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/