Hello everybody!
Does anybody know what is the modern dialect or language which most resembles the vulgar Latin or the latin itself ?
Phonologically, Sardinian is the most conservative of the romance languages.
In terms of vocabulary, Italian (of which Sardinian can be taken as a dialect) is the most latin, as the Italian paeninsula has no history of prior, celtic languages, such as the French have.
In terms of syntax and morphology, I believe it is Romansch, a small language spoken in Switzerland. Romanian also.
So I remember to have read in various sources at least.
Sardinian has several dialects, each with varying features. Phonologically, the Logudoresu dialect is most similar to classical Latin, actaully, from wikipedia:
The Latin short vowels and have preserved their original sound (in Italian and Spanish they became [e] and [o], respectively; in Portuguese and Catalan the was also kept but written as an ‘o’). For example: siccus > sicu ‘dry’ (Italian secco, Spanish seco).
Preservation of the plosive sounds [k] and [É¡] before front vowels [e] and in many (though not all) words. For example: kentu ‘hundred’; dèke ‘ten’ or gheneru ‘son in law’ (Italian cento, dièci, genero with [tʃ] and [dÊ’] ).
Absence of diphthongizations found in other Romance languages. For example: potest > podet ‘he can’ (Italian può, Spanish puede); bonus > bónu ‘good’ (Italian buono, Spanish bueno).