Balearic

Balearic is name given collectively to the group of Catalan variants spoken in the Balearic Islands (Balearic/Catalan Illes Balears, Castilian (Spanish) Islas Baleares), Spain.

Some features of Balearic include:

• Part of Balearic preserves a vocalic system of 8 stressed vowels
• Balearic preserves /v/ as a distinct phoneme from /b/, like Alguerese and most of Valencian do as well.
• Balearic is the Catalan variant that has the strongest tendency to not pronounce historical final r in any context.
• Balearic preserves the salat determinate article (derived from Latin IPSE,IPSA instead of ILLE,ILLA), a feature only shared with Sardinian among nowadays romance languages, but that was more common in other Catalan and Gascon areas in ancient times. However, the salat determined article is also preserved in Costa Brava (Catalonia) and in TÃ rbena and la Vall de Gallinera Valencian municipalities.

This article is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Balearic".