Dalmatian language

Dalmatian is an extinct Romance language formerly spoken along the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and as far south as Kotor in Montenegro.

The Dalmatian speakers lived in the coastal towns and villages: (Zara, Traù, Spalato, Ragusa and Cattaro), each of these cities having a local dialect, and also on the islands of Veglia, Cherso and Arbe.

Note that the term "Dalmatian" today is often used to refer to the Čakavian-ikavian Croatian dialect spoken in Dalmatia, which includes many words picked up from Italian and even some from German and Turkish. This dialect and the original Dalmatian language are not related, however, and should not be confused.

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.

The most important dialects we have information on are:

Vegliot — a northern dialect, spoken on the island of Veglia (Krk)
Ragusan — a southern dialect, spoken at Ragusa (Dubrovnik)
the dialect spoken in Zara (Zadar)

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 to the assimilation by Slavic language speakers.

Ragusan

Ragusan is the Southern dialect and it is derived from the Italian name of Dubrovnik, Ragusa. We know about it from two letters of 1325 and 1397 (and other medieval texts), but they show a language influenced heavily by Venetian, and not pure Dalmatian. Several words surviving are pen (bread), teta (father), chesa (house) and fachir (to do), which were quoted by an Italian, Fillipo Diversi, the head of school of Dubrovnik in the 1430s.

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

Vegliot

Vegliot is the Northern dialect and it is derived from the Italian name of Krk, Veglia, an island in Kvarner. On the inscription dating from the beginning of the 4th century, Krk 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.

The last speaker of any Dalmatian dialect was Tuone Udaina (in Italian: Antonio Udina), and he 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 thousands of words, stories, accounts of his life, which were published in a book, with Italian translation, which provides much information on the vocabulary, phonology and grammar of the language. He wrote them in Italian and published a translation in German (Das Dalmatische) in 1906. However, the Italian language manuscripts were lost, and the work was not retranslated into the Italian until 2001.

History

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

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Illyria continued to speak Latin and the 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.

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.

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, such as 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
/gn/	/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
Lat. singulus > Dalmatian sanglo, Romanian singur (alone), most other Romance languages using derivations of solus:

Also, the future is formed with the verb "to want" (just as in Romanian and other languages of the Balkan language union).

Vocabulary

Dalmatian kept Latin words related to urban life, lost in Romanian. 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 had been 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 Shtokavian 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 kept genders (masculine and feminine) and numbers.

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 Dalmatian, Italian, Istro-Romanian and Daco-Romanian:

Dalmatian	Italian	Istro-Romanian	Daco-Romanian
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,
sait santificuot el naun to.	sia santificato il tuo nome.	neca se sveta nomelu teu.	sfiinţească-se numele tău.
Vigna el raigno to.	Venga il tuo regno.	Neca venire craliestvo to.	Vie împărăţia ta.
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.
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.
E remetiaj le nuestre debete,	E rimetti a noi i nostri debiti,	Odproste nam dutzan,	şi ne iartă nouă păcatele noastre,
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.
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,
miu deleberiajne dal mal.	ma liberaci dal male.	neca na zbăveşte de zvaca slabe.	ci ne mântuieşte de cel rău.

External links

Ethnologue report for Dalmatian

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 0838677967
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 0631220399; Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK;