| Sardinian | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sardu, Limba / Lingua Sarda | ||||
| Spoken in | Italy | |||
| Region | Sardinia | |||
| Native speakers | ca. 850,000 (1993–2000) | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | Sardinia | |||
| Recognised minority language in | Italy | |||
| Regulated by | Limba Sarda Comuna code | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | sc | |||
| ISO 639-2 | srd | |||
| ISO 639-3 | srd – Macrolanguage individual codes: sro – Campidanese src – Logudorese |
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| Linguasphere |
51-AAA-s +(Corso-Sardinian) 51-AAA-pd & -pe |
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Languages and dialects of Sardinia
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Sardinian (Sardinian: sardu, limba sarda, lingua sarda, Italian: lingua sarda) is a Romance language spoken and written on most of the island of Sardinia (Italy). It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum.
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The Sardinian language is one of the principal elements of Sardinian cultural heritage, and there is activity dedicated to studying the language and acknowledging its importance; the recognition of the Sardinian language as a prominent element of the cultural identity is diffusely supported by the population.
The Sardinian language has recently been recognised, together with other local languages, as an official regional language by the Sardinian Region; it can therefore be used for official purposes on the island.
In the last decade, the Sardinian language has been legally recognized (with Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovene, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, and Occitan) by the Law 482-1999,[1] yet its actual acknowledgement in the present-day life is hard. For example, in many Italian libraries and universities, the books about Sardinian language are still grouped under the labels Linguistica italiana (Italian linguistics), Dialetti italiani (Italian dialects) or Dialettologia italiana (Italian dialectology),[2] despite its legal recognition as a different language.
Despite the political campaigns launched in order to put Sardinian on an equal footing with Italian, and any emotive value linked to Sardinian identity, the sociolinguistic situation in Sardinia due to several reasons, mainly political and socioeconomic (the gradual depopulation of the island's interior and rural exodus towards more urbanized and industrialized areas, the forced use of Italian presented as a prerequisite to get jobs and as one of the keys to social advancement, the barriers to communication between the dialectal varieties etc.) has resulted in a constant regression, though it is not homogeneous throughout the island[3]; many Sardinians (especially those born in the towns, far more populated than the villages) are raised in families in which bilingual parents spoke to them predominantly Italian, being the children monolingual and with little proficiency in Sardinian. Nowadays, Sardinian is a language living in an unstable status of diglossia and code-switching; UNESCO classifies the language as endangered as "many children learn the language, but some of them cease to use it throughout the school years"[4]: there is a serious decline of language ability from one generation to the next, in which Sardinian is being replaced by Italian[5].
The Sardinian language can be divided into the following main subregional language groups clearly identified by isogloss bundles:
The survival of a dialect of Catalan in the town of Alghero is a consequence of the domination of the Crown of Aragon (later subsumed in the Spanish Crown, after the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabel of Castile in the 15th century) over Sardinia since the Middle Ages until the 18th century.
All dialects of Sardinian feature archaic phonetic features when compared to other Romance languages. The degree of archaism varies, with Nuorese (central northeast part of the island) considered the most conservative, though in some cases it has innovated. Evidence from medieval documents indicates that the medieval language spoken over the entirety of Sardinia and Corsica was similar to modern Nuorese; all of the remaining areas are thought to have innovated as the result of heavy external influence from centuries of colonization by Italian and Spanish speakers.
The examples listed below are from the northwestern Logudorese dialect:
Sardinian also features numerous phonetic innovations, including the following:
While the latter two features were acquired during the Spanish domination, the others reveal deeper relations between ancient Sardinia and the Iberian world. Note that retroflex d, l and r are found not only in southern Italy and Tuscany but also in Asturias. They were probably involved in the palatalization process of the Latin clusters -ll-, pl-, cl- (-ll- > Cast. and Cat. -ll- [ʎ], Gasc. -th [c]; cl- > Old Port. ch- [tʃ], Ital. chi- [kj]).
Sardinian has the following phonemes (according to Blasco Ferrer):
The five vowels /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ (without length differentiation).
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | nny /ɲ/ | |||||
| Plosive | p /p/ b /b/ | t /t/ d /d/ | dd /ɖ/ | k /k/ g /ɡ/ | ||||
| Affricate | tz /ts/ z /dz/ | ch, c /tʃ/ g /dʒ/ | ||||||
| Fricative | b /β/ | f /f/ v /v/ | (th /θ/) d /ð/ | s, ss /s/ s /z/ | sc /ʃ/ x /ʒ/ | g /ɣ/ | ||
| Tap | r /ɾ/ | |||||||
| Trill | rr /r/ | |||||||
| Lateral | l /l/ | |||||||
| Approximant | j /j/ |
The following three series of plosives or corresponding approximants:
In Cagliari and neighbouring dialects the soft [d] is assimilated to the rhotic flap [ɾ] : digitus > didu = diru 'finger'.
| Articulation point | labio-dental | dentoalveolar | retroflex | palatal | velar | from Latin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiceless | p | t | k | double voiceless | ||
| double voiced | bb | dd | ɖɖ | – | kw > bb, bd > dd, etc. | |
| approximants | b [β] | d [ð] | ɡ [ɣ] | single stops |
and:
Some permutations of l and r can be observed, in that in most dialects preconsonant l (e.g. lt, lc, etc.) becomes r : L. "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 (It. accigliare), *volia > bòlla = bòlza = bòza 'wish' (It. vòglia), folia > fogia = folla = foza 'leaf' (It. foglia), filia > filla = fitza = fiza 'daughter' (It. figlia).
The main distinctive features of Sardinian are :
Other pre-Latin Sardinian words are presented here:
The history of the island of Sardinia, relatively isolated from the European continent up into modern times, led to the development of a distinct Romance language, which even now preserves traces of the indigenous pre-Roman language of the island. The language is of Latin origin like all Romance languages yet the following substratal influences are likely:
Adstratal influences include:
The early origins of the Sardinian language (sometimes called Paleosardinian) are still obscure, due mostly to the lack of documents, as Sardinian appeared as a written form only in the Middle Ages. There are substantial differences between the many theories about the development of Sardinian.
Many studies have attempted to discover the origin of some obscure roots that today could legitimately be defined as indigenous, pre-Romance roots. First of all, the root of sard, present in many toponyms and distinctive of the ethnic group, is supposed to have come from the Sherden, one of the so-called Peoples of the Sea.
Massimo Pittau claimed in 1984 to have found in the Etruscan language the etymology of many other Latin words, after comparison with the Nuragic language. If true, one could conclude that, having evidence of a deep influence of Etruscan culture in Sardinia, the island could have directly received from Etruscan many elements that are instead usually considered to be of Latin origin. Pittau then indicates that both the Etruscan and Nuragic languages are descended from the Lydian language, both therefore being Indo-European languages, as a consequence of the alleged provenance of Etruscans/Tyrrhenians from that land (as in Herodotus), where effectively the capital town was Sardis. Pittau also suggests, as a historical point, that the Tirrenii landed in Sardinia, whereas the Etruscans landed in modern-day Tuscany. Massimo Pittau's views however are not representative of most Etruscologists.
It has been said that Paleosardinian should be expected to have notable similarities with Iberic languages and the Siculian language: the suffix -'ara, for example, in proparoxytones (Bertoldi and Terracini proposed it indicated plural forms). The same would happen (according to Terracini) for suffixes in -/àna/, -/ànna/, -/énna/, -/ònna/ + /r/ + paragogic vowel (as in the toponym Bonnànnaro). Rohlfs, Butler and Craddock add the suffix -/ini/ (as in the toponym Barùmini) as a peculiar element of Paleosardinian. At the same time, suffixes in /a, e, o, u/ + -rr- seem to find a correspondence in northern Africa (Terracini), in Iberia (Blasco Ferrer), in southern Italy and in Gascony (Rohlfs), with some closer relation to Basque (Wagner, Hubschmid). However, these early links proposing a link to a precursor of modern Basque have been discredited by most Basque linguists.[6] Suffixes in -/ài/, -/éi/, -/òi/, and -/ùi/ are common to Paleosardinian and northern African languages (Terracini). Pittau underlined that this concerns terms originally ending in an accented vowel, with an attached paragogic vowel; the suffix resisted Latinization in some toponyms, which show a Latin body and a Nuragic desinence. On this point, some toponyms ending in -/ài/ and in -/asài/ were thought to show Anatolic influence (Bertoldi). The suffix -/aiko/, widely used in Iberia, and perhaps of Celtic origins, as well as the ethnical suffix in -/itanos/ and -/etanos/ (as in the Sardinian Sulcitanos) have been noted as other Paleosardinian elements (viz Terracini, Ribezzo, Wagner, Hubschmid, Faust, et al.).
Linguists like Blasco Ferrer (2009, 2010) or Morvan (2009) have recently attempted to revive the theory of a Basque connection by linking modern surface forms such as Sardinian ospile "fresh natural cover for cattle" and Basque ozpil "id.", Sardinian arrotzeri "vagabond" and Basque arrotz "stranger", Sardinian arru "stone, stony" and Basque arri "stone", Gallurese (South Corsican and North Sardinian) zerru "pig" and Basque zerri "id.".
The Roman domination, beginning in 238 BC, brought Latin to Sardinia, but this language was not able to completely supplant the Pre-Roman Sardinian language. Some obscure roots remained unaltered, and in many cases it was Latin that was made to accept the local roots, such as nur (in nuraghe, as well as Nugoro and many other toponyms). Roman culture, on the other hand, became largely dominant; Barbagia derives its name from the Greek word Ό βάρβαρος-ου, which means "stuttering", due to the fact that its people could not speak Latin well. Cicero, who called Sardinians latrones matrucati ("thieves with rough sheep-wool cloaks") to emphasise Roman superiority, helped to spread this conception.
During this time period, there was a reciprocal influence between Corsica and a limited area of northern Sardinia. On the southern side, though, the evidence favors contacts with Semitic and (later) Byzantine languages. In the 1st century AD, some relevant groups of Hebrews were deported to Sardinia, bringing various influences; the Christianization of the island would probably have brought Hebrews to convert to a sort of independent cult of Sant'Antioco (perhaps a way to preserve some aspects of their ethnicity under a Christian form), still present in Gavoi. This contact with Hebrews, followed by another deportation of Christians, presumedly lasted for a couple of centuries, and makes it likely that by the 3rd century AD, Vulgar Latin began to dominate the island.
This eventual Latin cultural domination thus makes Sardinian a Romance language, or more precisely an archaic neo-Latin language, whose main characteristics are an archaic phonetic and morphosyntactic phenomena.
After this domination, Sardinia passed under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire, and more influences are derived from this culture. The Greek language that was the main reference of Byzantines did not, however, enter into the structure of Sardinian (still a Romance language) except for in some ritual or formal formulas that are expressed in Latin using Greek structure. Much evidence for this can be found in the condaghes, the first written documents in Sardinian.
Some toponyms show Greek influence as well, such as Jerzu, commonly presumed to derive from the Greek khérsos (untilled), together with the personal names Mikhaleis, Konstantine, and Basilis.
The national anthem of the Kingdom of Sardinia was the Hymnu Sardu (or Cunservet Deus su Re), the lyrics of which are in the Sardinian language. It was partially substituted by the Savoy's March when Italy was unified. During the Fascist period, especially the Autarchy campaign, regional languages were banned. The restrictions went so far that even personal names and surnames were made to sound more "italian-sounding". During this period, the Sardinian Hymn was the sole chance to speak in a regional language in Italy without risking prison, because, as a fundamental part of the Royal Family's tradition, it could not be forbidden.
Italians took advantage of this possibility to express their opposition to Fascism by singing the Hymn,[citation needed] as did King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy on several official occasions, when the Crown needed to remind Mussolini of its superior position. To reduce this potentially dangerous bit of propaganda which was being whistled and sung in Sardinian streets, Mussolini was forced to find urgent remedies:[citation needed] Achille Starace, national secretary of the Fascist party, imposed the use of orbace, a poor Sardinian wool, as the national cloth for the uniforms of Blackshirts, while on a cultural level Mussolini himself officially recognised on repeated occasions the effective value of Sardinian poets and writers,[citation needed] still on the border of the limits of the law. The policies for the island also included the reclamation of wide areas of the region (bonifiche) and the implementation of commerce and industry.
Catholic priests practiced a strict obstructionism against mutos, a form of improvised sung poetry where two or more poets are assigned a surprise theme and have to develop it on the spur of the moment in rhymed quatrains.
In the Italian Army, the mechanized infantry of Brigata Sassari is the sole unit to have a hymn in Sardinian language: Dimonios, written in 1994 by Captain Luciano Sechi. This name comes from the attribute Rote Teufel (German for Red Devils, and Dimonios is Sardinian for Devils) given to them by Austro-Hungaric enemies during the World War I, cause of their white and red flashes and their worth in war.
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