- Also spoken in
- Italy
- Script
- Latin
Where it's spoken
Sicilian is spoken in Italy, where the national law on historical linguistic minorities states that the official language of the Republic is Italian. That law protects the languages of the Albanian, Catalan, Germanic, Greek, Slovene and Croatian populations and of those speaking French, Franco-Provençal, Friulian, Ladin, Occitan and Sardinian; Sicilian is not named in that list. Sicily has its own regional law, which states that the Region promotes the teaching of Sicilian history, literature and linguistic heritage in schools of every level.
The Cademia Siciliana describes the area it works on as the island of Sicily, its satellite archipelagos and the area of Reggio Calabria. It says that Sicilians are bilingual: all speak Italian, and very many also speak Sicilian. It also says that all the dialects of Sicilian have the same dignity and that its spelling is not based on any single dialect. For example, the first-person pronoun is written iu in Palermo, where it has two syllables, and ju in Catania, where it has one.
Sources
- Gazzetta Ufficiale della Regione Siciliana, Parte I, n. 24, 3 giugno 2011 (Legge regionale 31 maggio 2011, n. 9, art. 1 c.1) — Art. 1 c.1
- Cademia Siciliana (S. Baiamonte), Documento per l'Ortografia del Siciliano, April 2024 — Introduzione; La J
- Legge 15 dicembre 1999, n. 482, "Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche" (Parlamento italiano) — Art. 1 c.1; Art. 2 c.1
- Glottolog 5.3, Sicilian (sici1248) — Countries: Italy [IT]
Script & pronunciation
Sicilian is written in the Latin alphabet. According to the Cademia Siciliana spelling guide, the alphabet is almost identical to the Italian one, and the difference is one extra consonant letter, Ḍ ḍ, which it describes as a sound found in words that anciently had a double L. The guide gives coḍḍu ("neck") as an example. This app's cards use the same letter, as in the card for "That", Chiḍḍu. The guide says Ḍ is always written double, even at the start of a word, and that spellings such as cavaddru, cavaddu or cavaddhu are avoided.
The guide uses the grave accent to show which syllable is stressed and to tell words apart, and it gives ḍḍa ("that") and ḍḍà ("there") as a pair. This app's card for "There" is Ḍḍà. In stressed syllables the guide writes the five vowels A, E, I, O, U, but in unstressed syllables it writes only A, I and U; this app's card for "Just a moment", Nu mumentu, writes u in its unstressed syllables, as in this rule. The guide writes the letter Z doubled in the ending -zzioni, as in the app's cards Nun haiu na prenotazzioni ("I don't have a reservation") and Stazzioni ("Station"). The cards for Sicilian have no separate romanization; the ḍḍ and zz examples above follow the Cademia spelling.
Sources
- Cademia Siciliana (S. Baiamonte), Documento per l'Ortografia del Siciliano, April 2024 — Alfabeto; Le vocali; Le consonanti retroflesse; La lettera Z; Segni paragrafematici
Grammar essentials
A dialectology text by Ruffino reports a test in Terrasini, in which a farmer and then a fisherman were asked to repeat the same Sicilian sentence. It says the first speaker uses the definite article lu, which it calls the archaic type, while the second uses u, which it calls the more recent form. For the verbs "to carry" (portare in Italian) and "to keep" (conservare in Italian), it gives purtari and sarvari for the first speaker. This app's cards use the article u, as in U wifi nun funziuna ("The wifi isn't working"), and verb forms ending in -ari, as in Pozzu lassari u bagagghiu ccà? ("Can I leave my luggage here?").