Campidanese dialect

Campidanese Sardinian (, ) also known as Southern Sardinian () is one of the two written standards of the Sardinian language, which is often considered one of the most, if not the most conservative of all the Romance languages. The orthography is based on the spoken dialects of central southern Sardinia, identified by certain attributes which are not found, or found to a lesser degree, among the Sardinian dialects centered on the other written form, Logudorese. Its ISO 639-3 code is ''sro''.

Traditionally the name ( in Italian) refers to the fertile area located around the towns of Guspini and Villacidro. Campidanese dialects can be found across the entire Province of Cagliari and not just the Province of Medio Campidano area. Campidanese also extends into parts of the Province of Nuoro, notably the Ogliastra area and in the southern half of the Province of Oristano, the capital included. However, it is at this point that the dialects merge into Logudorese.

Subvariants

There are seven main subdialects of Campidanese Sardinian, namely Western Campidanese, Sarrabese (), Southern Barbagian, and Oristano's ( or also ), Ogliastra's (), Cagliari's (), and the varieties of Sulcis (). is the dialect spoken in the island's capital; however, it extends to most of the neighbouring towns and villages within a 15 km radius of Cagliari. In 2009, the provincial administration of Cagliari approved the spelling, phonetics, morphology, and vocabulary rules for Standard Campidanese Sardinian.

Vocabulary

Campidanese Sardinian has some borrowed words from Aragonese, Catalan and Spanish. Since the early 20th century, there has been an increase in lexical borrowing from Italian as well; that is particularly evident with technological words for which there is no Campidanese equivalent. However, many words that are from Italian have been changed phonetically so that they sound Sardinian. Italian loan words that end in an ''o'' are often substituted with a ''u''. The strong Campidanese accent also changes the sound of the word.

Characteristics

#Singular nouns descending from 3rd declension Latin nouns ending in "-i" (Campidanese ''pisci'' vs Logudorese )
#Plural definite article of "is" (Campidanese ''is terras'' vs Logudorese ''sas terras'')
#Gerund in "-endi" (Campidanese ''èssendi'' vs Logudorese ''èssende'')
#Conservation of the Latin phoneme and ( and ) in words such as ''akua'' (water) and ''sànguni'' (blood).
#Palatalisation of Latin word-initial before and (Lat. ''centum'' > ''centu'' cf. Logudorese ''chentu''). This palatalization is independent from the general Italo-Western development. In medial positions, becomes (Lat. ''decem'' > ''dexi'' cf. Logudorese ''deghe'') or (Lat. ''piscem'' > ''pisci'')
#Transformation of to , to , to , and , into
#Epenthetic before word-initial (Lat. ''rubeum'' > ''arrubiu'')
#Metathesis (Logudorese ''Carbonia'' vs Campidanese ''Crabonia'')
#Catalan influence (Words such as ''seu'' "cathedral" loaned from Catalan)

Campidanese Sardinian is intelligible to those from the central to the southern part of Sardinia, where Logudorese Sardinian is spoken, but it is not to those from the extreme north of the island, where Corsican–Sardinian dialects are spoken.

Italian speakers do not understand Campidanese, like any other dialect of the Sardinian language: Sardinian is an autonomous linguistic group rather than an Italian dialect as it is often noted because of its morphological, syntactic, and lexical differences from Italian.

Writing system

Campidanese is written using the Latin alphabet. Like Italian, Campidanese does not use or . Campidanese also uses the digraphs , representing , representing before ''e'' and ''i'' vowels, representing and , representing .

In phonetic syntax, final or intervocalic is pronounced as a (es: ''issu andat'', meaning "he goes", is pronounced ) and is pronounced as a , (es. ''sa mesa'', meaning "the table", is pronounced ''sa mez̪a''). When there are consonants like ''s'', ''t'' or ''nt'' at the end of the word, a helping vowel is usually added (es. ''sa domu'', ''is domus(u)'', the house, the houses).
If preceded by a consonant, an "i" is inserted before the normally-initial ''s'' (es: ''sa scala'', ''is (i)scalas(a)'', the staircase, the staircases). The spelling rules were established by the Province of Cagliari with a deliberation on March 17, 2010.

See also

* Sardinian language
** Logudorese Sardinian

References

External links

Ditzionàriu in línia de sa limba e de sa cultura sarda

Grammatica sardo-campidanese



La lingua sarda: Storia, spirito e forma
Max Leopold Wagner, a cura di Giulio Paulis, Nuoro 1997



Campidanese basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

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Campidanese dialect