dialects, which are theorised to derive from late Latin or African Romance, such as the vocabulary in the following list. It might be possible to reconstruct a chronology of which loans entered Berber languages in the Classical Latin period versus in Late Latin/Proto-Romance based on features; for example, certain forms such as afullus (from pullus, "chicken") or asnus (< asinus, "donkey") preserve the Classical Latin nominative ending -us, whereas other words like abekkadu (< peccatum, "sin") or muṛu (< murus, "wall") have lost final -s (matching parallel developments in Romance.) Forms such as tayda (< taeda, "pinewood"), which seem to preserve the Latin diphthong ae, might also be interpreted as archaic highly conservative loans from the Roman Imperial period or earlier. However, the potential chronological distinction based on word endings is inconsistent; the form qaṭṭus (from cattus, "cat") preserves final -s, but cattus is only attested in Late Latin, when one would expect final -s to have been dropped. Further, the -u endings may instead simply derive from accusative forms which had lost final -m; as a comparison, words drawn from 3rd declension nouns may vary between nominative-based forms like falku < falco ("falcon"), and accusative/oblique-case forms like atmun < temo (Acc: temonem, "pole", c.f. Italian timone) or amerkidu ("divine recompense") < merces (Acc: mercedem, "pay/wages", c.f. Italiian mercede.) Nevertheless, when undisputed Latin-derived Berber words are compared with corresponding terms in Italian, Sardinian, Corsican, Sicilian and Maltese, shared phonological outcomes with Sardinian (and to some extent Corsican) seem apparent. For evidence of the merger of Latin short ǐ, ŭ [ɪ, ʊ] with /i, u/ instead of /e, o/, compare how Latin pirus/a ("pear tree/pear") results in Berber ifires and Sardinian pira vs. Italian pero, and Latin pullus ("chicken") becomes Berber afullus and Sardinian puddu vs. Italian pollo. For the lack of palatalization of velar stops, notice how Latin merces ("pay/wages") results in Berber amerkidu and Sardinian merchede vs. Italian mercede, and Latin cicer ("chickpea") becomes Berber ikiker and Sardinian chìghere vs. Italian cece. For the other month names, see Berber calendar. See also Africitas'', a purported "style" of African Latin. Southern Romance, a proposed hypothetical Romance classification, including Sardinian and African Romance Lausberg area, a region of southern Italy covering Basilicata where the local Neapolitan dialects display variation between Sardinian, Sicilian and Romanian-like vowel systems Sardinian language, as stated above, theorized to be the closest surviving language to African Romance.