Talk:Corsican language
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I wish somebody would get some of the referred-to Corsican proverbs up on the proverbs page.
(The belief that Corsican polyphonic singing emerged from a "millenary oral transmission", and would derive from some kind of primordial Mediterranean music going back to the Neolithic is nothing but a myth. That style developped after the 16th century and evolved essentially from an importation of 3-part singing from the Italian mainland. See Marcel Peres (ed.), Le Chant religieux corse.) - I moved this text out of article but updated the article to reflect it --Cjnm 16:49, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
At the risk of offending, should this be the Coriscan "Language"? It's an Italian dialect not a seperate language, more recognizable to many northern Italians than many southern Italian dialects.
Whether Corsican should be considered a language if it’s own is a matter of definition. As far as I know Portuguese, Spanish, Corsican, Italian and Interlingua (an artificial language) is mutually understandable. Several centuries ago Portuguese, Spanish and Italian defined themselves as languages by creating their own rules of spelling. So did Corsican in the 1820s. It can’t just be the local dialect spelled phonetically with Italian rules: in that case Ajaccio would have been pronounced “uy-UK-ee-aw” and not “uy-UT-shaw”. Please tell me if I am wrong!
2007-02-16 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
[edit] In transition?
The article says: The dialect of Ajaccio has been described as in transition. What does it mean for a language to be "in transition?" | Keithlaw 22:38, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
- I interpreted that as meaning it's transitional between northern and southern dialects, i.e. it has a mixture of northern and southern features. User:Angr 11:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
- It's right. The transitional dialect of Ajaccio (Aiaccinu) is a mixture of the southern dialect base (in effect could be classified as a southern dialect: -ll->-dd- but only at the end of words, pronunciation of the -ghj- group, feminine plural noun ending in -i) and northern corsican influences (lexical "cane" and "accattà" and not "ghjacaru" and "cumprà", "ellu"/"ella" and not "eddu"/"edda") with minor local particularities ("sabbatu">"sabbitu", "u li dà">"ghi lu dà", stressed final: "marinari">"marinà", "panatteri">"panattè", "castellu">"castè", "cuchjari">"cuchjà").
- --Dch 09:03, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Number of speakers
The population of Corsica recorded in the 1990 census is 260,196. In 2004, the population was estimated to be 272,000 (both figures present in our article on Corsica and corroborated by other sources). Ethnologue's report on Corsican says that the 2001 Johnstone and Mandryk study says there are 341,000 speakers of the language in Corsica. Now this figure has to be wrong. Ethnologue goes on to say that the total number of speakers of Corsican throughout the world is estimated at 402,000. I know French domestic language policy has been rubbish in the past, but these figures don't add up. I would suggest that we treat Ethnologue's as a tainted source for this one. --Gareth Hughes 22:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah... The census in Corsica! One month before, no more tickets are available on planes or car-ferries and during the census itself, people from Mainland returns to Corsica to their homeland. It looks like a big Exodus, under the rule of the old Roman Census (read again the Bible about the birth of a little poor baby in Bethlehem). And even when few travellers come back, all the villages and so, add some extra Corscicans on their lists. I used to live in L'Île-Rousse for 15 years. At each census, 500 more people were added. Once, a political scandal happened, because the little town has more than 2,000 inhabitants — that's means more money than 1,950. So the figures of the French census in Corsica has to be over-estimated by at least 10 or 20%! And in Corsica itself, who speaks Corsican? The young people? They uses a few words but they are unable to speak fluently. The foreigners and the French that represents more than half of the populace? I suppose that less than 50,000 people speaks Corsican on the island. And perhaps, the same figure outside in the world. Enzino 18:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
To Enzino : That's true populations of certain villages or places can be overestimated but it's always to the detriment of others, which amounts to say the estimation of the total population is correct. It's impossible to be taken into account in 2 different places, especially since you can't have any idea of when the census counters come. That's wrong to say that Corsicans would go back to Corsica so they could get counted as inhabitants of Corsica (and indeed impossible for the very same reason). About the number of corsican language speakers, it's hard to say but the key 50.000 seems to suit well. But contrary to what you say, there exists young people that can speak corsican fluently (that's still rare). 402.000 or 350.000 speakers is way too much, I agree on that. To an unnamed contributors : Corsican is part of what we call the "italo-romance" languages, but there is no real difference between a language and a dialect : a dialect is a variety of language: british english, american english, australian english are all dialects of the same language, that is to say english. Corsican is close to the Tuscany dialect, that is to say the current italian language, and thus they are dialects of the same language.
Corsican defined itself as a language of it’s own in the 1820s by creating an own system of spelling. All the speakers don’t have to live in France, there might be minorities (primary immigrants) in neighbouring countries. When counting a language’s speakers they don’t have to speak it fluently: speaking it good enough to have a conversation is what is counted. However, I have hard to believe that a language with hundreds of thousands of speakers would be considered threatened by the United Nations. There is a rule of the thumb saying that a language needs at least 10,000 speakers to survive. Of cause there is exceptions but if it is spoken by hundreds of thousands it is highly unlikely to be considered endangered. Except by people who don’t know what they are talking about...
2007-02-16 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
