Corsican (Corsu or Lingua Corsa) is a continuum of Romance languages The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome. There are more than 600 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and Africa, as well as many smaller regions scattered throughout the world. The six most widely spoken spoken and written on the islands of Corsica Corsica is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily, Sardinia, and Cyprus). It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia (France France (pronounced /ˈfræns/ or /ˈfrɑːns/; French: [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the) and northern Sardinia Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily). The area of Sardinia is 24,090 square kilometres (9,301 sq mi). The nearest land masses to the island are (clockwise from north) the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Tunisia, and the Balearic Islands. Sardinia is part of Italy, with a special statute of (Italy Italy /ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica Italiana), is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. The), alongside French French is a Romance language spoken, around the world, by more than 100 million people as a first language (mother tongue), by 190 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 54 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France, where the language and Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City. Standard Italian, adopted by the, which are the official languages. Corsu is the traditional native language of the Corsican people, and was long the sole language of the island, which was acquired by France in 1768. In 1990, more than two centuries later, nearly all Corsicans were fluent in French, usually as a first language. In addition, an estimated 50% of those also had some degree of proficiency in Corsu, and a small minority, perhaps 10%, used Corsu as a first language.[1]

Contents

Number of speakers

The January 2007 estimated population of the island was 281,000, while the figure for the March 1999 census, when most of the studies - though not the linguistic survey work referenced in this article - were performed, was about 261,000 (see under Corsica Corsica is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily, Sardinia, and Cyprus). It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia). Only a certain percentage of the population at either time spoke Corsu with any fluency. The 2001 population of 341,000 speakers on the island given by Ethnologue Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language[3] exceeds either census and thus may be considered questionable, like its estimate of 402,000 speakers worldwide.

The use of Corsican over French has been declining. In 1980 about 70% of the population "had some command of the Corsican language."[4] In 1990 out of a total population of about 254,000 the percentage had declined to 50%, with only 10% using it as a first language.[1] The language was clearly on the way out when the French government reversed its non-supportive stand and began some strong measures to save it. Whether these measures will succeed remains to be seen. No recent statistics on Corsu are available.

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945. Its stated purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of classifies the Corsican language as a potentially endangered language, as it has "a large number of children speakers" but is "without an official or prestigious status."[5] The classification does not state that the language is currently endangered, only that it is potentially so. In fact it is being vigorously affirmed. Often acting according to the current long-standing sentiment unknown Corsicans cross out French roadway signs and paint in the Corsu names. The Corsican language is a key vehicle for Corsican culture, which is notably rich in proverbs A proverb , also called a byword or nayword, is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim. If a proverb is distinguished by particularly and in polyphonic In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony) song.

Governmental support

The 1991 "Joxe Statute", in setting up the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, also provided for the Assemblée de Corse, and charged it with developing a plan for the optional teaching of Corsu. The University of Corsica Pascal Paoli at Corte took a central role in the planning.[6]

At the primary school level Corsu can be taught up to a fixed number of hours per week (three in the year 2000) and is a voluntary subject at the secondary school level, but is required at the University of Corsica. It is available through adult education. It can be spoken in court or in the conduct of other government business if the officials concerned speak it. The Cultural Council of the Corsican Assembly advocates for its use; for example, on public signs.

Sources of Corsican

According to the anthropologist Dumenica Verdoni, writing new literature in modern Corsican, known as the Riacquistu, is an integral part of affirming Corsican identity.[7] Persons who had a notable career in France returned to Corsica to write in Corsican, such as the musical producers, Dumenicu Togniotti, director of the Teatru Paisanu, which produced polyphonic musicals, 1973-1982, followed in 1980 by Michel Raffaelli's Teatru di a Testa Mora, and Saveriu Valentini's Teatru Cupabbia in 1984.[8] The list of prose writers includes Alanu di Meglio, Ghiacumu Fusina, Lucia Santucci, Marc Biancarelli and many others.[9]

A mythology concerning the Corsican language is to some degree current among foreigners, that it was a spoken language only or was only recently written. Omniglot goes so far as to assert "Corsican first appeared in writing towards the end of the 19th century ...."[10] Whatever Omniglot may have meant, throughout the 19th and 18th century there was a steady stream of writers in Corsican, many of whom wrote also in other languages.[11]

Ferdinand Gregorovius, 19th century traveller and enthusiast of Corsican culture, reports that the preferred form of the literary tradition of his time was the vocero, a type of polyphonic ballad originating from funeral obsequies. These laments were similar in form to the chorales of Greek drama except that the leader could improvise. Some performers were noted at this, such as the 18th century Mariola della Piazzole and Clorinda Franseschi.[12]

The trail of written popular literature of known date in Corsican currently goes no further back than the 17th century.[13] An undated corpus of proverbs from communes may well precede it (see under External links below). Corsican has also left a trail of legal documents ending in the late 12th century. At that time the monasteries held considerable land on Corsica and many of the churchmen were notaries.

Between 1200 and 1425 the monastery of Gorgona, Benedictine Used as a noun, the term denotes their members, the Benedictines. By extension it is sometimes applied to other adherents of the Benedictine spirituality, for example, "Oblates " for much of that time and in the territory of Pisa Pisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its Leaning Tower , the city of over 87,500 residents contains more than 20 other historic churches, several palaces, and various bridges across the, acquired about 40 legal papers of various sorts written on Corsica. As the church was replacing Pisan prelates with Corsican ones there the legal language shows a transition from entirely Latin Latin is an Italic language historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Italian, French, Catalan, Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese are descended from Latin, while many others, especially European languages, including through partially Latin, partially Corsican to entirely Corsican. The first known surviving document containing some Corsican is a bill of sale from Patrimonio dated to 1220.[14] These documents were moved to Pisa before the monastery closed its doors and were published there.

Research into earlier evidence of Corsican is ongoing. It is entirely possible that archaeology or research in monastic archives will turn up more.

Origins of Corsican

The Corsican language has been influenced by the languages of the major powers taking an interest in Corsican affairs; earlier by those of the Medieval Italian powers: Tuscany Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of 22,990 square kilometres (8,880 sq mi) and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (828-1077), Pisa Pisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its Leaning Tower , the city of over 87,500 residents contains more than 20 other historic churches, several palaces, and various bridges across the (1077-1282) and Genoa Genoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000. It is also called la Superba ("the Superb one") due to its glorious past. Part of the old city of Genoa was (1282-1768), more recently by France (1768-present), which, since 1789, has promulgated the official Parisian French. The term gallicised Corsican refers to Corsu up to about the year 1950. The term distanciated Corsican refers to an idealized Corsu from which various agents have succeeded in removing French or other elements.[15]

The general classification of Corsican as a Romance language allows two possibilities as to the identity of the speakers of the first distinct Corsican, or Proto-Corsican. They created the language either from Proto-Romance or from a subsequent Romance language.

In 40 AD neither a Romance nor an Italic language were spoken by the natives of Corsica. The Roman exile, Seneca the younger Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was later executed by that emperor for complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate this last of the Julio-Claudian emperors;, reports that both coast and interior were occupied by natives whose language he did not understand (see under Prehistory of Corsica). Latin at that time was generally spoken only in the Roman colonies. The occupation of the island by Vandals The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe that entered the late Roman Empire during the 5th century. The Goth Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths and regent of the Visigoths, was allied by marriage with the Vandals as well as with the Burgundians and the Franks under Clovis I about 469 AD marks the end of authoritative influence by Latin-speaking Romans (see under Medieval Corsica The history of Corsica in the medieval period begins with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the invasions of various Germanic peoples in the fifth century and ends with the complete subjection of the island to the authority of the Bank of San Giorgio in 1511). If the natives of that time were speaking Latin they must have acquired it during the late empire. The documents of the early Christian church concerning Corsica are in Latin, but they are only communications between church officials (see under Ajaccio Ajaccio , is a commune in France. It is the capital of the region of Corsica and the prefecture of the department of Corse-du-Sud).

The next window of opportunity for the predecessor of a Proto-Corsican was the administration of Corsica by Tuscany Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of 22,990 square kilometres (8,880 sq mi) and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence, then speaking the Tuscan dialect, an immediate predecessor of Italian. The first Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City. Standard Italian, adopted by the documents date from the 10th century but Italian must have developed earlier and Tuscan even earlier. Tuscan would have come from the latest phases of Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin is a blanket term covering the popular dialects and sociolects of the Latin language which diverged from each other in the early Middle Ages, evolving into the Romance languages by the 6th century. Vulgar Latin can also refer to vernacular speech from other periods, including the Classical period,[citation needed] in which case it may; Proto-Corsican from the Tuscan spoken on Corsica.

The last historical possibility is that Proto-Corsican came from the Tuscan dialect of Pisa Pisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its Leaning Tower , the city of over 87,500 residents contains more than 20 other historic churches, several palaces, and various bridges across the; its period of Corsican administration, however, was relatively short. Genoese is not a likely possibility as Corsican is attested before the presence of Genoa Genoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000. It is also called la Superba ("the Superb one") due to its glorious past. Part of the old city of Genoa was on Corsica, and the linguistic features of Corsican do not match well with those of Genoese. Historical circumstances alone reduce the window of opportunity only to within several hundred years.

Classification by subjective analysis

One of the main sources of confusion in popular classifications is the difference between a dialect The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. A dialect that is and a language A language is a system for encoding information. In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using language. Essential to both meanings is the. Typically it is not possible to ascertain what an author means by these terms. For example, one might read that Corsican is a "central southern Italian dialect The Italian people generally refer to Italian dialects as all vernacular idioms spoken in Italy other than Italian and other languages recognised by the Italian state. As a rule of thumb, all Romance languages spoken in Italy are customarily termed as dialects. Ethnologue, the registrar of the ISO 639-3 recognises them as languages of Italy" along with Tuscan, Campanian, Sicilian and others[16] or that it is "closely related to the Tuscan dialect of Italian,"[17] where it is generally understood that modern Italian came from Tuscan. It is impossible to discern from these statements whether Corsican is or is not Italian, is or is not Tuscan and did or did not come from the ancient Tuscan dialect.

Turning to the professional comparatists it is possible to definitely state that Corsican is not Tuscan and is not Italian. For example one of the characteristics of Tuscan and Italian is that Latin -u- in -us becomes -o: annus "year" but Italian anno. Corsican has annu, retaining the -u. Or, the -re infinitive ending as in Latin mittere, "send", is retained in Tuscan but lost in Corsican, which has mette/metta, "to put." The Latin relative pronoun, qui, "who, what", is inflected In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, case. In covert inflection, such categories are not overtly expressed. Overt inflection typically distinguishes lexical items from functional ones (such as affixes, clitics, in Latin and Italian but in Corsican is the uninflectable chì. The number and profundity of differences is large and preclude the idea that they came from Tuscan rather than from Latin:[18] "the Corsican language is not the same as Tuscan" and "Corsican has preserved certain Latin forms which have disappeared elsewhere."[19]

Classification by statistical analysis

After the year 2000 a new approach to language classification made its debut. Given n graphemes A grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. Examples of graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems (an alphabet of n letters), the frequency of any digraph (two letters)[20] ninj in writing samples of a language approaches a fixed value. Using an alphabet of 26 letters plus a space it is possible to set up a matrix In mathematics, a matrix is a rectangular array of numbers, as shown at the right. Matrices consisting of only one column or row are called vectors, while higher-dimensional, e.g. three-dimensional, arrays of numbers are called tensors. Matrices can be added and subtracted entrywise, and multiplied according to a rule corresponding to composition of 27×27 frequencies unique to that language and therefore called its Statistical Language Signature (SLS).

The SLS is an abstract summary of all the lexical items and morphological features that distinguish the language and therefore determine the overall order of its digraphs. The statistical distance of one SLS from another measures the similarity of the two languages in a manner that does not depend on a subjective analysis of features or value decisions as to which should be considered. There is some variability of the signature depending on the selection of samples and the mathematical methods of conceiving and computing distance.

The ability to characterize languages by numbers creates a sample space In probability theory, the sample space or universal sample space, often denoted S, Ω, or U , of an experiment or random trial is the set of all possible outcomes. For example, if the experiment is tossing a coin, the sample space is the set {head, tail}. For tossing a single six-sided die, the sample space is {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}. For some kinds for them in which the clustering of points reveals groups of similar languages, or if samples are taken from the history of the language, graphs that trace the divergence of languages from each other. These methods are limited only by the comprehensiveness of the sample texts. On the other hand, since this method is based on orthographic conventions rather than actual linguistic features, any conclusions are necessarily of highly dubious value.

An initial effort to develop a language classification tree having turned out unsatisfactorily in 2002 because of insufficient data a second effort in 2003[21] utilized the text of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 52 languages as sample texts to develop two trees by two different statistical methods. Discrepancies between them were attributed to insufficient sample data; for example, by one method Sardinian Sardinian is, after Italian, the main language spoken on the island of Sardinia, Italy. It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum and Corsican are very close but by the other rather distant, with neither being close to Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City. Standard Italian, adopted by the.

A recent attempt to bring the tree into sharper focus on the Romance languages diminished the number of languages to 34 and the statistical parameters to the Frobenius Distance and the Kalin (1-norm) Distance.[22] It expanded the data set to include also other documents reflecting spoken language, such as newspapers, and made it diachronic, going back 22 centuries. Sardinian was not included but the results for Corsican are precise.

Corsican diverged from Italian, Corsican-Italian from Friulian Friulian ( furlan or affectionately marilenghe in Friulian, friulano in Italian) (also Eastern Ladin), more properly Friulan in English, is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaetian family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 800,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom also speak Italian. It is sometimes and that group from a larger that includes Latin on the one hand and almost all the others on the other. In other words, there was a common ancestor on Italian soil and Corsica. The ancestor was not Latin and was to be distinguished from ancestors on other soils, in Iberia The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small area of France. It is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulas—the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas. It is bordered on the southeast and east by the and Gaul Gaul is a historical name used in the context of the Roman empire in references to the region of Western Europe approximating present day France and Belgium, but also sometimes including the Po Valley, western Switzerland, and the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the River Rhine. In English, the word Gaul may also refer to.

The "Italian" from which Corsican diverged in mutual dissimilation was not modern Italian, still far in the future, but its ancestor, Tuscan, and that was not during the Tuscan period on Corsica, when it already existed. The common ancestor was a language about which little is known: spoken or vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin is a blanket term covering the popular dialects and sociolects of the Latin language which diverged from each other in the early Middle Ages, evolving into the Romance languages by the 6th century. Vulgar Latin can also refer to vernacular speech from other periods, including the Classical period,[citation needed] in which case it may, often considered to be Proto-Romance. Written Latin was a literary language, hence it does not appear as an ancestor in the tree. The ancestors in Iberia and Gaul came from soldiers' Latin, of mainly foreign troops learning the spoken language.

The ancestor of Corsican, Tuscan and Friulian - which was spoken on the soil of the earlier Rhaetia - draws the attention as being on formerly Etruscan As distinguished by its own language, the civilization endured from an unknown prehistoric time prior to the founding of Rome until its complete assimilation to Italic Rome in the Roman Republic. At its maximum extent during the foundation period of Rome and the Roman kingdom, it flourished in three confederacies of cities: of Etruria, of the Po soil.[23] Evidently when the Etruscans assimilated they did so with a unique signature.

The date of the first projected Corsican signature is about 1400 years ago, 600 AD more or less, well before Tuscan rule, in the early Christian period. This date is consistent with a Latinization of the Corsican people during the late empire and subsequent local development of Vulgar Latin into Proto-Corsican before close communication with Italy was again established.

Dialects

The language has several dialects including Northern Corsican, spoken in the Bastia Bastia , is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France on the island of Corsica. It is the capital of the department. Bastia is also an important Corsican port and is famous for its wines and Corte area, and Southern Corsican, spoken around Sartene and Porto-Vecchio. The dialect of Ajaccio Ajaccio , is a commune in France. It is the capital of the region of Corsica and the prefecture of the department of Corse-du-Sud has been described as in transition. The dialects spoken at Calvi and Bonifacio Bonifacio is a commune at the southern tip of the island of Corsica, in the Corse-du-Sud department of France. Its inhabitants are called Bonifaciens, feminine Bonifaciennes. The commune in this case is identical to the canton and is the largest commune of Corsica are closer to the Genoa Genoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000. It is also called la Superba ("the Superb one") due to its glorious past. Part of the old city of Genoa was dialect, also known as Ligurian Ligurian is a Gallo-Romance language, currently spoken in Liguria, northern Italy, and parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone of France, and Monaco. Genoese is one of the most well-known dialects, spoken in Genoa, the capital of Liguria.

Languages in northern Sardinia Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily). The area of Sardinia is 24,090 square kilometres (9,301 sq mi). The nearest land masses to the island are (clockwise from north) the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Tunisia, and the Balearic Islands. Sardinia is part of Italy, with a special statute of

On Maddalena archipelago the local dialect (called Isulanu, Maddaleninu, Maddalenino) was brought by fishermen and shepherds from Bonifacio during immigration in the 17th-18th centuries. Though influenced by Gallurese Gallurese is a diasystem of the Sardinian language, spoken in the Gallura (Gaddura), north-eastern part of Sardinia including the town of Tempio Pausania (Tempiu) it has maintained the original characteristics of Corsican. There are also numerous words of Genoese Genoese is the most important dialect of the Ligurian language, the one spoken in Genoa (the principal city of the Liguria region in Italy) and ponzese origin.[3]

Languages related to Corsican in Sardinia

Main articles: Gallurese Gallurese is a diasystem of the Sardinian language, spoken in the Gallura (Gaddura), north-eastern part of Sardinia including the town of Tempio Pausania (Tempiu) and Sassarese language

Gallurese is spoken in the Sardinian region of Gallura, including the archipelago of La Maddalena. Sassarese, is spoken in Sassari and in its neighbourhood, in the north-west of Sardinia. Whether these two languages should be included in the Corsican language as dialects, included in Sardinian as dialects, or considered as independent languages, is debatable.

For example, Article 2 Item 4 of Law Number 26, October 15, 1997, of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia grants "al dialetto sassarese e a quello gallurese" equal legal status with the other languages on Sardinia (which Corsica does not do). They are being legally defined as different languages from Sardinian. [24]

Alphabet

Main article: Corsican alphabet

Corsican uses the Latin alphabet with some changes. Although the words written in it are close enough to Italian and Latin for the non-Corsican speaker with a language background to follow, the pronunciation of those letters in English, French or Italian is not a guide to the pronunciation of Corsican, which follows complex rules that must be known by the speaker.

Phonology

Vowel inventory

The grapheme "i" appears in some digraphs and trigraphs in which it does not represent the phonemic vowel. All vowels are pronounced except in a few well-defined instances. "I" is not pronounced before a, o, u after sc, sg, c and g: sciarpa ['ʃarpa]; or initially in some words: istu ['stu].[25]

Vowels may be nasalized before n, which is assimilated to m before p or b, and the liquid consonant, gn. The nasal vowels are represented by the vowel plus n, m or gn. The combination is a digraph or trigraph indicating the nasalized vowel. The consonant is pronounced in weakened form. The same combination of letters might not be the digraph or trigraph but might be just the non-nasal vowel followed by the consonant at full weight. The speaker must know the difference. Example of nasal: pane is pronounced ['pãnɛ] and not ['panɛ].

The vowel inventory, or collection of phonemic vowels (and the major allophones), transcribed in IPA symbols, is:[10][26]

Description Grapheme (Minuscule) Phoneme Phone or Allophones Usage Example
Open front unrounded Near open a /a/ [a] [æ] Occasional northern casa ['kaza] carta ['kærta]
Open back unrounded a /â/ [ɑ]
Close-mid front unrounded Open-mid Near-open Open e /e/ [e] [ɛ] [æ] [a] Inherited as open or close Occasional southern Occasional southern U celu [u'ʤelu] Ci hè ['ʧɛ] terra ['tarra]
Close front unrounded Rounded i /i/ [i] [j] 1st sound, diphthong mi [mi] fiume ['fjumɛ]
Close-mid back rounded o /o/ [o] giòvani ['ʤowãni]

Consonant inventory

This section requires expansion.

Morphology

This section requires expansion.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "Corsican in France". Euromosaic. http://www.uoc.es/euromosaic/web/homean/index1.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-13. To access the data, click on List by languages, Corsican, Corsican in France, then scroll to Geographical and language background.
  2. ^ Ethnologue report for France - Corsican
  3. ^ a b "Corsican". http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=cos. Retrieved on 2008-06-13.
  4. ^ "Corsican language use survey". Euromosaic. http://www.uoc.es/euromosaic/web/homean/index1.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-13. To find this statement and the supporting data click on List by languages, Corsican, Corsican language use survey and look under INTRODUCTION.
  5. ^ Salminen, Tapani (1993-1999). "UNESCO Red Book on Endagered Languages: Europe:". http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-13.
  6. ^ Daftary, Farimah (October 2000). "Insular Autonomy: A Framework for Conflict Settlement? A Comparative Study of Corsica and the Åland Islands" (pdf). European Centre For Minority Issues (ECMI). pages 10-11. http://www.ecmi.de/download/working_paper_9.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-06-13.
  7. ^ Verdoni, Dumenica. "Etat/identités:de la culture du conflit à la culture du projet". InterRomania. Centru Culturale Universita di Corsica. http://www.interromania.com/studii/sunta/verdoni/etats_identites.htm. Retrieved on 2008-06-17. (French)
  8. ^ Magrini, Tullia (2003). Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean. University of Chicago Press. pp. 53. ISBN 0226501663.
  9. ^ Filippi, Paul-Michel (2008). "Corsican Literature Today". Transcript (17). http://www.transcript-review.org/section.cfm?id=226&lan=en. Retrieved on 2008-06-26.
  10. ^ a b Ager, Simon (1998-2008). "Corsican (corsu)". Omniglot. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/corsican.htm. Retrieved on 2008-06-20.
  11. ^ "Auteurs". ADECEC.net. http://www.adecec.net/adecec-net/Anthologie/liste.php?debut=0. Retrieved on 2008-06-28.
  12. ^ Gregorovius, Ferndinand; Russell Martineau (Translator) (1855). Corsica in Its Picturesque, Social, and Historical Aspects: the Records of a Tour in the Summer of 1852. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. pp. 275–312.
  13. ^ Beretti, Francis (Translator) (2008). "The Corsican Language". Transcript (17). http://www.transcript-review.org/section.cfm?id=227&lan=en. Retrieved on 2008-06-29.
  14. ^ Scalfati, Silio P. P. (2003). "Latin et langue vernaculaire dans les actes notariés corses XIe-XVe siècle". Éditions en ligne de l'École des chartes (7): Section I. (French).
  15. ^ Blackwood, Robert J. (August 2004). "Corsican distanciation strategies: Language purification or misguided attempts to reverse the gallicisation process?" (pdf). Multilingua - Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 23 (3): 233–255. doi:10.1515/mult.2004.011?cookieSet=1. http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/mult.2004.011?cookieSet=1. Retrieved on 2008-06-13.
  16. ^ "Italian Language". Encarta. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761560079/italian_language.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-13.
  17. ^ "Eurolang report on Corsican". http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72&Itemid=52&lang=en. Retrieved on 2008-06-13.
  18. ^ Posner, Rebecca; John N. Green (1993). Trends in Romance Linguistics and Philology. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 257–258. ISBN 311011724X.
  19. ^ Walter, Henriette; Peter Fawcett (1994). French Inside Out: The Worldwide Development of the French Language in the past, present and the future. Routledge. pp. 102. ISBN 0415076692.
  20. ^ As used in this study the word digraph is not the linguistics one, which means one sound, or phoneme, represented by a two-letter combination, such as English sh, but is any two letters or a letter and a blank. It might be a linguistics digraph or not.
  21. ^ Li, Ming; Chen, Xin; Li, Xin; Ma, Bin; Vitárizi, Paul (2003), "The Similarity Metric", in Farach-Colton, Martin, Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual ACM-SIAM, SIAM, pp. 870, ISBN 0898715385 .
  22. ^ Turchi, Marco; Cristianini, Nello (2006), "A Statistical Analysis of Language Evolution", in Cangelosi, Angelo; Smith, Andrew D.M.; Smith, Kenny, The Evolution of Language, World Scientific, pp. 348–355, ISBN 9812566562
  23. ^ "Language Data - Corsican". Eurolang. http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72&Itemid=52&lang=en. Retrieved on 2008-06-23.
  24. ^ Autonomous Region of Sardinia (1997-10-15). "Legge Regionale 15 ottobre 1997, n. 26". Art. 2, paragraph 4. http://www.regione.sardegna.it/j/v/86?v=9&c=72&s=1&file=1997026. Retrieved on 2008-06-16. (Italian)
  25. ^ "La prononciation des voyelles". A Lingua Corsa. April 19 2008. http://pagesperso-orange.fr/gbatti-alinguacorsa/. Retrieved on 2008-06-20.
  26. ^ "Notes sur la phonétique utilisée sur ce site". A Lingua Corsa. April 19 2008. http://pagesperso-orange.fr/gbatti-alinguacorsa/. Retrieved on 2008-06-20.

Bibliography

External links

Corsican language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Categories: Languages of France | Corsican language | Corsica | Latin-derived alphabets

 

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