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Language planning in Alghero (Sardinia): when standardization becomes problematic
important to be left in the hands of rebellious indigenous people, who were expelled soon after
the occupation (e.g., Budruni 1990). As a result, Catalan has been spoken in Alghero ever since.
3.1 Linguistic peculiarities of Algueres
Since the end of the fi fteenth century – that is, since Sardinians were allowed into Alghero again
(Bosch 2002: 18; Budruni 1990: 58) –, and for almost fi ve hundred years, Catalan has been in
contact with Sardinian dialects. Subsequently, as is expected in similar situations, the linguistic
structure of Alguerès has been affected by the continual interactions between the two groups
of speakers (let alone that Alghero is the most isolated and most peripheral area within the
Catalan linguistic domain). The resulting new dialect is considered as the most distant and
most peculiar Catalan variety (Veny 1991b: 198; 1998: 559; 2001: 106), and the main linguistic
peculiarities can be summarized (following Corbera 2002) as follows: 4
• The phoneme /d/ never appears between vowels, as it has been replaced by /R/: codony
[ku:Rom] ([ku:Doø] or [ko:D ø]), vida [:viRa] ([:viDa]) ‘life’, roda [:r Ra] ([:r Da]) ‘wheel’.
• /d/ also becomes /R/ at the beginning of the word or between a vowel and a /R/, with a
later assimilation: dormir (> dromir) [ru:mi] ([duR:mi], [doR:mi], [doR:mir]) ‘to sleep’, pedra
[:pera] ([:peDRa]) ‘stone’.
• Etymological /l/ has been replaced by /R/ in the following positions: a) before a consonant
of the same syllable: planta [:pRanta] ([:plant«], [:planta]) ‘plant’; b) between vowels: calent
[ka:Rent] ([k«:lent]) ‘hot’.
• Etymological /R/ has been replaced by a /l/ before a consonant: germana [dZal:mana] ([Z«R:
man«]) ‘sister’.
• Neither /ø/ nor /€/ appear in fi nal position, as they have been replaced by either /n/, /m/
or /l/: any [:an] ([aø]) ‘year’, codony [ku:Rom], bell [bel] ([be€]) ‘nice’.
Those examples above are only a few of the phonological peculiarities of Alguerès (for a
more detailed account of linguistic features, see Bosch 2002: 139-170; Corbera 2002; and Veny
1991a: 102-118). Nevertheless, they are quite explicative of the numerous mismatches that
occur between the orthographic forms and their phonological realizations. The mismatches
per se, however, would not be a problem: the continual practice of the language in informal
occasions would (partially) neutralize writing-induced changes. 5 They become problematic as
Alguerès, in its colloquial form, is no longer widely spoken among the population: speakers in
the process of acquisition have mainly written forms to refer to, as the predominant language
in Alghero has clearly become Italian. So, they will reproduce sounds from written forms
without any (or with little) contact with the language naturally and spontaneously spoken, as
the sociolinguistic picture presented in the next section suggests.
To put it simple, the (new) speakers of Alguerès will most probably tend to associate, for
example, the grapheme d with the phoneme /d/, as this association occurs in positions other
than those outlined above: dolç [dols] ‘sweet’, dire (< diure) [:diRa] ‘to say’. But, most of all,
they will do so because they are highly familiarized with the Italian spelling system, where the
letter d is always represented by the phoneme /d/ (e.g., dormire /doR:miRe/ ‘to sleep’, cadere
4 The orthographic form will appear in italics followed by the pronunciation in Alguerès. Within brackets the most
common pronunciation(s) in the other Catalan dialects are shown.
5 However, it must be said that language is not even totally exent from writing-induced changes in those cases where it
is widely spoken in colloquial interactions. A generalized awareness of Latin spellings (e.g., CRUDO raw), for example,
may have resolved the variation in early medieval Spanish between crudo and crúo (Penny 2000: 195).
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