Corsican, also called corsu and lingua corsa, is a Romance language closely related to Italian. It is spoken and written on the islands of Corsica (France) and northern Sardinia (Italy). It had an official status in Corsica until 1859. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of French grew to the extent that, by 1945, all islanders had a working knowledge of French. By the 1960s, there were no monolingual speaker of Corsican left. In 1995, around 65% of the islanders had some degree of fluency in Corsican with only 10% having Corsican as their first language. The language is considered definitely endangered by the UNESCO, meaning that it is in danger of becoming extinct. It is estimated that there is around 200,000 native speakers. Corsican is recognized as an official minority language in Sardinia.

Dialects

The Corsican language has two main dialects: Gallurese, spoken in the region of Gallura in the northeastern part of Sardinia, and Sassarese, which is a transitional language between Corsican and Italian spoken in Sardinia.

Lessons

External resources

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