Algherese or Alguerese (autonym: alguerés [alɣaˈɾes]) is the variety of Catalan spoken in the city of Alghero (L'Alguer in Catalan), in the northwest of Sardinia, Italy.
The dialect has its roots in 1372, when Catalan-speaking colonists were allowed to repopulate Alghero and expel the native population, after several revolts. Catalan was replaced as the official language by Spanish, then by Italian in the mid-18th century. Today the language has semi-official recognition alongside Italian.
Sardinia (/sɑːrˈdɪniə/ sar-DIN-ee-ə; Sardinian: Sardigna [saɾˈdiɲːa]; Italian: Sardegna [sarˈdeɲɲa] ), officially the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea after Sicily, and one of the twenty regions of Italy. It is located 200 km west of the Italian Peninsula, 200 km north of Tunisia, and 16.45 km south of the French island of Corsica. Sardinia is one five Italian regions with statutory domestic autonomy. It is divided into six provinces and two metropolitan cities. Cagliari is the capital and largest city, followed by Sassari. It has over 1.5 million inhabitants as of 2025.
Sardinia's indigenous language and the Algherese dialect of Catalan are recognized by both regional and national law as two of Italy's twelve official linguistic minorities, albeit gravely endangered; regional law provides some degree of protection and recognition of the island's other minority languages: the Corsican-influenced Sassarese and Gallurese, and Tabarchino Ligurian.
Alghero (Italian: [alˈɡɛːro]; Algherese: L'Alguer [lalˈɣe]; Sardinian: S'Alighera [saliˈɣɛɾa]; Sassarese: L'Aliera [laˈljɛːɾa]) is a city of about 45,000 inhabitants in the Italian Metropolitan City of Sassari in the north west of the island of Sardinia, next to the Mediterranean Sea. The city's name comes from Aleguerium, which is a mediaeval Latin word meaning "stagnation of algae" (Posidonia oceanica).
The population is noted for having retained the language of the Crown of Aragon rulers from the end of the Middle Ages, when Sardinia was part of the Crown of Aragon; hence, Algherese (the Catalan dialect spoken there) is officially recognized as a minority language.
The province of Sassari (Italian: provincia di Sassari; Sardinian: provìntzia de Tàtari; Sassarese: prubìnzia di Sàssari; Algherese: província de Sàsser; Gallurese: pruvincia di Sassari) was a province in the autonomous island region of Sardinia, Italy. Its capital was the city of Sassari. On 1 April 2025, the province was suppressed in favor of the new Metropolitan City of Sassari, which corresponds to the 66 western municipalities of the province in its 2005-2015 borders; the easternmost 26 municipalities were reorganized as Province of Gallura North-East Sardinia, corresponding to the borders of the former Province of Olbia-Tempio.
The province had 471,653 inhabitants in 2025.
The Catalan dialects (and restrictively also, Valencian dialects) feature a relative uniformity, especially when compared to other Romance languages; both in terms of vocabulary, semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology. Mutual intelligibility between its dialects is very high, estimates ranging from 90% to 95%. The only exception is the isolated idiosyncratic Alguerese dialect.