Editing Sardinian language (section)

===Late modern period===
[[File:A Sardinian family while reading "L'Unione Sarda".jpg|thumb|A Sardinian family reading ''[[L'Unione Sarda]]'' ("The Sardinian Union"), a [[daily newspaper]] in the Italian language founded in 1889]]
At the dawn of the 20th century, Sardinian had remained an object of research almost only among the island's scholars, struggling to garner international interest and even more suffering from a certain marginalization in the strictly Italian sphere: one observes in fact "the prevalence of foreign scholars over Italian ones and/or the existence of fundamental and still irreplaceable contributions by non-Italian linguists".<ref name="centoquattordici">{{Cite book|author=Manlio Brigaglia|title=La Sardegna. La cultura popolare, l'economia, l'autonomia|volume=2|location=Cagliari|publisher=Edizioni Della Torre|year=1982|page=114}}</ref> Previously, Sardinian had been mentioned in a book by August Fuchs on [[irregular verbs]] in Romance languages ({{lang|de|Über die sogennannten unregelmässigen Zeitwörter in den romanischen Sprachen}}, Berlin, 1840) and, later, in the second edition of {{lang|de|Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen}} (1856–1860) written by [[Friedrich Christian Diez]], credited as one of the founders of Romance [[philology]].<ref name="centoquattordici" /> The pioneering research of German authors spurred a certain interest in the Sardinian language on the part of some Italian scholars, such as [[Graziadio Isaia Ascoli]] and, above all, his disciple Pier Enea Guarnerio, who was the first in Italy to classify Sardinian as a separate member of the Romance language family without subordinating it to the group of "Italian dialects", as was previously the custom in Italy.<ref name="centoquindici">{{Cite book|author=Manlio Brigaglia|title=La Sardegna. La cultura popolare, l'economia, l'autonomia|volume=2|location=Cagliari|publisher=Edizioni Della Torre|year=1982|page=115}}</ref> [[Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke]], an undisputed authority on Romance linguistics, published in 1902 an essay on Logudorese Sardinian from the survey of the [[condaghe]] of San Pietro di Silki ({{lang|de|Zur Kenntnis des Altlogudoresischen}}, in {{lang|de|Sitzungsberichte der kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaft Wien}}, Phil. Hist. Kl., 145), the study of which led to the initiation into Sardinian linguistics of the then university student [[Max Leopold Wagner]]: it is to the latter's activity that much of the twentieth-century knowledge and research of Sardinian in the phonetic, morphological and, in part, syntactic fields was generated.<ref name="centoquindici" />

During the mobilization for [[World War I]], the [[Italian Army]] compelled all people on the island that were "of Sardinian stock" ({{lang|it|di stirpe sarda}}<ref>{{cite book|author=Manlio Brigaglia|title=La Sardegna|volume=2. La cultura popolare, l'economia, l'autonomia|location=Cagliari|publisher=Edizioni Della Torre|year=1982|page=175}}</ref>) to enlist as Italian subjects and established the [[Brigata Sassari|Sassari Infantry Brigade]] on 1 March 1915 at [[Tempio Pausania]] and [[Sinnai]]. Unlike the other infantry brigades of Italy, Sassari's conscripts were only Sardinians (including many officers). It is currently the only unit in Italy with an anthem in a language other than Italian: ''Dimonios'' ("Devils"), which would be written in 1994 by Luciano Sechi; its title derives from the German-language ''Rote Teufel'' ("red devils"), by which they were popularly known among the troops of the [[Austro-Hungarian Army]]. [[Compulsory military service]] around this period played a role in language shift and is referred to by historian Manlio Brigaglia as "the first great mass "nationalization"" of the Sardinians.<ref name="brigaglia2017">{{cite book|author=Manlio Brigaglia |display-authors=etal |chapter=Un'idea della Sardegna|title=Storia della Sardegna|location=Cagliari|publisher=Edizioni della Torre|year=2017}}</ref> Nevertheless, similarly to [[Navajo language|Navajo]]-speaking service members in the United States during [[World War II]], as well as [[Quechua language|Quechua]] speakers during the [[Falklands War]],<ref>{{cite book |editor=Marita Kaiser |editor2=Federico Masini |editor3=Agnieszka Stryjecka |title=Competenza comunicativa: insegnare e valutare|place=Rome|publisher=Sapienza Università Editrice|page=49|year=2021}}</ref> native Sardinians were offered the opportunity to be recruited as [[code talkers]] to transmit tactical information in Sardinian over radio communications which might have otherwise run the risk of being gained by Austrian troops, since some of them hailed from Italian-speaking areas to which, therefore, the Sardinian language was utterly alien:<ref name="moschetto">{{cite web|url=https://www.treccani.it/magazine/lingua_italiana/speciali/grande_guerra/Toso.html|title=Moschetto e dialetto|author=Fiorenzo Toso|year=2014}}</ref> Alfredo Graziani writes in his [[war diary]] that "having learned that many of our phonograms were being intercepted, we adopted the system of communicating on the phone only in Sardinian, certain that in this way they would never be able to understand what one was saying".<ref>{{cite book|author=Alfredo Graziani|title=Fanterie sarde all'ombra del Tricolore|year=2003|place=Sassari|publisher=La Nuova Sardegna|page=257}}</ref> To avoid infiltration attempts by said Italophone troops, positions were guarded by Sardinian recruits from the Sassari Brigade who required anyone who came to them that they identify themselves first by proving they spoke Sardinian: "{{lang|sc|si ses italianu, faedda in sardu!}}".<ref>{{cite book|title=Storia della Brigata Sassari|year=1981|page=10|place=Sassari|publisher=Gallizzi}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=L'amarezza leggiadra della lingua. Atti del Convegno "Tonino Ledda e il movimento felibristico del Premio di letteratura 'Città di Ozieri'. Percorsi e prospettive della lingua materna nella poesia contemporanea di Sardegna": giornate di studio, Ozieri, 4–5–6 maggio 1995, Centro di documentazione e studio della letteratura regionale|year=1997|page=346}}</ref><ref name="moschetto" />

The Sardinian-born philosopher [[Antonio Gramsci]] commented on the Sardinian linguistic question while writing a letter to his sister Teresina; Gramsci was aware of the long-term ramifications of language shift, and suggested that Teresa let her son acquire Sardinian with no restriction, because doing otherwise would result in "putting his imagination into a straitjacket" as well as him ending up eventually "learning two jargons, and no language at all".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://leletteredalcarcere.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/lettera-n%c2%b0-23-26-marzo-1927-a-teresina/|title=lettera n° 23: 26 marzo 1927: a Teresina|work=Antonio Gramsci : le lettere dal carcere |date=13 November 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Alessandro Carlucci|title=Gramsci and Languages. Unification, Diversity, Hegemony|location=Leiden, Boston|publisher=Brill|year=2013|page=27}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.labarbagia.net/notizie/territorio/3686/gramsci-la-sardegna-la-lingua-sarda-le-tradizioni-popolari|title=Gramsci, la Sardegna, la lingua sarda, le tradizioni popolari|author=Francesco Casula|date=4 June 2013 |publisher=LaBarbagia.net}}</ref>

Coinciding with the year of the [[Irish War of Independence]], Sardinian autonomism re-emerged as an expression of the fighters' movement, coagulating into the [[Sardinian Action Party]] (PsdAz) which, before long, would become one of the most important players in the island's political life. At the beginning, the party would not have had strictly ethnic claims though, being the Sardinian language and culture widely perceived, in the words of Fiorenzo Toso, as "symbols of the region's [[underdevelopment]]".<ref name=Toso2008 />

The policy of forced assimilation culminated in the twenty years of the [[Italian fascism|Fascist regime]], which launched a campaign of violent repression of autonomist demands and finally determined the island's definitive entry into the "national cultural system" through the combined work of the educational system and the one-party system.<ref>"Il ventennio fascista segnò per la Sardegna l'ingresso nel sistema nazionale. Il centralismo esasperato del governo fascista riuscì, seppure – come si dirà – con qualche contraddizione, a tacitare le istanze regionalistiche, comprimendole violentemente. La Sardegna fu colonialisticamente integrata nella cultura nazionale: modi di vita, costumi, visioni generali, parole d'ordine politiche furono imposte sia attraverso la scuola (dalla quale partì un'azione repressiva nei confronti della lingua sarda), sia attraverso l'organizzazione del partito (che accompagnò, come in ogni altra regione d'Italia, i sardi dalla prima infanzia alla maturità, oltre tutto coinvolgendo per la prima volta – almeno nelle città – anche le donne). La trasformazione che ne seguì fu vasta e profonda." Guido Melis, ''La Sardegna contemporanea'', in {{cite book|author=Manlio Brigaglia|title=La Sardegna. La geografia, la storia, l'arte e la letteratura|volume=1|location=Cagliari|publisher=Edizioni Della Torre|year=1982|page=132}}</ref> Local cultural expressions were thus repressed, including Sardinia's festivals<ref>{{cite book|author=Giancarlo Deidda|year=1990|title=Folk festivals in Sardinia|publisher=Janus|location=Cagliari|page=7}}</ref> and improvised poetry competitions,<ref>{{cite book|author=Sergio Salvi|title=Le lingue tagliate. Storia delle minoranze linguistiche in Italia|location=Milano|publisher=Rizzoli|year=1974|page=191}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Massimo Pittau|title=Grammatica del sardo illustre: con la messa cristiana in lingua sarda|location=Sassari|publisher=C. Delfino|year=2005}} [http://www.pittau.it/Sardo/sardoillustre.html Premessa]</ref><ref>Marcel A. Farinelli, '''The invisible motherland? The Catalan-speaking minority in Sardinia and Catalan nationalism''', in: Studies on National Movements, 2 (2014), p. 15</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.manifestosardo.org/quando-a-scuola-si-insegnava-la-lingua-sarda/|title=Quando a scuola si insegnava la lingua sarda|work=Il Manifesto Sardo|date=2 January 2016 }}</ref><ref name="Remundu">{{cite web| url = http://www.sardegnacultura.it/j/v/253?s=23661&v=2&c=2767&c1=2797&t=1| title = ''Remundu Piras'', Sardegna Cultura| access-date = 17 February 2018| archive-date = 30 October 2020| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20201030105038/http://www.sardegnacultura.it/j/v/253?s=23661&v=2&c=2767&c1=2797&t=1}}</ref> and a large number of [[Sardinian surnames]] were changed to sound more Italian. An argument broke out between the Sardinian poet Antioco Casula (popularly known as ''Montanaru'') and the fascist journalist Gino Anchisi, who stated that "once the region is moribund or dead", which the regime declared to be,<ref group=note>Casula's reply to Anchisi, arguing in favour of Sardinian as the only means through which the island's "cultural reawakening" could be pursued, was never published in the newspaper [[L'Unione Sarda]], whose editorial staff properly censored it in accordance with the regime's directives. The newspaper then justified itself in the following way, in a personal letter addressed to Casula on 12 September: "Your article could not be published because part of it clearly exalts the region too much. This is absolutely forbidden by the current provisions of the Head of Government's press office, which specifically state: 'In no way and for no reason does the region exist'. We are very sorry. However, we would ask you to redo the article by simply talking about your poetry in dialect [''sic''] without touching on this dangerous subject!" {{cite web|url=https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3400254.pdf|author=Francesco Casula|title=Sa chistione de sa limba in Montanaru e oe|page=66}}</ref> "so will the dialect ''(sic)''", which was interpreted as "the region's revealing spiritual element";<ref>{{cite book|author=Francesco Atzeni|title=Mediterranea (1927–1935): politica e cultura in una rivista fascista|location=Cagliari|publisher=AM & D|year=2005|page=106}}</ref> in the wake of this debate, Anchisi managed to have Sardinian banned from the printing press, as well.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3400254.pdf|title=Casula, Francesco. ''Sa chistione de sa limba in Montanaru e oe''}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.regione.sardegna.it/messaggero/1982_dicembre_21.pdf|title=Masala, Francesco. ''Est torradu Montanaru'', Messaggero, 1982|access-date=19 June 2019|archive-date=14 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414040935/http://www.regione.sardegna.it/messaggero/1982_dicembre_21.pdf}}</ref> The significance of the Sardinian language as it was posed by Casula, in fact, lent itself to potentially subversive themes, being tied to the practices of cultural resistance of an indigenous ethnic group,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.manifestosardo.org/montanaru-e-la-lingua-sarda/|title=Montanaru e la lingua sarda|year=2019|website=Il Manifesto Sardo}}</ref> whose linguistic repertoire had to be introduced in school to preserve a "Sardinian personality" and regain "a dignity" perceived to have been lost in the process.<ref>"Il diffondere l'uso della lingua sarda in tutte le scuole di ogni ordine e grado non è per gli educatori sardi soltanto una necessità psicologica alla quale nessuno può sottrarsi, ma è il solo modo di essere Sardi, di essere cioè quello che veramente siamo per conservare e difendere la personalità del nostro popolo. E se tutti fossimo in questa disposizione di idee e di propositi ci faremmo rispettare più di quanto non-ci rispettino." {{cite book|author=Antioco Casula|title=Poesie scelte|publisher=Edizioni 3T|location=Cagliari|year=1982|page=35}}</ref> Another famed poet from the island, Salvatore (''Bore'') Poddighe, fell into a severe depression and took his own life a few years after his masterwork (''Sa Mundana Cummedia''<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.lophius.net/Cummun_en.pdf|title=Poddighe, Salvatore. ''Sa Mundana Cummedia'', bilingual version in Sardinian and English}}</ref>) had been seized by Cagliari's police commissioner.<ref>Poddighe, Salvatore. ''Sa Mundana Cummédia'', p. 32, Domus de Janas, 2009, {{ISBN|88-88569-89-8}}</ref> When the use of Sardinian in school was banned in 1934 as part of a nation-wide educational plan against the alloglot "dialects", the then Sardinian-speaking children were confronted with another means of communication that was supposed to be their own from then onwards.<ref>Bolognesi, Roberto. ''The Phonology of Campidanian Sardinian: A Unitary Account of a Self-organizing Structure'', 1998, 6</ref>

On a whole, this period saw the most aggressive cultural assimilation effort by the central government,<ref name="gruyter">"La politica di assimilazione culmina nel ventennio fascista, ma si protrae nel secondo dopoguerra, dove l'abbandono del sardo a favore dell'italiano viene favorito anche dalla crescente mobilità e dalla diffusione dei mass-media." {{cite book|author=Sergio Lubello|year=2016|title=Manuale Di Linguistica Italiana, Manuals of Romance linguistics|publisher=De Gruyter|page=499}}</ref> which led to an even further sociolinguistic degradation of Sardinian.<ref name="degruyter.com">{{Cite book|title=Manuale di linguistica sarda|year=2017 |author=Eduardo Blasco Ferrer |author2=Peter Koch |author3=Daniela Marzo |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton|page=36}}</ref> While the interior managed to at least partially resist this intrusion at first, everywhere else the regime had succeeded in thoroughly supplanting the local cultural models with new ones hitherto foreign to the community and compress the former into a "pure matter of folklore", marking a severance from the island's heritage that engendered, according to Guido Melis, "an identity crisis with worrying social repercussions", as well as "a rift that could no longer be healed through the generations".<ref>"Il prezzo che si pagò fu altissimo: la compressione della cultura regionale, la frattura sempre più netta tra il passato dei sardi e il loro futuro "italiano", la riduzione di modi di vita e di pensiero molto radicati a puro fatto di folklore. I codici di comportamento tradizionali delle zone interne resistettero, seppure insidiati e spesso posti in crisi dalla invasione di nuovi valori estranei alla tradizione della comunità; in altre zone della Sardegna, invece, i modelli culturali nazionali prevalsero facilmente sull'eredità del passato e ciò, oltre a provocare una crisi d'identità con preoccupanti riflessi sociali, segnò una frattura non più rimarginabile tra le generazioni." Guido Melis, ''La Sardegna contemporanea'', in {{cite book|author=Manlio Brigaglia|title=La Sardegna. La geografia, la storia, l'arte e la letteratura|volume=1|location=Cagliari|publisher=Edizioni Della Torre|year=1982|page=132}}</ref> This period is identified by Manlio Brigaglia as the second mass "nationalization" of the Sardinians, which was characterized by "a policy deliberately aiming at "Italianisation"" by means of, in his words, "a declared war" against the usage of the Sardinian language by fascism and the Catholic Church alike.<ref name="brigaglia2017" />

In 1945, following the restoration of political freedoms, the Sardinian Action Party called for autonomy as a federal state within the "new Italy" that had emerged from the [[Italian resistance movement|Resistance]]:<ref name=Toso2008 /> it was in the context of the second post-war period that, as consensus for autonomy kept growing, the party began to distinguish itself by policies based on Sardinia's linguistic and cultural specificity.<ref name=Toso2008 />

{{anchor|Current situation}}