Dalmatian language

Dalmatian is an extinct Romance language formerly spoken in the Dalmatia region of Croatia, and as far south as Cattaro (Kotor) in Montenegro.

The Dalmatian speakers lived in the coastal towns: Zara (Zadar), Trau (Trogir), Spalato (Split), Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Cattaro (Kotor), each of these cities having a local dialect, and also on the islands of Veglia (Krk), Cherso (Cres) and Arbe (Rab).

Dialects

Almost every city developed its own dialect; however, most disappeared before they were recorded, so the only information we have on them are some words borrowed into Croatian local dialects and some Venetian "letters" of the Middle Ages.

The most important dialects are:

• Vegliot — a northern dialect, spoken on the island of Krk (Veglia in Italian, Vikla in Dalmatian)
• Ragusan — a southern dialect, spoken at Ragusa(actual Dubrovnik)

The first two (being the Northern and the Southern dialects) are the best known and it appears they were separated for over 500 years. About the other dialects, almost nothing is known as they became extinct before they were recorded. The dialect of Zara disappeared because of the strong Venetian influence and the other dialects due even to the assimilation by Slavic language speakers (the Chakavian dialect has nearly half of its vocabulary loanworded from the Dalmatian and the Venetian languages).

Istriot

Istriot or Istro-Romance — an Istrian-venetian dialect closely related to Dalmatian, is spoken on the west coast of the peninsula of Istria in the villages in Rovinj (Rovigno) and Vodnjan (Dignano). Presently only 1,000 people speak it, and it is seriously endangered.

Ragusan

Ragusan is the Southern dialect. Its name is derived from the Italian name of Dubrovnik, Ragusa. We know about it from two letters, from 1325 and 1397, and other medieval texts, which show a language influenced heavily by Venetian. The available sources include hardly 260 Ragusan words. Surviving words include pen (bread), teta (father), chesa (house) and fachir (to do), which were quoted by an Italian, Fillipo Diversi, the head of school of Ragusa in the 1430s.

The Republic of Ragusa had at one time an important fleet, but its influence decreased. The language was in trouble in the face of Croatian expansion, as the Ragusan Senate decided that all debates had to be held in lingua veteri ragusea (ancient Ragusan language) and the use of the lingua sclava (Croatian) was forbidden. Nevertheless, in the 16th century, Ragusan fell out of use and became extinct.

Vegliot

Vegliot (the native name being Viklasun) is the Northern dialect and it is derived from the Italian name of Krk, Veglia, an island in Quarnaro. On the inscription dating from the beginning of the 4th century, Veglia is named as "Splendissima civitas Curictarum". The Croatian name derives from the Roman name (Curicum, Curicta), while the younger title Vecla – Vegla – Veglia (meaning "Old Town") was created in the medieval Romanesque period (in Venetian "old" island is called "Vecia" isla).

The last speaker of any Dalmatian dialect was Tuone Udaina Burbure (in Italian: Antonio Udina), who was killed by a landmine on June 10, 1898. His language was studied by an Italian scholar, Matteo Giulio Bartoli, who visited him in 1897 and wrote down approximately 2800 words, stories, and accounts of his life, which were published in a book that has provided much information on the vocabulary, phonology, and grammar of the language. Bartoli wrote in Italian and published a translation in German (Das Dalmatische) in 1906. The Italian language manuscripts were lost, and the work was not retranslated into Italian until 2001. The book is considered the originator of the linguistic science about disappeared languages.

History

The Romans gradually occupied the territory of Illyria between 229 BC and 155. The traders and the authorities spoke Latin and the inhabitants mostly abandoned their language for Latin (in fact, the "Vulgar Latin"). It is noteworthy that there were some Roman Emperors of Illyrian origin; the best known are Aurelian, Diocletian and Constantine I.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Illyrian towns continued to speak Latin and their language evolved relatively independent from other Romance languages, progressing toward a regional variant and finally to a distinct language.

The earliest reference on the language dates from the 10th century and it is estimated that about 50,000 people spoke it at that time (according to Bartoli).

Other languages influenced the Dalmatian, but without erasing its Latin roots (superstrates): the Slavs, then the Venetians. Several cities of the regions have Italian names, and other mostly the romanized Illyrian ones.

The oldest preserved documents written in Dalmatian are some 13th century inventories, in the Ragusan dialect. A letter of the 14th century from Zadar shows strong Venetian influence, which was also the cause of its extinction soon after.

Characteristics

Once thought to be a language that bridged the gap between the Romanian language and Italian, it was only distantly related to the nearby Romanian dialects, such as the nearly extinct Istro-Romanian, also spoken in nearby Istria, Croatia.

Some of its features are quite archaic; for example, Dalmatian is one of the two Romance languages (the other one is Sardinian) that did not palatalise /k/ and /g/ before /e/ and /i/: Latin cenare > Vegliot: kenur (to dine).

Some of its words have been preserved as borrowings in South Slavic languages, chiefly in Croatian, and also a few in Albanian.

Similarities to Romanian

Among the similarities with Romanian, there are some consonant shifts that can be found among the Romance languages only in Dalmatian and Romanian:

source	destination	Latin	Vegliot	Romanian	Italian	Meaning
/kt/	/pt/	octo	guapto	opt	otto	eight
/ŋn/	/mn/	cognatus	comnut	cumnat	cognato	cognate
/ks/	/ps/	coxa	copsa	coapsa	coscia	thigh

There are a few words of Vulgar Latin origin that can't be found in other Romance languages, such as:

• *ex-cotere > Romanian 'scoate' Dalmatian 'skutro' (to take out), not found in other Romance language (except Friulian 'scuedi', meaning "to ask somebody to give something owed" and Italian 'scuotere' "to shake (sthg.)" and 'riscuotere' "to ask somebody to give something owed")
• Lat. singulus > Dalmatian sanglo, Romanian singur (alone), most other Romance languages using derivations of solus:

Vocabulary

Dalmatian kept Latin words related to urban life, present too in Romanian, such as čituot (city), (in Romanian cetate). The Dalmatians retained an active urban society in their city states, whereas the Romanians were driven into small mountain settlements during the Great Migrations of the Dark Ages.

Also, unlike Romanian, Dalmatian did not keep any substrate words of Thracian or Illyrian origin, as the speakers are considered to have been almost initially colonists, not a Romanized population.

Major influences on the language were the Rhaeto-Romance languages, then Venetian as Venice's commercial influence grew. The Chakavian dialect and Dubrovnik Jekavian dialect in Croatia, which was spoken outside the cities since the Slavs migrated, gained importance in the cities by the 16th century, and it eventually completely replaced Dalmatian as a day-to-day language.

Grammar

An analytic trend can be observed in Dalmatian: nouns and adjectives began losing their gender and number inflections, the noun declension disappeared completely and the verb conjugations began to follow the same path; however, the verb maintained a person and number distinction, except in the third person (in common with Romanian and several dialects of Italy).

The definite article is used as a preposition, unlike the Eastern Romance languages (like Romanian) which have it postposed to the noun.

Language sample

Here are examples of the Lord's prayer in Latin, Dalmatian, Italian, Istro-Romanian and Romanian:

Latin	Dalmatian	Italian	Istro-Romanian	Romanian
Pater noster, qui es in caelis:	Tuota nuester, che te sante intel sil,	Padre nostro, che sei nei cieli,	Ciace nostru car le şti en cer,	Tatăl nostru care eşti în ceruri,
sanctificetur Nomen Tuum;	sait santificuot el naun to.	sia santificato il tuo nome.	neca se sveta nomelu teu.	sfiinţească-se numele tău.
adveniat Regnum Tuum;	Vigna el raigno to.	Venga il tuo regno.	Neca venire craliestvo to.	Vie împărăţia ta.
fiat voluntas Tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra.	Sait fuot la voluntuot toa, coisa in sil, coisa in tiara.	Sia fatta la tua volontà, come in cielo così in terra.	Neca fie volia ta, cum en cer, aşa şi pre pemint.	Facă-se voia ta, precum în cer, aşa şi pe pământ.
Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie;	Duote costa dai el pun nuester cotidiun.	Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano	Pera nostre saca zi de nam astez.	Pâinea noastră cea de toate zilele dă-ne-o nouă astăzi.
et dimitte nobis debita nostra,	E remetiaj le nuestre debete,	E rimetti a noi i nostri debiti,	Odproste nam dutzan,	şi ne iartă nouă păcatele noastre,
Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris;	coisa nojiltri remetiaime a i nuestri debetuar.	come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori.	ca şi noi odprostim a lu nostri dutznici.	precum şi noi iertăm greşiţilor noştri.
et ne nos inducas in tentationem;	E naun ne menur in tentatiaun,	E non ci indurre in tentazione,	Neca nu na tu vezi en napastovanie,	Şi nu ne duce pe noi în ispită,
sed libera nos a Malo.	miu deleberiajne dal mal.	ma liberaci dal male.	neca na zbăveşte de zvaca slabe.	ci ne mântuieşte de cel rău.

External links

• Ethnologue: Languages of the World (unknown ed.). SIL International.

References

• Bartoli, Matteo Giulio, (1906) Das Dalmatische (2 vols), Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna
• Bartoli, Matteo Giulio. (2000) Il Dalmatico, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Italy (translation from the German original)
• Fisher, John. (1975). Lexical Affiliations of Vegliote, Rutherford, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ISBN 0-8386-7796-7
• Hadlich, Roger L. (1965) The phonological history of Vegliote, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press
• Price, Glanville. (April 2000) Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe. ISBN 0-631-22039-9; Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK;