Tuone Udaina (1823 – 10 June 1898; Antonio Udina in Italian) was the last person to have any active knowledge of the Dalmatian language, a

Romance language The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...

that had evolved from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

along the eastern coast of the

Adriatic Sea The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Sea) to t ...

. He was the main source of knowledge about his parents' dialect, that of the island of

Krk Krk (; it, Veglia; ruo, Krk; dlm, label= Vegliot Dalmatian, Vikla; la, Curicta; grc-gre, Κύρικον, Kyrikon) is a Croatian island in the northern Adriatic Sea, located near Rijeka in the Bay of Kvarner and part of Primorje-Gorski Kot ...

, for the linguist

Matteo Bartoli Matteo Giulio Bartoli (22 November 1873 in Labin/Albona – 23 January 1946 in Turin) was an Italian linguist from Istria (then a part of Austria-Hungary, today part of modern Croatia). He obtained a doctorate at the University of Vienna, wher ...

, who recorded it in 1897. Udaina bore the nickname ''Burbur'', the etymology of which is uncertain. Bartoli tentatively associated it with , an Italian word for a surly, gruff, or ill-tempered person. Other interpretations include "barbarian" and "barber". He worked as a marine postman and as a sexton. Vegliot Dalmatian was not Udaina's

native language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

, as he had learned it from listening to his parents' private conversations. Udaina had not spoken the Dalmatian language for nearly 20 years before the time he acted as a linguistic informant. No sound recordings were ever made. When Udaina was accidentally killed at 74 in an explosion during road work on 10 June 1898, the Dalmatian language is generally assumed to have become extinct as no other speakers of the language were found or known to have lived.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * Last known speakers of a language 1823 births 1898 deaths Deaths by explosive device Industrial accident deaths Dalmatian language Krk Accidental deaths in Croatia People from Primorje-Gorski Kotar County {{Croatia-bio-stub