Dalmatian Language - Characteristics

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, spoken in nearby Istria, Croatia.

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

Some of its words have been preserved as borrowings in South Slavic languages, chiefly in the Chakavian dialect of Croatian.

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