Corsican (
corsu or
lingua corsa) is an
Italo-Dalmatian Romance language, closely related to
Tuscan, spoken and written on the islands of
Corsica (
France) and northern
Sardinia (
Italy). Corsican was long the
vernacular language alongside
Italian, the official language in Corsica until 1859; afterwards Italian was replaced by
French, owing to the acquisition of the island by France from
Genoa in 1768. Over the next two centuries, the use of French grew to the extent that, by the
Liberation in 1945, all islanders had a working knowledge of French. The 20th century saw a wholesale language shift, with islanders changing their language practices to the extent that there were no monolingual Corsican speakers left by the 1960s. By 1995, an estimated 65 percent of islanders had some degree of proficiency in Corsican, and a small minority, perhaps 10 percent, used Corsican as a first language.