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Sicilian vs. Standard Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Melito Irpino Newbie United States Joined 6134 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 15 10 September 2007 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am planning on learning a little Sicilian for a future trip. I have seen a couple of phrasebooks and websites that I will use but did not see any language tapes since Sicilian does not have official language status.
I was wondering from a linguistic standpoint wondering how different Sicilian is from Standard Italian. Is it more different than Portuguese or Catalan are from Spanish? Is it as different as Romanian from the other Romance languages or even more so? I only know Italian and a small amount of Spanish so I was hoping an expert on the Romance languages would chime in. I’ve heard that it is different enough to be considered a separate language from a linguistic standpoint which makes sense since is has a wide variety of influences including Greek and Arabic. I know is this might be a politically charged topic for some but I’m only interested in the linguistic side of the discussion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6457 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 2 of 15 11 September 2007 at 6:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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An Italian friend of mine who's from Apulia understands it without problems. She understand Corsican as well, but not Sardinian. I had a look at some sample texts and I understand a lot as well and I'd say it's closer to Italian than Portuguese or Catalan are to Spanish (but I'm no expert, of course).
I'm sure people will appreciate your efforts to speak Sicilian, but of course you can get by just fine with Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6495 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 15 11 September 2007 at 8:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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You could try this homepage, which has a lot of written materials. The Italian Wikipedia gives a fairly good overview, as far as I can judge - but I´m not an expert on the subject of Sicilian. I would say, based on the things I have read in Sicilian and other relevant dialects or languages, that Sicilian is closer to standard Italian than both Sardinian and Romantsch (and maybe even some of the Norther Italian dialects, which I checked out last year because of a thread on the subject in this forum). There are some words here and there that I don´t recognize, but I can read the written sources without much trouble. As for the spoken version it is more problematic. I have certainly visited Sicily (long ago), but didn´t really search for Sicilian speakers because at the time I was more concerned about finding people that spoke a kind of Italian that I could understand. And with this attitude you won´t hear much dialect.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6064 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 4 of 15 11 November 2007 at 3:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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In Godfather Part One, the "Sicilian" Michael Corleone speaks in the Italian restaurant before shooting Sollozzo and McCluskey appears to be standard Italian. I'm not sure about Part Two. The Sicilian phrases used in Goodfellas are apparently real Sicilian.
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| OCCASVS Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6435 days ago 134 posts - 140 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, English, French, Polish | Message 5 of 15 11 November 2007 at 5:28am | IP Logged | |||||
Spoken or written Sicilian? Real spoken Sicilian isn't easy to understand. The language spoken in films by Sicilian characters is often a mix of Italian and Sicilian, because non-Sicilian would have trouble understanding proper Sicilian.
Yes, some knowledge of Sicilian will be useful to communicate with elder people in rural areas. Everyone expects foreigners to speak Italian (or English), though. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ofdw Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5647 days ago 39 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English*, Italian | Message 6 of 15 11 December 2008 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been learning Italian for a couple of years, and I've spent a lot of time reading, especially detective novels. My latest "find" is the Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri.
I'd had my eye on them for a while and last time I was in Italy I grabbed one at the airport to start reading on my trip - only to discover halfway into the first paragraph that there was something really odd about the language - which turned out to be that he uses Sicilian dialect for a lot of the dialogue, and Sicilian forms of Italian throughout. What was fascinating is that it only took me a couple of chapters to get used to it. Certain meanings became obvious from the context, eg "macari" = "anche"; certain spellings were easily figured out, eg unstressed e and o tend to be replaced by i and u. And there was the odd thing I only figured out by searching the internet! Having said that, it was not particularly "hard core" dialect - and recently on a train in London I heard two women speaking what *seemed* to be Italian, although I couldn't make head or tail of it: eventually I started to spot some Sicilian words, and realised there was an awful lot more to it than a handful of dialect words! I'm fascinated by varieties of Italian and look forward to learning more. I hope you enjoy your trip - maybe try taking a couple of Camilleri novels with you? Regards Oliver 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JonB Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6057 days ago 209 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Dutch, Greek | Message 7 of 15 16 December 2008 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oliver, I think Camilleri writes his books in a kind of standard Italian which is slightly 'coloured' by Sicilian dialect - rather than using actual 'full blown' Sicilian.
According to an Italian friend of mine, even native Italians can't understand very much of 'real' Sicilian - it is really a completely different language from Italian! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ofdw Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5647 days ago 39 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English*, Italian | Message 8 of 15 17 December 2008 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Absolutely - I'm not under any illusions! He also varies the tone - some speakers seem to use many more dialect words and others are nearer to standard Italian. It is one of the fascinating features of Italian that there are these layers of language - from standard Italian through regional varieties of standard Italian down to individual dialects.
Oliver 1 person has voted this message useful |
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