Italo-Dalmatian languages

The Italo-Dalmatian languages is one of the two branches with which the authors of Ethnologue classify the Western Romance languages. The group is made up of the Italo-Romance languages along with Dalmatian and Istrian. These languages do not form a valid phylogenetic unit, there are no isoglosses or grammatical aspects that unite the Italo-Romance, Dalmatian and Istrian languages. Dalmatian shares isoglosses and grammatical features with the Balco-Romanian languages, which is why they would be more closely related to these languages and in fact has traditionally been classified as closer to Balco-Romanian, and Istrian seems to have more similar characteristics to the Gallo-Italic languages, especially with the veneto

Languages

Ethnologue considers that the Italo-Dalmatian languages can be grouped into seven broad languages or dialect groups:

• Dalmatism:
  • Dalmatian or Dalmatic (Croatia)
  • Istriano (Croatia)
• Italorromance
  • Central American Judeo-Italian (Italy)
  • Italian (Italy)
  • Romanesco (Italy)
  • Napolitano (Italy)
  • Sicily (Italy)

Classification

The Italo-Dalmatian group is often classified in various ways and there is no global consensus on their parentage. The most accepted theories about its classification are:

• 1- The one that classifies it as a group of Eastern Romance languages. Linguistically the Dalmatian and the italorromance languages share the isoglosas of the south and east of the Massa-Senigallia Line.
• 2- Classify them together with the western Romance languages forming an Iolo-Western nail. This option is followed by Ethnologue.
• 3- Classify the italian and Dalmatian languages separated into the Eastern Romance languages and the istrian as part of the Western Romance languages. On the other hand, italorromances and Dalmatian languages, together with the Balcorruman languages, retain more intervocálic deaf occlusives (p, k, t) and the palatalization of the groups (ci, ce) did (t PREMIUM) and (ti, te) did (ts). Instead, the istriano smiles or loses (p, k, t) intervocálicas and its palatalization of (ci, ce, ti, te) gives rise to one (s, z), two typical features of the western romance languages.
• 4- Leave the Dalmatian and the istrian as unclassifiable languages within the romance languages.