It's called Lemons and it's a project to bring together all the variants of Campidanese and Logudorese-Nuorese, in order to unify the Sardinian language and create a dictionary first, then a digital linguistic atlas .
It was born from the work of the Scientific College of s'Academia de su Sardu and is supported by the Fondazione di Sardegna.
At the moment it foresees the presentation of a digital platform intended for the insertion and collection of all the lemmas collected so far . It is a work of linguistic cohesion – it was explained during the official presentation at the Lazzaretto di Sant'Elia in Cagliari (the experts Massimo Madrigale, Stefano Cherchi, Andrea Picciau and Alessandra Pinna spoke among others) – which aims to bring together and simplify all the variants to arrive at selecting a single standard form to which each variant can be traced back .
Lemons means regulatory orthographic lemma, in Sardinian Lemariu.
«The need for this tool - Madrigale explained - arises from the fact that for centuries everyone wrote Sardinian without an orthographic standard, as best they could. This has fueled the false myth that Sardinian is a mysterious language, impossible to study and standardize, and that in Sardinia there is not and cannot exist a common language , because there are 377 different languages: as many as there are municipalities in the island".
Instead, Cherchi explained, analyzing the improvised poetry of the cantadoris, «it has been discovered that a supra-dialectal language is used which allows for a broad understanding» . Phenomenon that occurs for both macro-varieties of Sardinian: Campidanese and Logudorese-Nuorese.
«Our goal - say the experts - is to select a standard form of each word of the Sardinian language . This work will be extremely useful for anyone who wants to orient themselves in the remarkable and precious wealth of our language, for those who want to study it and to promote its use by institutions".
In 2024, when the project is completed, it will become the basis for the great dictionary of the Sardinian language . Final goal, as mentioned, the linguistic atlas of the Sardinian language , to be achieved in a decade.
An IT platform is already active that allows data management and processing, accessible on the sardu.wiki site (it is based on the same Wikipedia software). "A turning point under the banner of linguistic cohesion - said Pinna - and the original combination of study, research and digital innovation".
(Unioneonline/L)
