Sardinian (was: Thylean)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> Do you know an URL where I can see some grammatical stuff about Sardinian? It's
> not the only time I hear that Sardinian is really a funny Romance tongue, but I
> could never check it out by myself (and grammar books are right now far too
> expensive for my bank account :(( ).
Some basic stuff is available at http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/mensch/language.html ,
including some of the sound changes (or lack of sound changes).  Basically, the
Latin vowel qualities are retained, though length is lost; Latin /k/ and /g/ are
preserved before front vowels; Latin /ll/ -> /d.d./, where the dot marks
retroflexion.  Grammatically, the articles are su/sa (< ipse/ipsa).
Sardinian split from the evolving Romance languages very early, perhaps in the -1st
century.

Core grammar materials are at http://www.freeweb.org/freeweb/sa_limba/grammar.htm?p .
The verb conjugation engine at http://www.verbix.com/languages/sardu.shtml handles
Sardinian.

Sardinian comes in five dialects, of which none is standard.  Campidanese basically
belongs to one branch, and Nuorese/Logudorese to another.  Gallurese and Tattarese/
Sassarese are really more like dialects of Tuscan and Ligurian respectively,
with influence from Sardinian proper. Finally Algherese (spoken in the old port town
of Alghero) is not Sardinian at all but Catalan.  The Lord's Prayer in contrasting
dialects:

        http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/JPN-sard-campidan.html
        http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/JPN-sard-lugodor.html
        http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/JPN-sard-nugoresu.html

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Sardinian:
http://www3.itu.int/udhr/lang/srd.htm .

Sardinian today is mostly used for casual conversaion, but there is also a
poetic tradition.

ObInsulting: Dante said that Sardinian imitated Latin "as apes imitate men".
Of course, this was before it was understood that Latin was actually ancestral
to the Romance languages, and not merely the formal version of them.

ObConlang:  Esperanto "sardino" can mean either "female Sardinian" or "sardine".
Of course, this is not very surprising, as the sardine (the fish, *Sardina pilchardus*)
is clearly named after Sardinia (or vice versa?).

ObSignature: J. A. Rea <jarea@...> used to use a Sardinian proverb as his signature
on sci.lang:

                Ki seminat ispinaza, non andet iskultsu!

Lots more proverbs are available in Sardinian/Italian/English at
http://www.jannas.net/proverbi.htm .

--
There is / one art                   || John Cowan <jcowan@...>
no more / no less                    || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things                   || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness                 \\ -- Piet Hein