Re: Sardinian.

I had always understood that the Romansch/Ladin languages of
Switzerland were the closest surviving languages to Latin. No doubt
geografic isolation would be a big factor there.
It does seem however that the gene pool in Sardinia is very
homogenous as it the population of Sardinia is subject to medical
research into certain genetic ilnesses precisely for that reason.
Incidently similar research is being done in Iceland for the same
reason.

--- In cybalist@egroups.com, "Mark Odegard" <markodegard@...> wrote:
> From:
> To: cybalist@egroups.com
> Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2000 2:33 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Sardinian.
>
>
> Mark Odegard wrote:
>
> > I seem to be missing something about Sardinian (the language).
> > There is the modern Romance language, which I gather is the
closest
> > to Latin of all Romance languages.
>
> It's a popular myth based on the fact that in one of Sardinian
> dialects Latin c, g before front vowels (kentu, gente <-- Lat.
> centum, gentem) have been preserved, while everywhere else in the
> Romance world they were palatalized.
> There are also a few other archaic features in Sardinian
phonetics but
> perhaps no more than very advanced developments. Some grammatical
> constructions are strikingly innovative as well. There is a
number of
> archaisms in vocabulary and some traces of the non-Indoeuropean
> substratum.
>
> To sum up, I don't think Sardinian could be called the closest
> to Latin of all Romance languages. However, the question is how we
> should assess (measure?) the proximity of languages in a really
> objective and verifiable way.
>
> Nemo
>
> My knowledge of the situation with Romance Sardinian is slight.
Having said this, however, it's obvious the situation is analogous to
that of Icelandic, where you had a language existing in isolation,
free of adstratal influences at the borders. The result is a
spectacularly 'archaic' language. The time depth for Icelandic vis-a-
vis Old Norse is shallower, however. Sardinia is less isolated and
has had more foreign influences through a foreign elite, most
recently Italian, but Spanish in earlier days.The only foreign elite
the Icelanders knew were a few Danish bureaucrats.
>
> An interesting thing about Sardinian is that it has never achieved
literary status. There is some folk poetry, but beyond this, it does
not really exist as a literary language. I came across a web page
that suggested they are still strugging to establish a common
spelling system. Standard Italian, of course, is the official
language of the island. The issue now seems one of fully documenting
Sardinian before it withers away.
>
> Mark.