Corsican language

Corsican (corsu, pronounced [ˈkorsu], or lingua corsa, pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa ˈɡorsa]) is a Romance language of the Italo-Romance group, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, a territory of France, and in the northern part of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Its northern varieties result from an intense medieval Tuscanisation and are closely related to, and largely mutually intelligible with, Standard Italian, whereas its southern varieties preserve features of an older stratum shared with Sardinian and show affinities with the Extreme Southern Italian dialects. On the sociolinguistic level, since the 1970s Corsican has increasingly been treated as an autonomous language in its own right rather than an Italian dialect, a status captured by the notion of polynomic language developed by Jean-Baptiste Marcellesi. 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, 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, and a minority of around 10% used Corsican as a first language.