by the Musi () Mountains, to the east by Mount Canin (), and to the north by Mount Sard (), therefore limiting possible connections with neighboring dialects and languages, which in turn has led to so many distinct features of Resian dialect. The area was settled by Slovenes from the north, the area of today's Gail Valley dialect. Both areas remained connected until the 14th century, when sparsely populated Slovenes living in the Raccolana and Dogna Valleys started speaking Romance languages. There is no Slovene-speaking minority in that area today because it is mainly populated by Friulian and German speakers. Standard Resian Standard Resian was developed by Han Steenwijk from the University of Padua and his colleagues Alfonso Barazzutti, Milko Matičetov, Pavle Merkù, Giovanni Rotta, and Willem Vermeer in the 1990s and continuing today. To date, they have standardized the writing, pronunciation, and declension. At first it was suggested to base the standard language on a central microdialect, particularly that of Gniva (), but later it was decided to allow four forms of standard Resian, based on the four microdialects of four larger villages: San Giorno (), Gniva (), Oseacco (), and Stolvizza (). For other areas of grammar, only the microdialect of San Giorno can be used because it is the only one described in sufficient detail thanks to Steenwijk's extensive research. Characteristics Resian belongs to the western subgroup of the South Slavic branch of the Slavic languages, together with Slovene, which includes the Natisone Valley dialect, and Serbo-Croatian. It represents the far northwestern part of the dialect continuum. The closest written language is the Natisone Valley dialect and the closest standard language is Slovene. The closest (other) Slovene dialect is the Torre Valley dialect, another dialect known for little mutual intelligibility with other dialects. Written Resian can be understood by most Slovenes, partially also due to its similar orthography. Spoken Resian, however, is much more difficult to understand, with the main reason being centralization of vowels, making them more difficult to distinguish. Speakers of the Torre Valley and Natisone Valley dialects, as well as other dialects in Littoral dialect group, can understand spoken Resian most easily because they have the most shared features and they all have extensive vocabulary from Friulian and Italian. Mutual intelligibility with other South Slavic languages is even more difficult, although Resian has undergone the > accent shift, and so these words are now