The long-lasting war and the so-called Black Death had a devastating effect on the island, depopulating large parts of it. People from the neighbouring island of Corsica began to settle in the northern Sardinian coast, leading to the birth of the Tuscan-sounding Sassarese and Gallurese.^[63][64]

Despite spoken Catalan's popularity on the island at this time (which had a lasting influence on Sardinian), there are some written records of Sardinian. One is the 15th-century Sa Vitta et sa Morte, et Passione de sanctu Gavinu, Brothu et Ianuariu, written by Antòni Canu (1400–1476) and published in 1557: Tando su rey barbaru su cane renegadu / de custa resposta multu restayt iradu / & issu martiriu fetit apparigiare / itu su quale fesit fortemente ligare / sos sanctos martires cum bonas catenas / qui li segaant sos ossos cum sas veinas / & totu sas carnes cum petenes de linu ... . Rimas Spirituales, by Hieronimu Araolla, "glorif[ied] and enrich[ed] Sardinian, our language" (magnificare et arrichire sa limba nostra sarda) as Spanish, French and Italian poets had done for their languages (la Deffense et illustration de la langue françoyse and il Dialogo delle lingue).^[25][65] Antonio Lo Frasso, a poet born in Alghero^[66] (a city he remembered fondly)^[67] who spent his life in Barcelona, wrote lyric poetry in Sardinian:^[68]  ... Non podende sufrire su tormentu / de su fogu ardente innamorosu. / Videndemi foras de sentimentu / et sensa una hora de riposu, / pensende istare liberu e contentu / m'agato pius aflitu e congoixosu, / in essermi de te senora apartadu, / mudende ateru quelu, ateru istadu ....

Habsburg period – Spanish influence

Through the marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469 and, later in 1624, the reorganization of the monarchy led by the Count-Duke of Olivares, Sardinia would progressively leave the exclusive Aragonese cultural sphere in favour of a broader Spanish one. Unlike Catalan, however, Spanish was perceived as an elitist language, gaining ground among the ruling classes; Sardinian retained much of its importance, being the only language the rural people were proficient in.^[69][70] In "Legendariu de Santas Virgines, et Martires de Iesu Christu", the Orgolese priest Ioan Matheu Garipa called Sardinian the closest living relative of classical Latin: Las apo voltadas in sardu menjus qui non in atera limba pro amore de su vulgu [...] qui non tenjan bisonju de interprete pro bi-las decrarare, et tambene pro esser sa limba sarda tantu bona, quanta participat de sa latina, qui nexuna de quantas limbas si plàtican est tantu parente assa latina formale quantu sa sarda. Spanish had a profound lexical influence on Sardinian nonetheless, especially in those words related to the role that the Spanish had in the vast Habsburg Empire as the language of the Court^[71] and as a spoken language in the American colonies. Most Sardinian authors were well-versed in Spanish, so much so that Vicente Bacallar y Sanna was one of the founders of the Real Academia Española,^[72] and used to write in both Spanish and Sardinian until the XIX° century; a notable exception was Pedro Delitala (1550–1590), who decided to write in Italian instead.^[66][73]

A 1620 proclamation is in the Bosa archives.^[74]

Savoyard period and Kingdom of Italy

The War of the Spanish Succession gave Sardinia to Austria, whose sovereignty was confirmed by the 1713–14 treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt. In 1717 a Spanish fleet reoccupied Cagliari, and the following year Sardinia was ceded to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy in exchange for Sicily. This transfer would not initially entail any social nor linguistic changes, though: Sardinia would still retain for a long time its Hispanic character, so much so that only in 1767 were the Aragonese and Spanish dynastic symbols replaced by the Savoyard cross.^[75]

During the Savoyard period, a number of essays written by philologist Matteo Madau^[76][77] and professor (and senator) Giovanni Spano attempted to establish a unified orthography based on Logudorese, just like Florentine would become the basis for Italian.^[78] In 1811, Vincenzo Raimondo Porru published the first essay on the Southern Sardinian grammar^[79] and in 1832 the first Sardinian-Italian dictionary as well.^[80]

However, the Savoyard government imposed Italian on Sardinia in July 1760,^{[81][82][83][84]} for reasons related more to the Savoyard need of drawing the island away from the Spanish influence than for Italian nationalism, which would be later pursued by the King Charles Albert.^[85][86] Back then, Italian was a foreign language to Sardinians.^[87]

Carlo Baudi di Vesme (Cuneo, 1809 – Turin, 1877) proposed the suppression of Sardinian in order to make the islanders "civilized" Italians,^[88] importing solely Italian-speaking teachers from other regions, and Piedmontese cartographers replaced many Sardinian place names with Italian ones. Despite the assimilation policy the anthem of the Savoyard Kingdom of Sardinia was the Hymnu Sardu Nationale (Sardinian National Anthem), or Cunservet Deus su Re (God save the King), with Sardinian lyrics first in Campidanese and then Logudorese.^[89]

During the mobilization for World War I, the Italian Army compelled all Sardinians to enlist as Italian subjects and raised the Sassari Infantry Brigade on 1 March 1915 at Tempio Pausania and Sinnai. Unlike other Italian infantry brigades, Sassari's was recruited on Sardinia (including its officers). It is the only Italian unit with an anthem in a regional language: Dimonios ("Devils"), by Luciano Sechi. Its title derives from Rote Teufel (German for "red devils"). Even the compulsory military service played a role in language shift.

Under Fascism every language other than Italian was banned, to the point of forbidding Sardinia's characteristic improvised poetry competitions,^[90][91][92] and surnames were changed to sound more Italian.^[93] During this period, the Sardinian Hymn of the Piedmontese Kingdom was a chance to use a regional language without penalty; as a royal tradition, it could not be forbidden.

Present

No-smoking sign in Sardinian and Italian

The emphasis on monolingual (Italian-only) policies and assimilation has continued after World War II, with historical sites and ordinary objects renamed in Italian.^[94] The Ministry of Public Education reportedly requested the monitoring of Sardinian teachers.^[95] The rejection of the indigenous language, along with a rigid model of Italian-language education^[96] and corporal punishments, led to the difficult scholarization of Sardinians. Even now, Sardinia currently has the highest rate of school and university drop-out in Italy.^[97]

There have been many campaigns, often expressed in the form of political demands, to give Sardinian equal status with Italian as a means to promote cultural identity.^[98] Following tensions and claims of the Sardinian nationalist movement for concrete cultural and political autonomy, including the recognition of the Sardinians as an ethnic and linguistic minority, three separate bills were presented to the Regional Council in the '80s.^[25] A survey conducted in 1984 (cited in Pinna Catte's work, 1992^[99]) showed that many Sardinians had a positive attitude towards bilingual education (22% wanted Sardinian to be mandatory in Sardinian schools, while 54.7% would have preferred to see its teaching to be facultative), with such a consensus being strong even to this day: another survey in 2008 reported that more than half of the interviewees, 57.3%, are in favour of the introduction of Sardinian into schools alongside Italian.^[100]

During the 1990s, Sardinian, Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovenian, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin and Occitan were formally recognized as minority languages by Law 482-1999.^[101] Nevertheless, in many Italian libraries and universities books about the Sardinian language are still classified as Linguistica italiana (Italian linguistics), Dialetti italiani (Italian dialects) or Dialettologia italiana (Italian dialectology).^[102][103] Sardinian is considered an "Italian dialect" by some^[104] (even at the institutional level)^[105] and it has been stigmatized as indicative of a lack of education;^[106][107] it is associated still by many locals with shame, backwardness and provincialism as a result.^[108] For instance, some Sardinians call the language sa limba de su famine / sa lingua de su famini, literally translating into English as "the language of hunger" (i.e. the language of the poor), regarding it as a stigma of a poverty-stricken, rural, and underprivileged life.

Bilingual Italian–Sardinian road sign in Siniscola

Besides, a number of other factors like a considerable immigration flow from mainland Italy, the interior rural exodus to urban areas^[109] and the use of Italian as a prerequisite for jobs and social advancement actually hinder any policy set up to promote the language.^{[14][110][111]} Therefore, UNESCO classifies Sardinian as "definitely endangered", because "many children learn the language, but some of them cease to use it throughout the school years".^[112]

At present, language use is far from stable:^[25] reports show that, while an estimated 68 percent of the islanders have a good oral command of Sardinian, language ability among the children drops to around 13 percent, if not even less;^{[14][113][114]} some linguists, like Mauro Maxia, cite the low number of Sardinian-speaking children as indicative of language decline, calling it "a case of linguistic suicide".^[13] Most of the younger generation, although they do understand some Sardinian, is actually Italian monolingual and monocultural,^[14] speaking a mixture of Italian and Sardinian^[115] (considered regional Italian by linguists^[25]) that is called italiànu porcheddìnu ("piggy Italian", meaning more or less "broken Italian") by the relatively few native Sardinian speakers still left.^[116] Today, the only people who are still able to speak Sardinian on an everyday basis mainly live in the sparsely populated interior of the island, like the Barbagia region.^[117][118]

A bill proposed by former prime minister Mario Monti's cabinet would have lowered Sardinian's protection level,^[119] distinguishing between languages protected by international agreements (German, Slovenian, French and Ladin) and indigenous languages. This bill, which was not implemented (Italy has signed, but not ratified, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages),^[120][121] triggered a reaction on the island.^{[122][123][124][125]} Students have expressed an interest in taking all (or part) of their exit examinations in Sardinian.^{[126][127][128][129][130][131][132][133]}

Church of the Pater Noster (Jerusalem), Lord's Prayer plaque in Sardinian

In response to a 2013 Italian initiative to remove bilingual signs, a group of Sardinians began a virtual campaign on Google Maps to replace Italian place names with the original Sardinian names. After about one month, Google changed the place names back to Italian.^{[134][135][136]} After a signature campaign,^[137] it has been made possible to change the language setting on Facebook from any language to Sardinian.^{[138][139][140]} In the 1990s, there was a resurgence of Sardinian-language music, ranging from the more traditional genres (cantu a tenore, cantu a chiterra, gozos etc.) to rock (Kenze Neke, Askra, Tzoku, Tazenda etc.) and even hip hop and rap (Dr. Drer e CRC Posse, Quilo, Sa Razza, Malam, Menhir, Stranos Elementos, Randagiu Sardu, Futta etc.), and with artists who use the language as a means to promote the island and address its long-standing issues and the new challenges.^{[141][142][143][144]} There are also a few films (like Su Re, Bellas Mariposas, Treulababbu, Sonetaula etc.) dubbed in Sardinian,^[145] and some others (like Metropolis) provided with subtitles in the language.^[146]

In 2015, all the political parties in the Sardinian regional council have reached an agreement involving a series of amendments to the old 1997 law in order to introduce the optional teaching of the language in Sardinia's schools;^{[147][148][149]} as of 2016, this law has yet to be approved. Although there is still not an option to teach Sardinian on the island itself, let alone in Italy, some language courses are instead available in Germany (Universities of Stuttgart, Munich and Tübingen), Spain (University of Girona)^[150] and Czech Republic (Brno university).^[151][152] Shigeaki Sugeta also taught Sardinian to his students of Romance languages at the Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.^{[153][154][155][156]}

The Sardinian-speaking community among the other minority language groups officially recognized by Italy.^[157]

At present, the Sardinian-speaking community is the least protected one in Italy, despite being the largest minority language group officially recognized by the state.^[26][158] In fact the language, which is receding in all domains of use, is still not given access to any field of public life,^[14] such as education (Italian–Sardinian bilingualism is still frowned upon,^{[13][128][159][160]} while the local universities do not play any role whatsoever in supporting the language^{[161][162][163]}), politics (with the exception of some nationalist groups^[164]), justice, administrative authorities and public services, media,^{[165][166][167]} and cultural,^[168] ecclesiastical,^[169][170] economic and social activities, as well as facilities.

In 2015, the Council of Europe commented on the status of national minorities in Italy, regrettably noting the à la carte approach of the state towards them with the exception of German, French and Slovenian, where Italy has been forced to apply full bilingualism due to international agreements. Despite the formal recognition from the Italian state, Italy does not in fact collect any information on the ethnic and linguistic composition of the population and there is virtually no print and broadcasting media exposure in politically or numerically weaker minorites like Sardinian. Moreover, the resources allocated to cultural projects like bilingual education, which lacks a consistent approach, are largely insufficient to meet "even the most basic expectations".^{[171][172][173]}

With things being the way they are now, Sardinian has low prestige^[14] and is relegated to little more than highly localised levels of interaction.^[14] With a solution to the Sardinian question being unlikely to be found anytime soon,^[25] the language is becoming highly endangered.^[161]

Phonology

All dialects of Sardinian have phonetic features that are archaic relative to other Romance languages. The degree of archaism varies, with the dialect spoken in the Province of Nuoro being considered the most conservative. Medieval evidence indicates that the language spoken on Sardinia and Corsica at the time was similar to modern Nuorese Sardinian. The remaining dialects are thought to have innovated as the result of Tuscan (later Italian) and Spanish influences.

The examples listed below are from the Logudorese dialect:

• The Latin short vowels [i] and [u] have preserved their original sound; in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese they became [e] and [o], respectively (for example, siccus > sicu, "dry" (Italian secco, Spanish and Portuguese seco).
• Preservation of the plosive sounds [k] and [ɡ] before front vowels [e] and [i] in many words; for example, centum > kentu, "hundred"; decem > dèke, "ten" and gener > gheneru, "son-in-law" (Italian cento, dièci, genero with [tʃ] and [dʒ]).
• Absence of diphthongizations found in other Romance languages; for example, potest > podest, "he can" (Italian può, Spanish puede, Portuguese pode); bonus > bónu, "good" (Italian buono, Spanish bueno, Portuguese bom)

Sardinian contains the following phonetic innovations:

• Change of the Latin -ll- into a retroflex [ɖɖ], shared with Sicilian; for example, corallus > coraddu, "coral" and villa > bidda, "village, town"
• Similar changes in the consonant clusters -ld- and -nd-: soldus > [ˈsoɖ.ɖu] (money), abundantia > [ab.buɳ.ˈɖan.tsi.a] (abundance)
• Evolution of pl-, fl and cl into pr, fr and cr, as in Portuguese and Galician; for example, platea > pratza, "plaza" (Portuguese praça, Galician praza, Italian piazza), fluxus > frúsciu, "flabby" (Portuguese and Galician frouxo) and ecclesia > cresia, "church" (Portuguese igreja, Galician igrexa and Italian chiesa)
• Rearrangements like abbratzare > abbaltzare (to embrace)
• Vowel prothesis before an initial r in Campidanese, similar to Basque and Gascon: rex > urrei = re, gurrèi (king); rota > arroda (wheel) (Gascon arròda); rivus > Sardinian and Gascon arríu (river)
• Vowel prothesis in Logudorese before an initial s followed by consonant, as in the Western Romance languages: scriptum > iscrítu (Spanish escrito, French écrit), stella > isteddu, "star" (Spanish estrella, French étoile)
• Except for the Nuorese dialects, intervocalic Latin single voiceless plosives [p, t, k] became voiced approximant consonants. Single voiced plosives [b, d, ɡ] were lost: [t] > [d] (or its soft counterpart, [ð]): locus > [ˈlo.ɡu] (Italian luògo), caritas > ['ka.ri.tas] (It. carità). This also applies across word boundaries: porcus (pig), but su borku (the pig); domus (house), but sa omo (the house).

Although the latter two features were acquired during Spanish rule, the others indicate a deeper relationship between ancient Sardinia and the Iberian world; the retroflex d, l and r are found in southern Italy, Tuscany and Asturias, and were probably involved in the palatalization process of the Latin clusters -ll-, pl-, cl- (-ll- > Spanish and Catalan -ll- [ʎ], Gascon -th [c]; cl- > Galician-Portuguese ch- [tʃ], Ital. chi- [kj]).

According to Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, Sardinian has the following phonemes:

Vowels

The five vowels /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/, without length differentiation.

Consonants

There are three series of plosives or corresponding approximants:

• Voiceless stops derive from their Latin counterparts in composition after another stop. They are reinforced (double) in initial position, but this reinforcement is not written because it does not produce a different phoneme.
• Double voiced stops (after another consonant) derive from their Latin equivalents in composition after another stop.
• Weak voiced "stops", sometimes transcribed ⟨β, δ, ğ⟩ (approximants [β, ð, ɣ] after vowels, as in Spanish), derive from single Latin stops (voiced or voiceless).

In Cagliari and neighboring dialects, the soft [d] is assimilated to the rhotic consonant [ɾ]: digitus > didu = diru (finger).

The double-voiced retroflex stop /ɖɖ/ (written dd) derives from the former retroflex lateral approximant /ɭɭ/.

Fricatives

• The labiodentals /f/ (sometimes pronounced [ff] or [v] in initial position) and /v/
  • Latin initial v becomes b (vipera > bibera, "viper")
    • In central Sardinia the sound /f/ disappears, akin to the /f/ > /h/ change in Gascon and Spanish.
• [θ], written th (as in the English thing, the voiceless dental fricative), is a restricted dialectal variety of the phoneme /ts/.
• /s/
• /ss/: For example, ipsa > íssa
• /ʃ/: Pronounced [ʃ] at the beginning of a word, otherwise [ʃʃ] = [ʃ.ʃ], and is written sc(i/e). The voiced equivalent, [ʒ], is often spelled with the letter x.

Affricates

• /ts/ (or [tts]), a denti-alveolar affricate consonant written tz, corresponds to Italian z or ci.
• /dz/ (or [ddz]), written z, corresponds to Italian gi- or ggi- respectively.
• /tʃ/, written c(i/e) or ç
• /ttʃ/
• /dʒ/, written g(e/i) or j

Nasals

• /m/, /ɭɭ/
• /n/, /nn/
• /ɲɲ/, written nny (the palatal nasal for some speakers or dialects, although for most the pronunciation is [nːj])

Liquids

• /l/ (or [ll]), double initially
• /ɾ/, a flap written r
• /r/, a trill written rr

Some permutations of l and r are seen; in most dialects, a preconsonant l (for example, lt or lc) becomes r: Latin "altum" > artu, marralzu = marrarzu, "rock".

In palatal context, Latin l changed into [dz], [ts], [ldz] [ll] or [dʒ], rather than the [ʎ] of Italian: achizare (Italian accigliare), *volia > bòlla = bòlza = bòza, "wish" (Italian vòglia), folia > fogia = folla = foza, "leaf" (Italian foglia), filia > filla = fidza = fiza, "daughter" (Italian figlia).

Grammar

Sardinian's distinctive features are:

• The plural marker is -s (from the Latin accusative plural), as in the Western Romance languages French, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and Galician): sardu, sardus, "sardinian"; pudda, puddas, "hen"; margiane, margianes, "fox". In Italo-Dalmatian languages (such as Italian) or Eastern Romance languages (such as Romanian), the plural ends with -i or -e.
• Sardinian uses a definite article derived from the Latin ipse: su, sa, plural sos, sas (Logudorese) and is (Campidanese). Such articles are common in Balearic Catalan, and were common in Gascon.
• A periphrastic construction of "to have to" (late Latin habere ad) is used for the future: ap'a istàre < apo a istàre, "I will stay" (as in the Portuguese hei de estar, but here as periphrasis for estarei).
• For prohibitions, a negative form of the subjunctive is used: no bengias!, "don't come!" (compare Spanish no vengas and Portuguese não venhas, classified as part of the affirmative imperative mood).

Varieties

Sassarese (orange) and Gallurese (yellow) with respect to Sardinian (green)

Sardinia has historically had a small population scattered across isolated cantons. Its language is divided into two major dialects: Logudorese (su logudoresu), spoken in the north, and Campidanese (su campidanesu), spoken in the south. They differ primarily in phonetics, which does not hamper intelligibility. Logudorese is considered the more conservative dialect, with the Nuorese subdialect being the most conservative of all. It has retained the classical Latin pronunciation of the stop velars (kena versus cena, "supper"), the front middle vowels (compare Campidanese iotacism, probably from Byzantine Greek)^[174] and assimilation of close-mid vowels (cane versus cani, "dog" and gattos versus gattus, "cats"). Labio-velars become plain labials (limba versus lingua, "language" and abba versus acua, "water"). I is prosthesized before consonant clusters beginning in s (iscala versus Campidanese scala, "stairway" and iscola versus scola, "school"). An east-west strip of small villages in central Sardinia speaks a transitional dialect (Sardu de mesania) between Logudorese and Campidanese. Examples include is limbas (the languages) and is abbas (the waters). Campidanese is the dialect spoken in the southern half of Sardinia (including Cagliari, the metropolis of the Roman province), influenced by Rome, Carthage, Costantinople and Late Latin. Examples include is fruminis (the rivers) and is domus (the houses).

Sardinian is the language of most Sardinian communities. However, in a significant number of Sardinian communities (amounting to 20% of the Sardinian population) Sardinian is not spoken as the native and primary language.^[26] Two Sardinian–Corsican transitional languages (Gallurese and Sassarese) are spoken in the northernmost part of Sardinia,^[175] although some Sardinian is also understood by the majority of people living there (73,6% in Gallura and 67,8% in the Sassarese-speaking subregion). Sassari, the second-largest city on Sardinia and the main center of the northern half of the island (cabu de susu in Sardinian, capo di sopra in Italian), is located there. There are also two language islands, the Catalan Algherese-speaking community from the inner city of Alghero (northwest Sardinia) and the Ligurian-speaking towns of Carloforte, in San Pietro Island, and Calasetta in Sant'Antioco island (south-west Sardinia).^[175]

Sample of text

See also

• Sardinia
• Sardinians
• Paleo-Sardinian language
• Southern Romance
• Dialects of Sardinian: Logudorese, Campidanese dialect
• Non-Sardinian dialects spoken on Sardinia: Sassarese, Gallurese, Algherese, Tabarchino

Notes

References

External links

Sardinian edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Media related to Sardinian language at Wikimedia Commons

• Antoninu Rubattu's site. In addition to vocabularies of each Sardinian variety of the language and non-Sardinian languages, the site provides the reader also with some basic grammar guides and etymology dictionaries as well.
• SardegnaCultura lingua sarda – The section "Lingua Sarda" in the official cultural site from the Regional Sardinia administration.
• Sintesa. Phonetic, phonological and prosodic characteristics and structures of the Sardinian language (Text to Speech Synthesizer) – Università di Cagliari / Universidade de Casteddu
• A iscola de sardu (Maria Barca) – Sassari.tv
• An extract in Sardinian from the Little Prince
• Mithridates: de differentiis linguarum (Sardorum lingua), Conrad Gessner, 1555, pg. 66.
• University of Berlin – Contains many links and other information about the language.
• Grammar of Limba Sarda Comuna (standardized form adopted at institutional level)
• Grammar of Nuorese Sardinian – Wikibooks (English-incomplete)
• Grammar of Nuorese Sardinian – Sardinian Wikipedia (Sardinian-incomplete)
• Grammar of Nuorese Sardinian – Wikibooks (Italian-complete)
• Arrègulas : Grammar of Campidanese Sardinian
• A mailing list for Sardinian-speakers
• Acadèmia campidanesa de sa lìngua sarda (in Campidanese Sardinian)
• Memorie in lingua sarda Sardegna Digital Library
• Sardinian language's office – University of Cagliari
• Blog of Sardinian language's office – University of Cagliari: news about Sardinian language and culture
• Interactive Atlas of Romance Intonation, Sardinian from Ittiri and Sinnai

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