The Sicilian Language (lu sicilianu)

33 Comments

1. 

   @Langfocus 10 months ago

   Hi everyone! I hope you like the video! There's one error in the video that I want to point out: gelu is apparently not a word of Arabic origin. It comes from Latin gelū.

2. 

   @HappyBeezerStudios 10 months ago

   can't tell me that sicilian gelu, arabic jalā' and italian gelato aren't connected somewhere.
   And that accattari isn't related to english acquire through some latin.

3. 

   @revinhatol 10 months ago

   Arberisht (a dialect of the Albanian language) in Sicily was spoken too.

4. 

   @revinhatol 10 months ago

   The Sicilian "gelu" is also cognate to the Spanish "hielo".

5. 

   @revinhatol 10 months ago

   3:35 Spanish "bodega"

6. 

   @mygetawayart 10 months ago

   To answer your question: it's as you say, a different register. I speak Sicilian to friends and family, especially to my grandma who understands me better if i speak Sicilian actually. Outside of those situations, i speak with a distinct Sicilian accent and sometimes throw in a few words here and there IF I'M IN SICILY, because outside of Sicily i make an effort to mask my accent too, unless I'm speaking with another Sicilian.

   In the past one/two decades there's been a change of approach of sorts, but in the past people would grow up being taught that using the Dialetto was rude and plebean, and that we should make an effort to always use standard Italian. Even the classification of the language as "dialetto" is a way to disparage its use. Even though I'm in my 20s i still grew up with that notion since elementary school and it makes me mad that we're letting our beautiful language slip away for the sake of some kind of "national unity" that hasn't existed for the longest time. I'm proud to be a Sicilian born and raised. I consider them two distinct languages, doesn't matter if they also represent two different registers. History is full of places that use different languages as different registers.

7. 

   @freetraveller_pt 10 months ago

   Probably "accattari" (to buy/purchase) derives from (old) French "acheter".
   In Italian "acquistare" is the more formal version of "comprare", but they are virtually synonymous

8. 

   @MrBegliocchi 10 months ago

   My story is I was born and raised in California by parents both born in sicily where they lived till they were preteens. I was taught sicilian alongside English because the parents of my parents were poor and couldn’t afford much elementary school (common for Sicilians before the 1950’s, even though Italian had been the language used in Sicilian schools since probably the 1300s). So when I was a kid in the 90s, my parents and grandparents would talk to me in sicilian even while in sicily sicilian was declining and Italian had been widely spoken and growing in sicily since the 1950s due to the media and more people going to school. When I was 15 (now 34) I taught myself Italian and now I speak that much more regularly with my family that currently lives in sicily even though I could totally speak sicilian to them too. I’ve been listening to so much Italian pop music plus watching Italian movies and tv for so many years that I’m a bit more fluent in Italian than sicilian which has extremely little media in it. But I can still speak sicilian without much thought, though my Italian is also as fluent if not slightly more so because culture in sicily is now extremely italianized like the rest of Italy and i regularly consume that culture here in California. I wouldn’t dream of speaking sicilian to Sicilians I’m not related to even if they’re friends. And obviously speaking sicilian to doctors, shopkeepers, waiters, barbers, etc is absolutely out of the question. It just wouldnt feel right. I would use Italian. It should also be noted, not all Sicilians speak sicilian. I know a few younger ones who never learned it and strictly speak Italian (most in that category at least understand sicilian). Another note is that Sicilians write to each other in Italian 99.9% of the time. Writing to each other in sicilian on Facebook etc is not really a thing even though we’re Sicilian. For example I normally speak sicilian with my cousins verbally, but when communicating on Facebook, we only write in Italian to each other

9. 

   @Ajsthenics-02 10 months ago

   As a Puerto Rican and half Sicilian this was very interesting to watch many differences and similarities to other cultures viva Sicilia 🤌🏽🇮🇹

10. 

    @tommysoprano1441 10 months ago

    Joe Rogan is garbage

11. 

    @NatanFlayer 10 months ago

    Was conquered by Roman republic. The empire is a later development.

12. 

    @jacobtribe9623 10 months ago

    The word "taliari" (to look) according to the Etimological vocabulary Sicilian-Italian-Latin vol.4-5
    Derives from Latin.
    taliari= dirizzare la vista verso "tale" oggetto, guardare…. Dal latino Talis, quasi fatto verbale si disse " taliari ", cioè dirizzare la vista verso "tale" oggetto.
    https://books.google.ie/books?id=SSoSAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=taliari&f=false

13. 

    @elenagiacobbe6203 10 months ago

    Il siciliano non è una lingua ma un dialetto. Nelle scuole italiane è vietato parlare il dialetto

14. 

    @-MacCat- 10 months ago

    I'm Australian born and raised (in Carlton – when it was a colony of Italy 😉), of northern Italian (Veneto) parents, and am now retired and living in Sicily (an economically sensible choice and it has an excellent climate) half way between Messina and Palermo.
    I knew that Italians had lots of different dialects, many of which have been actively suppressed in the recent past, but when you come to Sicily and live in some of the more remote villages, especially with lots of elderly (older than ~80 years old) folk you really get to hear languages/dialects which are almost indecipherable to we 'Italian as a second language speakers'.
    Thanks for all your entertaining and informative language videos.

15. 

    @mauriziocaputo8172 10 months ago

    the differences between palermitano and catanase dialects are similar to the differences between British and American English, we understand each other obviously, but we feel certain nouns, expressions, idioms and the cadence weird each other; and I don’t mention the different pronunciation of the preconsonantal R.

16. 

    @Sifossifoco71 10 months ago

    May i suggest a focus on languages spoken in puglia region? Italian south estern region

17. 

    @TiberiuGociu 10 months ago

    This comment was triggered by @fmdocx great story !

    My name is Tiberiu. I'm Romanian and when I was 14 years old… Together with my younger brother, I learned Italian from TV watching Ambra (Non è la RAI) and Ruota della Fortuna with late Mike Buongiorno. Later I worked remotely for an Italian bank for eight years (spent 4 years in Italy in trasferta) before moving to Ireland. My Italian accent is Piemontese (Biella) and I have the guts to say that I'm nearly native in Italian.
    It was only when I moved to Ireland I discovered how much I miss Italy and the language. Then I discovered Inspector Montalbano TV series on BBC iPlayer. Watched the whole series twice as it made me feel so close to home (whatever that was).
    The first thing that stroke me was how many Sicilian words are almost Romanian.
    The second thing was the the Sicilians are speaking Italian like the Romanians from the Oltenia region in Romania… "passato prossimo".
    Why is that? Two distant regions one from another (Sicily and Oltenia) share this way of speaking.

    Another question is why do so many words from other "dialetti" are almost Romanian?
    Also there are more voices saying that Latin is a Romanian language and not the other way round. What do you think?

    @langfocus these are questions for you, maybe enough material for another video.

    Thank you Paul! You're doing a great job!

18. 

    @messgiuliano9277 10 months ago

    This is a job for the @metatron!

19. 

    @antoniovalle7071 10 months ago

    Accattari means “ to grab or to get “. I think

20. 

    @dmitrijpetrov1905 10 months ago

    I don't want to be banned from Italy 😭

21. 

    @lapotencia25 10 months ago

    I'm a Spanish speaker, and Sicilian stands out to me for having a lot of words ending in "u", much more than other Romance languages

22. 

    @SophisticatedBanjo 10 months ago

    As someone who has studied some Spanish and French, I thought it was interesting that the Italian and Sicilian words for "to buy" seem to be cognate with "comprar" (Spanish) and "acheter" (French), respectively.

    Presumably two Latin words that may have been synonyms or closely related, and each of these four languages preserved one and set the other aside. Although it wouldn't surprise me if each language still contained an archaic or less-used form of the alternate word.

23. 

    @magnumdave2 10 months ago

    Great video!!! Actually, "Ni vittimu" and "ci vediamo" are very different, because in sicilian it means "we have seen each other" implying that we are now saying goodbye, while in italian "ci vediamo" is litteraly "we will see each other again next time" 😊

24. 

    @antoninonils91 10 months ago

    I am sicilian from Catania. I would say "Iddu mi rissi ca veni rumani". As a "rule" the "d" between vocals becomes an "r".

25. 

    @mchlkpng 10 months ago

    Using "u" and "i" is crazy bro thinks he's Portuguese

26. 

    @franbalcal 10 months ago

    girl, why are the pronounciation of the letters similar to Quechua? especially the vowels.

27. 

    @bittercriticism 10 months ago

    Congratulations! You still doing great and improving!!1

28. 

    @japeri171 10 months ago

    As a native Portuguese speaker, it is impossible not to notice 3 similarities between my language and Sicilian: the replacement of the phoneme "o" with "u"; the various words of Arabic origin; and the influence of French.

29. 

    @pitshard6079 10 months ago

    As a descendent of sicilian minority in tunisia, the language is getting replaced by French in my family, my grandmother used to always say that Sicilian is an ugly dialect
    our version is pretty close to the Palermitan accent, but with a few variations like for the "st" for example
    Thanks for the video

30. 

    @AntosiculoEolo 10 months ago

    in reality during the Arab domination the native Sicilians spoke the vulgar Latin, it was passed down orally in fact 50% of the Latin terms in Sicilian are autochthonous and not derived from French and Spanish, only with the Norman conquest the natives were favored and the Arabs and Greeks were downgraded. the impact of the Normans and Arabs are generally overestimated by multiculturalist propaganda. then the Sicilianization of Arab Malta is in recent times many Latin terms and Surname( vella,mangion, vassal etc.. ) in Maltese arrived with Sicilian between the 15th and 18th centuries.

31. 

    @vx7168 10 months ago

    I don't want to be that guy……But but but actually, the Italian language comes Sicilian……not Tuscan

32. 

    @marcob1729 10 months ago

    Every tourist who attempts the bare minimum is thrilled by “grazzi” lol

33. 

    @leonardofragapane5348 10 months ago

    I would have never thought to watch a video about the language of my own isle, it was more than appreciated, I liked how precise you were on the differences between different forms of sicilian (I'm from Catania)
    The thing Giacomo said is true, especially in schools we are teached to use sicilian not so much, it is practically forbidden im formal situations
    Speaking to friend, we tend to mix standard italian and the dialect, a lot of words or expressions are unknown to most of people, for sure sicilian comes out a lot when speaking to friend even if we're good to transition to Italian if we have to do a more serious comment
    Thanks again for the video, greetings from Sicily❤️💛