Deus ti salvet, Maria

I came across a religious song in Sardinian that prompted me to write for the first time about this language, not often brought up, otherwise. Material in a minority language such as Sardinian is scarce, unfortunately, so every bit available is always welcome and helpful.

Personally, I haven't delved very much into the minority Romance languages because my goal has always been to be able to master the major Neo-Latin tongues (see here), and I'm able to understand the rest without much trouble. And such is the case with the various "dialects" in Italy. "Dialects" in quotation marks because, even though that's the name given by Italians to these regional idioms, they are not dialects of the standard Italian language, but of Latin itself. Therefore, Sardinian is among many Latin dialects spoken within the boundaries of the Italian nation.
Yes, minority languages is the right term.

With each Romance language, I imagine a Roman speaking a form of Latin. I imagine this Roman in different times and spaces, each influenced by different factors, giving flavor to his own form of Latin — that is precisely the history of the Romance languages, as we know them. Each variety of Romance is a window to the evolution of Latin; and, Sardinian offers quite a unique view.
To understand Sardinian, a knowledge of Italian is almost enough. Knowledge of Italian, plus Spanish and Catalan, and you're able to understand most of it. Add Latin to your language collection, and you reach a high degree of intelligibility.

Deus ti salvet, Maria - Maria Carta

Deus ti salvet, Maria,
chi ses de grassias piena;
de grassias ses sa vena e sa currente.

Su Deus Onnipotente
cun tecus est'istadu;
pro chi t'hat preservadu immaculada.

Beneitta e laudada
supra totus gloriosa,
ses mamma, fiza e isposa de su Segnore.

Beneittu su fiore,
fruttu de su sinu;
Gesus, fiore Divinu, Segnore nostru.

Pregade a fizu bostru
pro nois peccadoris,
chi totus sos errores nos perdonet.

Ei sas grassias nos donet,
in vida e in sa morte,
e sa dizzosa sorte, in Paradisu.

The title of the song in Sardinian is almost identical to its equivalent in Latin. We see in it the conservation of the final -t in third person verbal forms, and, at the same time, the jussive subjunctive. The tile would be very similar in the rest of Romance, also.

Latin	DEUS TE SALVET
Sardinian	Deus ti salvet
Portuguese	Deus te salve
Spanish	Dios te salve
Italian	Dio ti salvi
French	Que Dieu te sauve
Romanian	Dumnezeu (să) te salveze

Some interesting characteristics of Sardinian that we can gather from the song:

• Masculine nouns, for the most part, end in -u, reminiscent of the Latin accusative ending -um, and, particularly, of older forms of Romanian, which preserved this final vowel in writing up until a spelling reform suppressed them with few exceptions, i.e. Lat. TOTUS, Sard. totu, Older Rom. totŭ (Modern spelling tot); but, Lat. NOSTRUM, Sard. nostru, Modern Rom. nostru.
• The form cun tecus is analogous to the Portuguese and Spanish contigo, coming directly from the Vulgar Latin *CUM TECUM, cf. Modern It. con te from Latin *CUM TE.
• The line pro nois peccatoris is almost identical to its Latin counterpart, PRO NOBIS PECCATORIBUS, a line found in the Latin version of the Ave Maria.

Not directly from the song, but it is interesting to see that quite a few sound changes in Sardinian turned out the same in Romanian. This allows for comparisons of the type I most often make between Spanish and Portuguese. For instance, Latin LINGUA gives both Sardinian and Romanian limba, and, from Latin ACQUA, we see àba in Sardinian, and apă in Romanian.

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In the end, Sardinian is yet another branch of Latin — an interesting one at that, just like Romanian and all the others. Unfortunately, because it is a minority language that doesn't enjoy the international (or even national) prestige that the major languages have, it lacks a truly unified standard. With this, we arrive at a similar situation than what we encounter with Occitan, for instance, or Romansh: to genuinely master the language, one would have to move to the locality, and, besides that, get the locals to speak with you in this language. Like other minority languages as well, there are movements to encourage its study and use in Sardinia, so, while the resources are few, they are out there. In writing this post, I came across several of these, some of which I list below.

• Sa Limba Sarda — a Sardinian grammar in Sardinian. Very useful, uses Italian as a linguistic reference for most concepts, as one would expect. So, indeed, studying Sardinian would almost make knowing Italian a prequisite.
• Ditzionàriu — Sardinian online dictionary. Available in Sardinian, Italian, French, and English.
• T.S. Elliot in Sardinian —  Outstanding translation work that includes Sa Terra Desolada ("The Waste Land"): Abrile est su mese prus cruele, faghet bessire su lillà da sa terra dormida... ("April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land...").