Dalmatian is a (virtually) extinct Romance language which belonged to the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the vulgar Latin of the Illyro-Romans, and was spoken in the Dalmatia region of Croatia in coastal towns such as Zadar, Trogir and Split.
In 1897, the scholar Matteo Bartoli, visited the last speaker of Dalmatian (Tuone Udaina) and from his conservations wrote Das Dalmatische, which contains much of the existing information on the language. The original was written in Italian, and the manuscripts lost not being retranslated into Italian Il dalmatico until (much) later.
There are currently attempts to revive the language with a handful of fluent speakers.
Tuota nuester, che te sante intel sil,
sait santificuot el naum to.
Vigna el raigno to.
Sait fuot la voluntuot toa, coisa in sil, coisa in tiara.
Duote cost dai el pun nuester cotidiun,
e remetiaj le nuestre debete.
Coisa nojiltri remetiaime a i nuestri debetuar,
e naun ne menur in tentatiaun,
mui deliberiajne dal mul.
A sample text in Dalmation along with the Italian and English translations.
Se dekaja strúz perkó el distrużaja kuonta ráuba ke ge venáro in bual. Te maníka de ple: me puor a jú ke féro un strúz.
Si dice "struzzo" perche distrugge quanto gli viene in bocca. Mangi troppo: mi pare a me che sei uno struzzo
You say "ostrich" because it destroys what comes into its mouth. You eat too much: it seems to me that you are an ostrich.
In Italian, there is a phrase avere uno stomaco di struzzo, to have 'the stomach of an ostrich' or less literally to have 'a cast iron stomach'.
I'm adding to this small Vegliot Dalmation language dictionary as and when I have time. The vocabulary comes from Das Dalmatische and L' Antico dialetto di Veglia.
There is very little information on the internet about Dalmation. I will add more to these pages as and when I work through my copy of Das Dalmatische, and L' Antico dialetto di Veglia.
Some Dalmatian texts referred to in a chapter of Archivo Glottologico Italiano called L' Antico dialetto di Veglia by
Ive, Antonio and written in 1886.
https://archive.org/stream/archivioglottolo
An interesting page about Matteo Giulio Bartoli:
www.istrianet.com
This has the distinction of using the word glottologist which is not one I had ever come across before. A quick glance in my Oxford English told me that glottology is a synonym for 'philology or linguistics'. It is also (and this wasn't much of a surprise) rare or archaic.
Perhaps, like Dalmation itself, the word glottology should be revived.