Corsican language
| Corsican | |
|---|---|
| Corsu, Lingua corsa | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈkorsu] or [ˈkɔrt͡su] |
| Native to |
France Italy |
| Region |
Corsica Northern Sardinia |
|
Native speakers
|
ca. 200,000 (1993–2009) |
| Latin script (Corsican alphabet) | |
| Official status | |
|
Recognised minority
language in |
|
| Regulated by | No official regulation |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | co |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | Variously: cos – Corsican proper sdn – Gallurese sdc – Sassarese |
| Glottolog |
cors1242 (Corsican/Gallurese)sass1235 (Sassarese)
|
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-p |
 |
|
Corsican dialects
|
|
Corsican (corsu or lingua corsa) is a Romance language within the Italo-Dalmatian subfamily and is closely related to the Italian language. It is spoken and written on the islands of Corsica (France) and northern Sardinia (Italy). Corsican was long the vernacular alongside Italian, the official language in Corsica until 1859; afterwards Italian was replaced by French, owing to the acquisition of the island by France from the Republic of Genoa in 1768. Over the next two centuries, the use of French grew to the extent that, by the Liberation in 1945, all islanders had a working knowledge of French. The 20th century saw a wholesale language shift, with islanders changing their language practices to the extent that there were no monolingual Corsican speakers left by the 1960s. By 1995, an estimated 65 percent of islanders had some degree of proficiency in Corsican, and a small minority, perhaps 10 percent, used Corsican as a first language.
One of the main sources of confusion in popular classifications is the difference between a dialect and a language. Typically it is not possible to ascertain what an author means by these terms. For example, one might read that Corsican belongs to the "centrosouthern Italian dialects" along with Standard Italian, Neapolitan and others or that it is "closely related to the Tuscan dialect of Italian".
One of the characteristics of Italian is the retention of the -re infinitive ending as in Latin mittere, "send", which is lost in Corsican, which has mette/metta, "to put". The Latin relative pronouns, qui, quae "who", and quod "what", are inflected in Latin while the relative pronoun in Italian for "who" is chi and "what" is che and (che) cosa, and in Corsican, it is uninflected chì.
...
Wikipedia