Dalmatian language

Dialects

Almost every city developed its own dialect. Most of these became extinct before they were recorded, so the only trace of these ancient dialects is some words borrowed into local dialects of today's Croatia.

Ragusan dialect

Ragusan is the Southern dialect, whose name is derived from the Romance name of Dubrovnik, Ragusa. It came to the attention of modern scholars in two letters, from 1325 and 1397, and other mediaeval texts, which show a language influenced heavily by Venetian. The available sources include some 260 Ragusan words including pen ("bread"), teta ("father"), chesa ("house"), and fachir ("to do"), which were quoted by the Dalmatian Filippo Diversi, the rector of Ragusa in the 1430s.

The Maritime Republic of Ragusa had, at one time, an important fleet, but its influence decreased over time, to the point that, by the 15th century, it had been reduced to only about 300 ships. The language was in trouble in the face of Slav 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 Slav was forbidden. Nevertheless, in the 16th century, Ragusan fell out of use and became almost extinct.

Vegliot dialect

Vegliot (the native name being Viklasun) is the Northern dialect. The language's name is derived from the Italian name of Krk, Veglia, an island in Kvarner, called Vikla in Vegliot. On the inscription dating from the beginning of the fourth century, Krk is named as Splendissima civitas Curictarum. The Serbo-Croatian name derives from the Roman name (Curicum, Curicta), whereas the younger name Vecla, Vegla, Veglia (meaning "Old Town") was created in the mediaeval Romanesque period.

History

The Roman Republic gradually came to occupy the territory of Illyria between 229 and 155 BC. Merchants and authorities settling from Rome brought with them the Latin language, and eventually the indigenous inhabitants mostly abandoned their languages (prevalently varieties of Illyrian) for Vulgar Latin. After the Roman capital moved to Constantinople, Greek began to replace Latin as the Lingua Franca in the empire (eventually becoming official in 620), but Illyrian towns continued to speak Latin (see Illyro-Roman), which evolved over time into regional dialects and eventually into distinct Romance languages.

Dalmatian was spoken on the Dalmatian coast from Fiume (now Rijeka) as far south as Cottora (Kotor) in Montenegro. Speakers lived mainly in the coastal towns of Jadera (Zadar), Tragurium (Trogir), Spalatum (Split), Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Acruvium (Kotor), and also on the islands of Curicta (Krk), Crepsa (Cres) and Arba (Rab). Almost every city developed its own dialect, but the most important dialects we know of were Vegliot, a northern dialect spoken on the island of Curicta, and Ragusan, a southern dialect spoken in and around Ragusa (Dubrovnik).

The Dalmatian dialect of Ragusa is known from two letters, dated 1325 and 1397, as well as from other mediaeval texts. The oldest preserved documents written in Dalmatian are 13th century inventories in Ragusan. The available sources include roughly 260 Ragusan words. Surviving words include pen ("bread"), teta ("father"), chesa ("house"), and fachir ("to do"), which were quoted by the Dalmatian, Filippo Diversi, the head of school of Ragusa in the 1430s. The earliest reference to the Dalmatian language dates from the tenth century and it is estimated that about 50,000 people spoke it at that time, though the main source of this information, the Italian linguist Matteo Bartoli, may have exaggerated his figures.

Dalmatian was influenced particularly heavily by Venetian and Serbo-Croatian (despite the latter, the Latin roots of Dalmatian remained prominent). A 14th-century letter from Zadar (origin of the Iadera dialect) shows strong influence from Venetian, the language that after years under Venetian rule superseded Iadera and other dialects of Dalmatian. Other dialects met their demise with the settlement of populations of Slavic speakers.

The last speaker of any Dalmatian dialect was Burbur ("barber" in Dalmatian) Tuone Udaina (Italian: Antonio Udina), who was accidentally killed in an explosion on June 10, 1898. His language was studied by the scholar Matteo Bartoli, himself a native of nearby Istria, who visited him in 1897 and wrote down approximately 2,800 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 reportedly lost, and the work was not re-translated into Italian until 2001.

Classification

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, spoken in nearby Istria, Croatia.

Some of its features are quite archaic. Dalmatian is the only Romance language that has palatalised /k/ and /g/ before /i/, but not before /e/ (others have palatalised them in both situations, except Sardinian, which has not palatalised them at all): Latin: civitate > Vegliot: cituot ("city"), Latin: cenare > Vegliot: kenur ("to dine").

Some of its words have been preserved as borrowings in South Slavic languages, mainly in Chakavian.

Similarities to Romanian

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

Grammar

An analytic trend can be observed in Dalmatian: nouns and adjectives began to lose their gender and number inflexions, the noun declension disappeared completely, and the verb conjugations began to follow the same path, but 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 precedes the noun, unlike in the Eastern Romance languages like Romanian, which have it postposed to the noun.

Vocabulary

Dalmatian kept Latin words related to urban life, lost (or if preserved, not with the original sense) in Romanian, such as cituot "city" (in old Romanian cetate means "city"; in modern Romanian "fort"; compare also Albanian qytet, borrowed from Latin, which, too, means "city"). The Dalmatians retained an active urban society in their city-states, whereas most Romanians were driven into small mountain settlements during the Great Migrations of 400 to 800 AD.

Venetian became a major influence on the language as Venetian commercial influence grew. The Chakavian dialect and Dubrovnik Shtokavian dialect, which were spoken outside the cities since the immigration of the Slavs, gained importance in the cities by the 16th century, and it eventually replaced Dalmatian as the day-to-day language. Nevertheless, some words were loaned into coastal Serbo-Croatian varieties:

Sample

The following are examples of the Lord's Prayer in Latin, Dalmatian, Serbo-Croatian, Friulian, Italian, Istro-Romanian and Romanian:

Parable of the Prodigal Son