| Logudorese Sardinian | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sardu Logudoresu, Logudoresu | ||||
| Spoken in | Italy | |||
| Region | Sardinia | |||
| Native speakers | 500,000[1] (date missing) | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | src | |||
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-sa | |||
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Languages and dialects of Sardinia
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Logudorese Sardinian (Sardinian: Sardu Logudoresu, Italian: Sardo Logudorese) is a standardised variety of Sardinian, often considered the most conservative of all Romance languages. Its ISO 639-3 code is src.
Latin G and K before /i, e/ were not palatalized in it, in stark contrast with all other Romance languages. Compare Logudorese kentu with Italian cento /ˈtʃento/, Spanish ciento /θiento/ and French cent /sã/.
Outside of Sardinia, the language also exists in Northern Italy due to the migration that took place after World War II. Many Sardinians moved to Turin, Milan and Genoa for economic reasons. Outside of Italy, large Sardinian populations can be found in Australia and Germany.
Logudorese is intelligible to those from the southern part of Sardinia, where Campidanese Sardinian is spoken, and partly unintelligible to those from the extreme north of the island, where Corsican–Sardinian dialects are spoken. Italian speakers can hardly understand Logudorese: Sardinian is not a dialect of Italian as is often noted.
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The name refers to the area of Logudoro (literally "golden place") in which it is spoken, mainly a northern subregion of the island of Sardinia (compare map on the right) which mainly defers to Ozieri (Othieri) and Nuoro (Nùgoro) for culture and language, as well as history, with important particularities in the western area, where the most important town is Ittiri. Roughly it is an area of 150 × 100 km, with some 500 000–700 000 inhabitants.
The language's origins have been investigated by several authors; Eduardo Blasco Ferrer's investigation is one of the most thorough. The language derives from Latin, and has been influenced by Catalan and Spanish due to the dominion of the Crown of Aragon and later the Spanish Empire over the island. Logudorese is the northern macro-dialect of the Sardinian language, the southern macro-dialect being Campidanese, spoken in the southern half of the island. The two variants share a clear common origin and history, but have experienced somewhat different developments.
Though the language is typically Romance, some words in the language are not of Latin origin, and often are of uncertain etymology. One such is "nura", found in "nuraghe", the main form of pre-Roman building, hence the term for the pre-Roman era as the Nurgic Period. Various place names similarly have unanalisable roots.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Logudorian is that, due to the particular history of the area, it has suffered very little contamination and has changed very slowly from Vulgar Latin in comparison to other Latin languages, even though in terms of vocabulary it is not as close to its Latin ancestor as Italian, the most Latin of Romance languages. Having said this, Campidanese in contrast at times shows more archaic features than Logudorese, particularly in its verb forms, such as the retention of the 3rd person plural in -nt(), reduced to -n() in Logudorese.
Logudorese has a number of dialects, some confined to individual villages or valleys. Though such differences can be noticeable, all the dialects are generally mutually intelligible, and share some mutual intelligibility with the neighbouring Campidanese dialects.
A large body of Sardinian poetry, songs and literature is composed in Logudorese.
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