Orthography development in Sardinia: the case of Limba Sarda Comuna

Sardinian is classified as ‘definitely endangered’ by UNESCO due to the loss of intergenerational transmission. Children no longer learn Sardinian at home and most young adults are semi-speakers. Sardinian is a historical minority language that has been officially recognised by the Italian Republic as recently as 1999 (Law 482/1999). Since 2006, Sardinian has had a standard orthography, called Limba Sarda Comuna. This orthography was developed with the declared intent of it to be used by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia in its official documents, alongside Italian. However, in recent years the adoption of Limba Sarda Comuna has been encouraged also for other purposes. This chapter aims at discussing whether, in the light of the principles of orthography design for endangered languages, LSC can be regarded as an effective orthography for Sardinian dialects