Corsican Language - Classification By Subjective Analysis

Classification By Subjective Analysis

One of the main sources of confusion in popular classifications is the difference between a dialect and a language. Typically it is not possible to ascertain what an author means by these terms. For example, one might read that Corsican is a "central southern Italian dialect" along with Tuscan, Neapolitan, Sicilian and others or that it is "closely related to the Tuscan dialect of Italian,", an infelicitous claim in that Italian is derived from Tuscan rather than the reverse.

One of the characteristics of Italian, and variable in Tuscan, is the retention of the -re infinitive ending as in Latin mittere, "send", which is lost in Corsican, which has mette/metta, "to put." The Latin relative pronoun, "who," "qui," "quae," and "what," "quod," are inflected in Latin, while relative pronoun in Italian for "who" and "what" is "che" and in Corsican is uninflected chì."