Corsican (endonym: corsu [ˈkorsu], [ˈkɔrsu]; full name: lingua corsa [ˈliŋɡwa ˈɡorsa], [ˈliŋɡwa ˈɡɔrsa]) is a Romance language consisting of the continuum of the Italo-Dalmatian dialects spoken on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, France, and in the northern regions of the island of Sardinia, Italy, located due south.

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Corsican
corsu, lingua corsa
Pronunciation	[ˈkorsu], [ˈkɔrsu]
Native to	France Italy
Region	Corsica Sardinia (Maddalena archipelago)
Ethnicity	Corsicans
Native speakers	150,000 in Corsica (2013)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Romance Italo-Western Italo-Dalmatian Italo-Romance Tuscan Corsican
Dialects	Northern Corsican Southern Corsican Gallurese[lower-alpha 1] Sassarese[lower-alpha 1] Central Corsican Capraiese (semi-corsican dialect) [extinct] Castellanese
Writing system	Latin script (Corsican alphabet)
Official status
Recognised minority language in	France ( Corsica)
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	co
ISO 639-2	cos
ISO 639-3	cos – Corsican
Glottolog	cors1241  Corsican sass1235  Sassarese Sardinian
ELP	Corsican
Linguasphere	51-AAA-p
Linguistic map of Corsica
Corsican is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
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Corsica, the island proper, is situated approximately 123.9 km (77.0 miles; 66 nautical miles) off the western coast of Tuscany; as such, the Corsican language is related to varieties of Tuscan, from that region of the Italian peninsula, and thus also to Florentine-based standard Italian.

Under the long-standing influence of Tuscany's Pisa, and the historic Republic of Genoa, over Corsica, the Corsican language once filled the role of a vernacular (in-combination with Italian), functioning as the island's official language until France acquired the island from the Republic of Genoa (1768); by 1859, French had replaced Italian as Corsica's first language so much so that, by the time of the Liberation of France (1945), nearly every islander had at least a working-knowledge of French. The 20th century saw a vast language shift, with the islanders adapting and changing their communications to the extent that there were no monolingual Corsican-speakers left by the 1960s. By 1995, an estimated 65% of islanders had some degree of proficiency in Corsican,^[2] and a minority of around 10% used Corsican as a first language.^[3]

Corsican is classed as a regional language under French law. It is almost universally agreed that Corsican is typologically and traditionally Italo-Romance,^[4] but its specific position therein is more controversial. Some scholars argue that Corsican belongs to the Centro-Southern Italian dialects,^[5] while others are of the opinion that it is closely related to, or as part of, Italy's Tuscan dialect varieties.^{[6][7][8][9][10]} Italian and the dialects of Corsican (especially Northern Corsican) are in fact very mutually intelligible. Southern Corsican, in spite of the geographical proximity, has as its closest linguistic neighbour not Sardinian (a separate group with which it is not mutually intelligible), but rather the Extreme Southern Italian dialects like Siculo-Calabrian.^[11] It has been theorised, on the other hand, that a Sardinian variety, or a variety very similar to Sardo-Romance, might have been originally spoken in Corsica prior to the island's Tuscanisation under Pisan and Genoese rule.^{[12][13][14][15]}

The matter is controversial in light of the historical, cultural and particularly strong linguistic bonds that Corsica had traditionally formed with the Italian Mainland from the Middle Ages until the 19th century: in contrast to the neighbouring Sardinia,^[16] Corsica's installment into a diglossic system with Italian as the island's prestige language ran so deep that both Corsican and Italian might be even, and in fact were, perceived as two sociolinguistic levels of a single language.^[17][18] Corsican and Italian traditionally existed on a spectrum, and the dividing lines between them were blurred enough that the locals needed little else but a change of register to communicate in an official setting. "Tuscanising" their tongue, or as the Corsican elites would have once said, parlà in crusca ("speaking in crusca", from the name of the Academy dedicated to the standardisation of the Italian language),^[19] allowed for a practice not of code-switching, but rather of code-mixing which is quite typical of the Mainland Italian dialects.^[20] Italian was perceived as different from Corsican, but not as much as the differences between the two main isoglosses of Northern and Southern Corsican, as spoken by their respective native speakers.^[21] When Pasquale Paoli found himself exiled in London, he replied to Samuel Johnson's query on the peculiar existence of a "rustic language" very different from Italian that such a language existed only in Sardinia; in fact, the existence of Corsican as the island's native vernacular did not take anything away from Paoli's claims that Corsica's official language was Italian.^[19]

Today's Corsican is the result of these historical vicissitudes, which have morphed the language to an idiom that bears a strong resemblance to the medieval Tuscan once spoken at the time of Dante and Boccaccio, and still existing in peripheral Tuscany (Lucca, Garfagnana, Elba, Capraia).^[22] The correspondence of modern Corsican to ancient Tuscan can be seen from almost any aspect of the language, ranging from the phonetics, morphology, lexicon to the syntax.^[22] One of the characteristics of standard Italian is the retention of the -re infinitive ending, as in Latin mittere "send"; such infinitival ending is lost in Tuscan as well as Corsican, resulting in the outcome mette / metta, "to put". Whereas the relative pronoun in Italian for "who" is chi and "what" is che/(che) cosa, it is an uninflected chì in Corsican. The only unifying, as well as distinctive, feature which separates the Corsican dialects from the mainland Tuscan ones, with the exception of Amiatino, Pitiglianese, and Capraiese, is the retention of word-final o-u.^[23] For example, the Italian demonstrative pronouns questo "this" and quello "that" become in Corsican questu or quistu and quellu or quiddu: this feature was also typical of the early Italian texts during the Middle Ages.

Even after the acquisition of Corsica by Louis XV, Italian continued to be the island's language of education, literature, religion and local affairs. The affluent youth still went to Italy to pursue higher studies. (It has been estimated that Corsican presence in Pisa amounted to a fourth of the University's total student body in 1830.) Local civil registers continued to be written in Italian until 1855; it was on May 9, 1859 that Italian was replaced by French as the island's official language,^[24] although the latter would start to take root among the islanders from 1882 onwards, through the Jules Ferry laws aimed at spreading literacy across the French provinces.^[25] Even so, a specifically homegrown Corsican (rather than Italian) literature in Corsica only developed belatedly and, in its earliest phase, there were no autonomous cultural instances;^[26] Corsican writers, such as Salvatore Viale, even prided themselves on their affiliation to the broader Italian sphere, considering Corsican "one of the lowest, impure dialects of Italy".^[27]

It was the Italian Fascist aggressive claims to the island in the 20th century, followed by their invasion, that provoked a popular backlash, estranging the native islanders from standard Italian and, if anything, only accelerated their shifting to the French even further.^[28] By the Liberation of France, any previously existing link between the two linguistic varieties and with Italy altogether had been severed; any promotion of Corsican, which had been politicized by the local collaborators with the regime, would be met with popular criticism and even suspicion of potentially harboring irredentist sentiments.^[29] From then on, Corsican would grow independently of Italian to become, later in the 1970s, a centerpiece of the Riacquistu ("reacquisition") movement for the rediscovery of Corsican culture. Nationalist calls for Corsican to be put on the same footing as French led the French National Assembly, in 1974, to extend the 1951 Deixonne Law, which initially recognized only a few languages (Breton, Basque, Catalan and Occitan),^[30] to including Corsican as well, among others, not as a dialect of Italian, but as one of France's full-fledged regional languages.(See governmental support.)

The common relationship between Corsica and central Italy can be traced from as far back as the Etruscans, who asserted their presence on the island in as early as 500 BC.^[31] In 40 AD, the natives of Corsica reportedly did not speak Latin. The Roman exile, Seneca the Younger, reported that both coast and interior were occupied by natives whose language he was not able to understand. More specifically, Seneca claimed that the island's population was the result of the stratification of different ethnic groups, such as the Greeks, the Ligures (see the Ligurian hypothesis) and the Iberians, whose language had long since stopped being recognizable among the population due to the intermixing of the other two groups.^[32] The occupation of the island by the Vandals around the year 469 marked the end of authoritative influence by Latin speakers. (See Medieval Corsica.) If the natives of that time spoke Latin, they must have acquired it during the late empire.^{[citation needed]}

Modern Corsican has been influenced by the languages of the major powers taking an interest in Corsican affairs; earlier by those of the medieval Italian powers, such as the Papal States (828–1077), the Republic of Pisa (1077–1282) and the Republic of Genoa (1282–1768), and finally by France which, since 1859, has promulgated the official Parisian French. The term "gallicised Corsican" refers to the evolution of Corsican starting from about the year 1950, whereas "distanciated Corsican" refers to an idealized variety of Corsican following linguistic purism, by means of removing any French-derived elements.^[33]

The situation of Corsican with regard to French as the country's national language is analogous to that of many other French regions and provinces, which have or used to have a traditional language of their own, even though the islanders' switch from their local idiom to regional French has happened relatively later and the presence of Corsican, albeit declining, is still strongly felt among the population.^[37] In 1980, about 70 percent of the island's population "had some command of the Corsican language."^[38] In 1990, out of a total population of about 254,000, the percentage had declined to 50 percent, with 10 percent of the island's residents using it as a first language.^[3] The language appeared to be in serious decline when the French government reversed its unsupportive stand and initiated some strong measures to save it.

The January 2007 estimated population of Corsica was 281,000, whereas the figure for the March 1999 census, when most of the studies—though not the linguistic survey work referenced in this article—were performed, was about 261,000. Only a fraction of the population at either time spoke Corsican with any fluency.

According to an official survey run on behalf of the Territorial Collectivity of Corsica which took place in April 2013, in Corsica, the Corsican language had a number of speakers between 86,800 and 130,200, out of a total population amounting to 309,693 inhabitants.^[39] 28% of the overall population was able to speak Corsican well, whilst an additional 14% had a capacity to speak it "quite well." The percentage of those who had a solid oral understanding of the language varies between a minimum of 25 percent in the 25–34 age group and the maximum of 65 percent in the over-65 age group: almost a quarter of the former age group reported that they were not able to understand Corsican, while only a small minority of the older people did not understand it.^[39] While 32 percent of the population of Northern Corsica was reported to speak Corsican quite well, this percentage dropped to 22 percent for Southern Corsica.^[39] Moreover, 10 percent of the population of Corsica spoke only French, while 62 percent code-switched between French and at least some Corsican.^[39] 8 percent of the Corsicans knew how to write correctly in Corsican, while about 60 percent of the population did not know how to write in Corsican.^[39] While 90 percent of the population was in favor of a Corsican-French bilingualism, 3 percent would have liked to have only Corsican as the official language in the island, and 7 percent would have preferred French to have this role.^[39]

UNESCO classifies Corsican as a "definitely endangered language."^[40] The Corsican language is a key vehicle for Corsican culture, which is notably rich in proverbs and in polyphonic song.

When the French Assembly passed the Deixonne Law in 1951, which made it possible for regional languages to be taught at school, Alsatian, Flemish and Corsican were not included on the ground of being classified as dialectes allogènes of German, Dutch and Italian respectively,^[41] i.e. dialects of foreign languages and not languages in themselves.^[42] Only in 1974 were they too politically recognized as regional languages for their teaching on a voluntary basis.

The 1991 Joxe Statute, in setting up the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, also provided for the Corsican Assembly, and charged it with developing a plan for the optional teaching of Corsican. The University of Corsica Pasquale Paoli at Corte, Haute-Corse took a central role in the planning.^[43]

At the primary school level Corsican is taught up to a fixed number of hours per week (three in the year 2000) and is a voluntary subject at the secondary school level,^[44] but is required at the University of Corsica. It is available through adult education. It can be spoken in court or in the conduct of other government business if the officials concerned speak it. The Cultural Council of the Corsican Assembly advocates for its use, for example, on public signs.

In 2023, in a judgement initiated by local prefect and going in opposite direction of recent trends, usage of the Corsican language in French public offices and the regional parliament was legally banned, the existence of the "Corsican people" was also deemed unconstitutional.^[45]

According to the anthropologist Dumenica Verdoni, writing new literature in modern Corsican, known as the Riacquistu, is an integral part of affirming Corsican identity.^[46] Some individuals have returned from careers in continental France to write in Corsican, including Dumenicu Togniotti, director of the Teatru Paisanu, which produced polyphonic musicals, 1973–1982, followed in 1980 by Michel Raffaelli's Teatru di a Testa Mora, and Saveriu Valentini's Teatru Cupabbia in 1984.^[47] Modern prose writers include Alanu di Meglio, Ghjacumu Fusina, Lucia Santucci, and Marcu Biancarelli.^[48]

There were writers working in Corsican in the 1700s and 1800s.^[49]

Ferdinand Gregorovius, a 19th-century traveller and enthusiast of Corsican culture, reported that the preferred form of the literary tradition of his time was the vocero, a type of polyphonic ballad originating from funeral obsequies. These laments were similar in form to the chorales of Greek drama except that the leader could improvise. Some performers were noted at this, such as the 1700s Mariola della Piazzole and Clorinda Franseschi.^[50] However, the trail of written popular literature of known date in Corsican currently goes no further back than the 17th century.^[51] An undated corpus of proverbs from communes may well precede it (see under External links below). Corsican has also left a trail of legal documents ending in the late 12th century. At that time the monasteries held considerable land on Corsica and many of the churchmen were notaries.

Between 1200 and 1425 the monastery of Gorgona, which belonged to the Order of Saint Benedict for much of that time and was in the territory of Pisa, acquired about 40 legal papers of various sorts related to Corsica. As the church was replacing Pisan prelates with Corsican ones there, the legal language shows a transition from entirely Latin through partially Latin and partially Corsican to entirely Corsican. The first known surviving document containing some Corsican is a bill of sale from Patrimonio dated to 1220.^[52] These documents were moved to Pisa before the monastery closed its doors and were published there. Research into earlier evidence of Corsican is ongoing.

Corsican is written in the standard Latin script, using 21 of the letters for native words. The letters j, k, w, x, and y are found only in foreign names and French vocabulary. The digraphs and trigraphs chj, ghj, sc and sg are also defined as "letters" of the alphabet in its modern scholarly form (compare the presence of ch or ll in the old Spanish alphabet) and appear respectively after c, g and s.

The primary diacritic used is the grave accent, indicating word stress when it is not penultimate. In scholarly contexts, disyllables may be distinguished from diphthongs by use of the diaeresis on the former vowel (as in Italian and distinct from French and English). In older writing, the acute accent is sometimes found on stressed ⟨e⟩, the circumflex on stressed ⟨o⟩, indicating respectively (/e/) and (/o/) phonemes.

Corsican has been regarded as a dialect of Italian historically, similar to the Romance lects developed on the Italian peninsula, and in writing, it also resembles Italian (with the generalised substitution of -u for final -o and the articles u and a for il/lo and la respectively; however, both the dialect of Cap Corse and Gallurese retain the original articles lu and la). On the other hand, the phonemes of the modern Corsican dialects have undergone complex and sometimes irregular phenomena depending on phonological context, so the pronunciation of the language for foreigners familiar with other Romance languages is not straightforward.

• Corsican Wikipedia
• Gallurese dialect
• Languages of France
• Sassarese language