Sardinian

Sardinian is spoken by about 1,300,000 people on the island of Sardinia in the western Mediterranean Sea. Sardinia was one of the first Roman colonies, and, as in other parts of the empire, the spoken Latin of the region gave rise to a Romance language, the first written documentation of which we find in the eleventh century. During the second millennium, Sardinia was first strongly influenced by the presence of Pisa and Genoa and then belonged to Aragon and Spain from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, it passed to Piemonte and, later, to Italy.
The main problem about Sardinian is the relatively strong dialectal diversity. Basically, as is shown below, we can distinguish between two main groups of varieties, Campidanian in the South and Logudorian in the north. Logudorian also comprises the conservative or archaic central region around the city of Nùgoro. In the extreme north, we find some varieties that can be characterised as semi-Sardinian, due to the strong linguistic influence of Italian during the Middle Ages. Finally, there are two clearly non-Sardinian varieties: Catalan, in the city of L'Alguer on the north-western coast, and Ligurian on some small islands in the south.
It is a longstanding tradition within Romance Philology to characterise Sardinian as the most archaic Romance language, that is to say, the language that has best conserved some Latin elements, for example words that have been lost in all other Romance languages, like DOMUS (srd. domo) or MAGNUS (srd. mannu). Another so-called archaic element is the preservation of the short Latin vowels I and U and the third person singular ending -T.
The socio- linguistics status is that of a minority language before any legal establishment as a regional language. Sardinian is mainly spoken in the villages, in private life (both in the family or for non-official contact within the village community). Italian is the main language in the cities, whereas in the villages it is used for communication with strangers. In this respect, it is notable that Italian is also used to communicate with speakers of distant dialects of Sardinian. Italian is almost the only language used for official purposes.
During the last few years the legal situation has been improved: Sardinian has been officially recognized by the island's local legislation in 1997 and by the Italian State in 1999. As far as the standardisation of Sardinian is concerned, it is evident that the dialectal diversity makes it extremely difficult to find a common standard. Recently, a commission of experts established by the Sardinian Regional Government has been working out a proposal for a unified Sardinian Standard (Limba Sarda Unificata), which has given rise to highly controversial reactions. It is still unclear, whether it will be accepted by the speakers.