Campidanese Sardinian

Campidanese Sardinian, also called Southern Sardinian, is one of the two main written forms of the Sardinian language. It is often seen as one of the most unchanged and traditional types of all the Romance languages. The way we write Campidanese Sardinian is based on how people speak in central southern Sardinia. This area around the towns of Guspini and Villacidro is known as Campidanu or Campidano in Italian.

You can hear Campidanese dialects not just in the Province of Medio Campidano, but all over the Province of Cagliari. It also reaches into parts of the Province of Nuoro, especially in the Ogliastra area, and the southern half of the Province of Oristano, including its capital. Here, the speech starts to change and become more like Logudorese. The special code for this language is sro.

Subvariants

Campidanese Sardinian has seven main subdialects. These include Western Campidanese, Sarrabese (sarrabesu), Southern Barbagian, Oristano ('aristanesu or also arborensi), Ogliastra (ollastrinu), Cagliari (casteddaju), and the varieties of Sulcis (meurreddinu). The dialect called casteddaju is spoken in Cagliari, the capital of the island, and also in nearby towns and villages within a 15 km radius. In 2009, the Cagliari area officially set rules for the spelling, sounds, word forms, and vocabulary of Standard Campidanese Sardinian.

Vocabulary

Campidanese Sardinian includes some words borrowed from Aragonese, Catalan, and Spanish. Since the early 20th century, more words from Italian have been added, especially for new technologies that didn’t have existing Campidanese words. Even so, many of these Italian words are changed to sound more like Sardinian. For example, words that end in “o” in Italian often end in “u” in Campidanese, and the strong Campidanese accent also affects how these words sound.

Characteristics

Campidanese Sardinian has some special features that make it different from other forms of Sardinian. For example, it uses certain words like "pisci" for "fish" instead of "pische". It also has its own way of forming plurals and using verb endings.

The language keeps some ancient sounds from Latin that changed in other languages. It also changes some sounds in special ways, like turning certain letters into others. Words from Catalan, another language, are also found in Campidanese Sardinian. People from central and southern Sardinia can usually understand it, but those from the far north may have trouble, as they speak a different type of Sardinian. Italian speakers generally cannot understand Campidanese because it is very different from Italian.

Main articles: Logudorese Sardinian, Corsican–Sardinian dialects, Italian dialect

Writing system

Campidanese is written using the Latin alphabet, just like Italian. It does not use the letters ⟨w⟩ or ⟨y⟩. Instead, it uses special pairs of letters called digraphs, such as ⟨gh⟩ for the sound /g/, ⟨ch⟩ for the sound /k/ before the vowels e and i, ⟨tz⟩ for the sound /ts/, and ⟨x⟩ for the sound /ʒ/.

When speaking Campidanese, some letters change sound depending on their position in a word. For example, the letter ⟨t⟩ at the end of a word or between vowels is said as the sound /d/. Also, the letter ⟨s⟩ can sound like /z̪/. To make words easier to say, a helping vowel is often added at the end when certain letters like s, t, or nt appear there. Sometimes an extra "i" is added before an s at the start of a word. These spelling rules were set by the Province of Cagliari on March 17, 2010.