Dalmatian

Classification and Dialects
The Dalmatian language is spoken as an official language in Dalmatia and in the Dalmatian Commonwealth. It is a very conservative Balkan Romance language, since it has kept a greater part of the Latin grammar, and it has gained a lot of grammatical features and words due to the influence of the surrounding Slavic languages and the dead Illyrian languages.

Writing System

 * the digraph ea is pronounced /ja/ : mea (=my) /mja/
 * the digraph ia is pronounced /ja/ too, but only and mostly used for words of non-Latin origin : energia (=energy) /ɛnɛrgja/ (there are some exception like : viata = life /vjata/)
 * the digraph gh is pronounced /dʒ/ : merghem (=we drown) /mɛrdʒɛm/
 * the letters ă and î stand for the same schwa-sound /ə/ and are purely ethymological compared to the father language Latin : viată (=life; accusative singular - from Latin vitam) /vjatə/; înteleghere (=to understand - from Latin intellegere) /əntɛlɛdʒɛrɛ/
 * some words do a vowel elipse mark by an hyphen : il n-înteleghe (=he does not understand)
 * the letter ô marks the sound /o/ which cannot submit an elipse : il nô înteleghe (=he understands us - no elipse of the vowel, otherwise : il n-înteleghe = he does not understand)
 * the digraph oă is pronounced /oa/ : poărta (=door) /poarta/

Nouns
Nouns in Dalmatian decline depending of the case and being singular or plural. There are two declensions in Dalmatian. Dalmatian nouns can be masculine, feminine or neuter and add definiteness endings at the end of a word.

First Declension

 * the vocative case does not exist for nouns being definite (hence even in English you would not say : Oh the woman, listen to me!)
 * the vocative case is regular for the first declension, but its separate form only exists for animate nouns in the singular, as inanimate nouns and animated nouns just take their nominative form proceeded by the vocative interjection ô : Femei, odei me! (=Oh woman, listen to me!), but : Ô feme, odeiţe me! (=Oh women, listen to me! - plural animate noun) or : Ô cusiliu, mînstraraşt nă mi via? (=Oh advice, will you show me the road? - inanimate noun)

Second declension

 * the vocative case is highly irregular for the second declension and there is no fix rule for it, but its separate form only exists for animate nouns in the singular, as inanimate nouns and animated nouns just take their nominative form proceeded by the vocative interjection ô : Duçiei, odei me! (=Oh boss, listen to me!), but :  Ô duçe, odeiţe me! (=Oh bosses, listen to me! - plural animate noun) or : Ô flumenă, mînstraraşt nă mi via? (=Oh river, will you show me the road? - inanimate noun)
 * nouns of the second declension may have a variable stem inherited from Latin as : flume (nominative singular), flumen- (stem for all other cases and the nominative plural)
 * nouns of the first and second declension may undergo a palatilzation of their last consonant of their stem, if the consonant is preceeded by a vowel and the vowel following the consonant is e, i, or even the diphtong ea as : d u çe (second declension; originary : duc), vi a ţe (first declension; originary : viata). But the palatilization just applies to c, t and g changing to ç, ţ and gh
 * masculine and neuter nouns add an u to their nominative singular stem before the -l, if their stem ends in a vowel, otherwise they just keep the vowel of the nominative singular stem as : du c ul, but : flum e l

Cases

 * the nominative case is used to mark the subject or attribute of the verbs esse (=to be) and fieri (=to become) : Băiatul vedi fema. (=The boy saw the woman. - subject) or : Băiatul eri înghenor. (=The boy will be engineer. - attribute of esse) or : Băiatul vre fieri doctor. (=The boy wants to become a doctor. - attribute of fieri)
 * the vocative case is used to mark interjections : Marçei, cupărai lacte! (=Marcus, buy milk!)
 * the accusative case is used to mark the direct object and is used after some prepositions : Femea vede omenele. (=The woman sees the man. - dierct object) or : Irăm a forul odie. (=I will go to the shop today. - preposition followed by the accusative)
 * the dative case is used to mark the indirect object and is used after some prepositions : Femea da omeneile dare. (=The woman gives the man a gift. - indirect object) or : Irăm cu sororei mei în parcul odie. (=I will go with my sister to the park today. - preposition followed by the dative)