3. Corsican.— If it were not for its geo graphical position, it would be better to place it in this group between 1 and 2, but it has also very close relations vith the Ligurian dialect, and naturally as we go further south it comes closer to the Sardinian tongues.
C. Southern Continental Italy.— Tyrrhenian Group, or Neapolitan, which extends to the other slope with Molise. The final vowel de termines the accented vowel, but this final vowel which at one time had to be u or o, i and e, is now restricted uniformly to an e, which we will call short or vanishing: ome from omo, man, uomene from uomeni; parente, plural pariente ; Porte from porto, I carry, but puorte for ports; negra but nigre, black and black, sposa but spuse, bridegroom and bride grooms. We pass over the fact that it has besides nn from nd, etc., and also nd from nt, nib, rig from rnp, nc, but everyone knows never theless the characteristic types chiane and sciure for the Italian piano, fiore, which con tinue in Sicilian, chianu, sciuri (also in Genoa, cian, sciu); and finally that splendid example of synectic phonetics 'nu vvase un bacio (a kiss), or a bbascio, etc.
2. Adriatic Groups.— Types of the Abruzzi, which comprehend the Capitanata. The foun dation is the Neapolitan type, but th examples of the modification of the vowels are more than ever varied and complicated, and the accented vowels disguise themselves become diph thongs in the most singular manner. Here, as in Sicily, the accenting of the sentence plays an important part, so that the tonic vowel is treated as being weak, if the accent of the en tire phrase is not placed upon it.
D. Sicily, with which we will unite Cala bria: some of their peculiar traits extend to Terra d'Otranto. The consonants are often treated as in Neapolitan, but nevertheless dis play their own peculiarities. But the Sicilian type has its own peculiar forms for the vowels especially; for instance, in place of the closed e or closed o of the Italian and the Romance tongues it employs an i or a u; pitu, pelo, suli, sole. As for the diphthongs ie, uo, they depend rather upon the accent of the sentence rather than that of the individual words. (See C, 2).
E. Sardinia.— The language of Sardinia can be considered as a type by itself, at least as much as the Ladino. Here Dante expressed the truth very delightfully: qui non Latini Italiani) sunt, sed Latinis adsociandi videntur.' (((The Sardinians are not Latins
but are to be grouped with the Latinsp). The most unmixed type of Sardinian, and hence the furthest removed from the Italian, is that of Logudorese or the dialect of the central part, to which nevertheless the southern or Campidanese dialect is very closely connected; on the contrary, we are far removed with the Gallurese which forms an intermediate passage from Sardinian to Corsican, and hence to Italian; and it is a most excellent ex ample of the rapidity with which, in so short a geographical space, one linguistical type can be joined to another absolutely dif ferent, and also of the uncertain and arbitrary character of each classification. Characteristics fundamentally Sardinian, which distinguish it from all the other Romance tongues: It pre serves intact the quality of the Latin tonic vowels, that is, each e, i, o, u, is here preserved as e, i, o, u; fide, instead of fede, ruge, croce; no fusion, therefore, of the long e and the short i, of the long o and the short u; and, moreover, no diphthongs. In the consonants, it is most noteworthy that the Logudorese pre serve intact the guttural pronunciation of the Latin ke, ki, kelu, cielo (sky) ; although prob ably the course is only like the Sardinian dialect, after having inherited from the Latin vulgate, like all the other Romance tongues, a ke ki somewhat influenced by the palate, did not go any further in that direction; and, in short, at a relatively late date, that is, toward about the 19th century the Sardinian tongue lost also the above-mentioned traces of the palatal pronunciation of the Latin vulgate. As an instance which connects the Sardinian dis trict with the Iberian, which has the effect of giving it a certain right to be considered as common ground of transition between the east ern Roman group (Rumanin, Dalmatic, Ital ian), and the western (Ladino, French, Spanish), and especially of the transition from Italian to Spanish; the Sardinian preserves intact, in the very same way as the Spanish, the final s of the Latin; for instance, firm= figlio (son), (sons), that is fair's. As an article the Sardinian has adopted SU, from ipse, rather than a derivative from ille.