Sardinian Alphabet & Letters

Sardinian, sa limba sarda, is the Romance language of the island of Sardinia (Sardigna). It is written in the Latin alphabet with a small, native set of letters: A B C D E F G H I J L M N O P R S T U V X Z. K, Q, W and Y are outside the common LSC alphabet; LSC replaces q with c, as in cuadru for Italian quadro.

Two letters set it apart from Italian at a glance. J is a living letter for the y sound: maju (May), eja (yes), ajò! (come on, let’s go). X writes the zh sound of the s in English pleasure, above all in the southern, Campidanese variety: luxi (light), boxi (voice), where the north says lughe and boghe. CLDR’s main list of Sardinian letters leaves x out (it appears only in the auxiliary set), in line with the common LSC standard, but Campidanese writing uses it all the time, so it is on this page.

The only marked letters are the five vowels with a grave accent: à è ì ò ù, and their capitals À È Ì Ò Ù. They are not separate letters for sorting; ò sits with o, ù with u.

Sardinian accents: à è ì ò ù and where the stress falls

Italian writes an accent almost only on a final stressed vowel. Sardinian writes it much more often, because it marks the stress whenever a reader could not guess it. That covers words stressed on the last syllable, like ajò, and, very often, words stressed on the third syllable from the end: the days sàbadu (Saturday), domìniga (Sunday), chenàbura (Friday) and mèrcuris (Wednesday), or bènnidos in bene bènnidos (welcome).

Words that end in a vowel group get one too, so that the stress is not read on the i or u: ghennàrgiu (January), freàrgiu (February), giòbia (Thursday), gràtzias (thank you). The standard spelling uses the grave for every vowel, without the Italian distinction between è and é; capitals keep the mark, as in SÀBADU or NÙGORO.

Sardinian letters and their sounds: ch, gh, tz, dd, j and x

Ch and gh keep c and g hard before e and i, as in Italian: chenàbura (Friday), ghennàrgiu (January), nuraghe, the Bronze Age stone towers found all over the island. Northern Sardinian is famous for keeping the hard k of Latin where Italian softened it: chentu (hundred) from Latin centum, said with a k.

Tz is the ts sound: martzu (March), gràtzias. A double dd is a heavy d made with the tongue curled back, the retroflex sound heard in Casteddu, the Sardinian name of Cagliari, and caddu (horse). J is always the y of English yes, and x the zh of pleasure.

Many words end in -u, and plurals end in -s, unlike Italian: su nuraghe, sos nuraghes; sa limba, sas limbas. The articles are su and sa, plural sos and sas in the north and is in the south, and they may lose their vowel before another one; the LSC standard marks only certain elisions with an apostrophe, as in s’àtera (the other one).

How to type Sardinian letters: à è ì ò ù

Windows: hold Alt and type on the number pad à 0224, è 0232, ì 0236, ò 0242, ù 0249, and for the capitals À 0192, È 0200, Ì 0204, Ò 0210, Ù 0217; « is 0171 and » 0187. The Italian keyboard used in Sardinia has keys for the small à è ì ò ù, but not for the capitals, so use the Alt codes for those. On the United States-International layout type ` and then the vowel.

Mac: press Option + ` and then the vowel (with Shift for a capital), or hold the vowel key and pick the grave form from the pop-up. Phones: long-press a, e, i, o or u. In HTML write à, è, ì, ò and ù. Or copy any letter straight from the grid on this page.

Where Sardinian is spoken, and Sardinian vs Italian and Latin

Sardinian is spoken on Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy 🇮🇹, and by Sardinians who have moved away. CLDR estimates around 1 million speakers, all counted in Italy; other estimates vary a great deal with how fluency is measured. Italian law has recognised Sardinian as a minority language since 1999, and its speakers are the largest linguistic minority in the country. Sardinia pays in euros, and CLDR’s Sardinian data writes the sign after the number: 20,00 €.

Sardinian has two main groups of varieties, Logudorese in the centre-north and Campidanese in the south, which is why many words have two forms (lughe and luxi). In 2006 the regional government adopted the Limba Sarda Comuna (LSC), a common written standard, for its own documents. Not everything spoken on the island is Sardinian: Gallurese and Sassarese in the north are close to Corsican, Alghero speaks a variety of Catalan, and Carloforte and Calasetta speak Tabarchino, a form of Ligurian.

Sardinian is a Romance language of its own, not a dialect of Italian, and an Italian speaker understands little of it without study. It is often called the living language closest to Latin, because it kept sounds and words that its sisters changed: domo (house, Latin domus), janna (door, Latin ianua), chentu with its hard k. Compare it with our Italian Accents & Letters, Catalan Alphabet & Accents, Ligurian Alphabet & Letters, Neapolitan Alphabet & Letters and Spanish Accent Marks & Letters, and see Italy Emoji & Symbols for the country.