Balearic
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Balearic is the 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 /a/,/ə/,/ɛ/,/e/,/i/,/ɔ/,/o/,/u/. In particular:
- *Majorca system has 8 stressed vowels /a/ /ə/ /ɛ/ /e/ /i/ /ɔ/ /o/ /u/, reduced to 4 in unstressed position (/a/ /ə/ /ɛ/ /e/ > [ə]), (/ɔ/ /o/ > [o]).
- *Western Minorca system has 8 stressed vowels /a/ /ə/ /ɛ/ /e/ /i/ /ɔ/ /o/ /u/, reduced to 3 in unstressed position (/a/ /ə/ /ɛ/ /e/ > [ə]), (/ɔ/ /o/ /u/ > [u]);
- *Eastern Minorca and Eivissa system has but 7 stressed vowels /a/ /ɛ/ /e/ /i/ /ɔ/ /o/ /u/ reduced to 3 in unstressed position (/a/ /ɛ/ /e/ > [ə]) (/ɔ/ /o/ /u/ > [u]), just like Central Catalan. There are differences between the dialect spoken in the city of Ibiza Town (eivissenc de vila) and in the rest of the island (eivissen pagès) as well as Formentera, where the dialect is also called formenterer.
- 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 Tàrbena and la Vall de Gallinera Valencian municipalities.
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