User:Tango303/sardinian1

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

During the 1990s, Sardinian, Albanian, Catalan, German, Greek, Slovenian, Croatian, French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin and Occitan were recognized as minority languages by Law 482-1999. 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), because Sardinian is considered an "Italian dialect" by some (even at the institutional level). The language has been stigmatized as indicative of a lack of education, and as a result it is associated still by many locals with shame, backwardness and provincialism.

Despite campaigns to give Sardinian equal status with Italian as a means to promote cultural identity, a number of factors like immigration from mainland Italy, the interior rural exodus to urban areas and the use of Italian as a prerequisite for jobs and social advancement actually hinder any policy set up to promote the language. 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".

At present, language use is far from stable: 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; some linguists cite the low number of Sardinian-speaking children as indicative of language decline. Instead, most of the younger generation, although they do understand some Sardinian, is actually monolingual and speaks a mixture of Italian and Sardinian (considered regional Italian by linguists ) that is called italiànu porcheddìnu ("piggy Italian", meaning more or less "broken Italian") by native Sardinian speakers. Today, people who speak Sardinian on an everyday basis mainly live in the sparsely populated interior of the island, like the Barbagia region.

A bill proposed by former prime minister Mario Monti's cabinet would have lowered Sardinian's protection level, 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), triggered a reaction on the island. Students have expressed an interest in taking all (or part) of their exit examinations 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. After a signature campaign, it has been made possible to change the language setting on Facebook from any language to Sardinian.

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. The law, if approved, will be implemented the same year. 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) and Czech Republic (Brno university). Shigeaki Sugeta also taught Sardinian to his students of Romance languages at the Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.

At the present day, the Sardinian-speaking community, despite being the largest minority language group recognised by Italy, is also the least protected one. In fact the language, which is slowly receding in all domains of use, is still not given access to any field of public life, such as education (the use of Sardinian in schools is still discouraged, while the local universities do not provide any support in the language ), politics (with the exception of some nationalist groups), justice, administrative authorities and public services, media,   and cultural, ecclesiastical, economic and social activities, as well as facilities. A solution to the Sardinian question is unlikely to be found anytime soon.

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 and  have preserved their original sound; in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese they became  and, respectively (for example, siccus > sicu, "dry" (Italian secco, Spanish seco).
 * Preservation of the plosive sounds and  before front vowels  and  in many words; for example, centum > kentu, "hundred"; decem > dèke, "ten" and gener > gheneru, "son-in-law" (Italian cento, dièci, genero with  and ).
 * Absence of diphthongizations found in other Romance languages; for example, potest > podet, "he can" (Italian può, Spanish puede); bonus > bónu, "good" (Italian buono, Spanish bueno)

Sardinian contains the following phonetic innovations:
 * Change of the Latin -ll- into a retroflex, shared with Sicilian; for example, corallus > coraddu, "coral" and villa > bidda, "village, town"
 * Similar changes in the consonant clusters -ld- and -nd-: soldus > (money), abundantia >  (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: regem > urrei = re, gurrèi (king); rotam > arroda (wheel) (Gascon arròda); rivum > 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), stellam > isteddu, "star" (Spanish estrella, French étoile)
 * Except for the Nuorese dialects, intervocalic Latin single voiceless plosives became voiced approximant consonants. Single voiced plosives  were lost:  >  (or its soft counterpart, ): locum >  (Italian luògo), caritatem >  (It. carità). This also applies across word boundaries: porku (pig), but su borku (the pig); domo (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- > Castilian and Catalan -ll-, Gascon -th ; cl- > Galician-Portuguese ch- , Ital. chi- ).

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

Vowels
The five vowels, without length differentiation.

Consonants
There are three series of plosives or corresponding approximants: In Cagliari and neighboring dialects, the soft is assimilated to the rhotic consonant : digitus > didu = diru (finger).
 * 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 $\langleβ, δ, ğ\rangle$ (approximants after vowels, as in Spanish), derive from single Latin stops (voiced or voiceless).

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

Fricatives

 * The labiodentals (sometimes pronounced  or  in initial position) and
 * Latin initial v becomes b (vipera > bibera, "viper")
 * In central Sardinia the sound disappears, evoking the  >  transformation in Gascon and Castilian.
 * , written th (as in the English thing, the voiceless dental fricative), is a restricted dialectal variety of the phoneme.
 * : For example, ipsa > íssa
 * : Pronounced at the beginning of a word, otherwise  =, and is written sc(i/e). The voiced equivalent, , is often spelled with the letter x.
 * : Pronounced at the beginning of a word, otherwise  =, and is written sc(i/e). The voiced equivalent, , is often spelled with the letter x.

Affricates

 * (or ), a denti-alveolar affricate consonant written tz, corresponds to Italian z or ci.
 * (or ), written z, corresponds to Italian gi- or ggi- respectively.
 * , written c(i/e) or ç
 * , written g(e/i) or j
 * , written g(e/i) or j

Nasals

 * , written nny (the palatal nasal for some speakers or dialects, although for most the pronunciation is )
 * , written nny (the palatal nasal for some speakers or dialects, although for most the pronunciation is )
 * , written nny (the palatal nasal for some speakers or dialects, although for most the pronunciation is )

Liquids
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".
 * (or ), double initially
 * , a flap written r
 * , a trill written rr

In palatal context, Latin l changed into, ,  or , rather than the  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).

Morphology
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
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 the most conservative. 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) 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).