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Sorry to have caused a puzzlement to my co-enquirers. DN is, of course
(but not of Corse), quite right, and sound in his knowledge of the
Italianterritory. But first I must apologize for causing this by
presenting a quotation, not something I said myself. I'd rather
stir people up by, say, and original bit of word play than someone
else's presumed wisdom. In the instance this is from a set of
"proverbs" from a booklet printed in Sardinia at Casteddu in 1904.
I was quoting from memory "orally", and my spelling with K for
/k/ was due to the Master's (M. L. Wagner's) phonetic spelling.
Now the people of the island are putting together a common spelling
system to cover the many dialect etc that DN alludes to. They are
settling for "Chi" for the word in question, rathdf than "Ki" or
"Qui" as in modern French (Old French having been happy to use "Ki"
although not insistent on it.
Sard, like some other Romance languages, avoids starting wordw with
s plus a cononant, and precedes this with /i/ Spanish preferring
e before this "s impure". (Other places in Italy at times use i, and
one will hear "Per ischerzo" = "For fun", or "In iscuola" "at school"
Nor does Sard permit consonants at the end of a word followed by a
pause, and puts in an "echo vowel", repeating the last preceding
vowel. The final -u for masculines is also characteristic of Sard,
but some other versions of romance muddy these waters by changing
final -o to a -u, whereas Northern Sard maintains these original
-o sounds as in the first person singular of verbs. I'm quoting
the book I referred to for the final word, which I don't recall finding
elsewhere. "If you plant thorns, don't go barefoot.
Back in the summer of 1967 I too spent a night on the lovely Costa
Smeralda while "circimnavigating" the island in and Alfa. Since
several of our finest posters have been curious about this, I hope
our hawk leyed guardians will allow my explanation. And now, back
to the ball game!
John