Southern Romance languages
| Southern Romance | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Corsica, Sardinia, Roman Africa |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European |
| Subdivisions |
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| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | sout3158 |
Sardinia as part of the Southern Romance group in Europe | |
The Southern Romance languages are a primary branch of the Romance languages.
According to the classification of linguists such as Leonard (1980) and Agard (1984), the Southern Romance family is composed of Sardinian, Corsican, and the southern Lucanian dialects.
This theory is far from universally supported. In fact, the majority of linguists classify Corsican, including Gallurese and Sassarese as its dialects, as part of Italo-Dalmatian and closely related to Tuscan or the centro-southern Italian dialects, because of the island's considerable degree of tuscanization during the Middle Ages, leaving Sardinian as the only remaining representative of the branch once the African Romance dialects had gone extinct, unless the southern Lucanian dialects are also classified as part of this branch, as they show some important traits in common with Sardinian.