Sardinian or Sard is a Romance language spoken by the Sardinians on the Italian Mediterranean island of Sardinia. The distinctive character of the Sardinian language among the Romance languages has long been known among linguists. Many Romance linguists consider it, together with Italian, as the language that is the closest to Latin among all of Latin's descendants. However, it has also incorporated elements of Pre-Latin (mostly Paleo-Sardinian and, to a much lesser degree, Punic) substratum, as well as a Byzantine Greek, Catalan, Spanish, French, and Italian superstratum. These elements originate in the political history of Sardinia, whose indigenous society experienced competition and, at times, conflict with a series of colonizing newcomers. Following the end of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, Sardinia passed through periods of successive control by the Vandals, Byzantines, local Judicates, the Kingdom of Aragon, the Savoyard state, and finally Italy. These regimes varied in their usage of Sardinian as against other languages. For example, under the Judicates, Sardinian was used in administrative documents. Under Aragonese control, Catalan and Castilian became the island's prestige languages, and would remain so well into the 18th century. More recently, Italy's linguistic policies have encouraged diglossia, reducing the predominance of both Sardinian and Catalan.

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