Talk:Sicilian language

message: The intro is very choppy and could use some work to more properly introduce the article. I'll try to get to it when I can.Mcorco2 (talk) 08:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I find it interesting that you've taken issue specifically with the Arab period section, when the same sources and citation format are employed throughout the history section. Any objection to those?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.195.134 (talk) 08:37, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for cleanup 

message: I think content about Sicilian adverbs would be appropriate, most likely in the section on distinguishing features of Sicilian. Like other Southern Italian dialects, Sicilian avoids -mente adverbs, and this is novel for speakers of other romance languages. Some example adverbs would be appreciated. Note: I'm no expert on Sicilian, but I am finding no online information about adverbial construction in Sicilian, except that it doesn't use -mente. Example adverbs have been mostly adverbs of time and place, with only a couple of manner, such as those found here: Lingua Siciliana - Lesson 4..  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bearsbearsbears (talk • contribs) 16:28, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adverbs 

message: How do you say "Good Luck"  or "Blessings"  "Good Fortune"  in Sicilian??  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.119.80.138 (talk) 08:56, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sicilian  words for english words 

message: This article is quite chauviniste and its fully based on "Etnlogue" book. 
The sicilian language is part of "meridionali estremi"(= "southern languages") as the picture in the page shows. 
Dialleti merdionali estremi are: 
"sicilian", southern calabrian, southern Apulia language, and southern Campania language. 
Sayng "Dialetti meridionali estremi" is sicilian is like affirming England is UK. A completely non-sence  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Firestorm81 (talk • contribs) 10:33, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Why, the Sicilian word fìmmina is the most direct and correct translation of the Italian word donna. It is also the correct translation of the Italian word fèmmina, but it’s less frequently used in that meaning, so much that when the Sicilian people want to qualify the gender of animals and plants they can feel the need to use other words such as masculinu (e.g. i laddichi masculini, the nettle) and fimmineḍḍa (e.g. i virioli fimmineḍḍi, a kind of fish). The Sicilian word donna means another thing, which you would translate as signora in Italian; it’s the feminine counterpart to the masculine don. Peppepz (talk) 10:12, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sicilian vs Dialetti meridionali estremi 

message: Where is there any evidence for the claim that there is a significant number of Sicilian speakers in the United States? I live in one of the US cities cited as having a sizable Sicilian-speaking population. I never hear it anymore. I do not know of a single Bostonian who speaks Sicilian as their only native language, does not speak English better than Sicilian, does not prefer to speak English, or speaks Sicilian on any regular basis. My father has not spoken Sicilian for more than 30 minutes total in the past 30 years.
Sicilian immigration into the US ended about 100 years ago. There are no more than a handful of Sicilian immigrants who are still alive. Very few Americans are of 100% Sicilian ancestry. Little remains of the ancestral identity of most white Americans.Bostoner (talk) 01:49, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and I couldn't find any relevant sources for that section (that really looked quite like WP:OR to me), so I've deleted the whole section. I would strongly encourage people to start searching for reliable sources in the future. --Angelo (talk) 10:37, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

text: Arba Sicula, which publishes newsletters and journals in Sicilian to this day, is one of the largest cultural clubs in the USA.  --202.14.81.49 (talk) 00:24, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sicilian in the United States 

message: I added a "citation needed" in the section about the verb "to have" (link), where it reads: "Sicilian may use the verb jiri, to go, to signify the act of being about to do something. Italian does not use the verb andare, to go, in this way". As an Italian I can witness that Italian does indeed use the verb "avere" (to have) in equivalent constructs. For example as a teacher I might say "Andiamo a vedere ..." (we're going to see, literally: we go to see), or as an anchorman I could say "Andiamo ad ascoltare ..." (we're going to listen, literally: we go to listen).
--Astabada (talk) 15:42, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  About the verb to have 

message: I would like to refactor the references in this page to use the inline citation style of footnote. Currently it uses parenthitical references (Hull, 1989) instead of inline referenceslike this. I will keep separate the Notes and the References since the page already does this. Does anybody have any objections to using this style of footnote? It is the prevailing method here and is easier (IMO) to maintain.
Sample Footnotes
Thanks, Dusty|💬|You can help! 16:04, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes and parenthetical references 

message: "The 2nd person singular (polite) of the Imperative does not follow the same pattern as the rest of the tense. The 2nd person singular and plural employ the Present Indicative in place of the Imperative, while the 2nd person singular (polite), because of its formality, employs the Present Subjunctive, which makes it less of a command and more of a request."
It might make sense, if it weren't for the fact that Romance 3rd person (=2nd person polite in most of those lgs) imperative is always derived from subjunctive, and it can be traced back to Latin (coniunctivus iussivus, prohibitivus & optativus, I believe). It's a case of a fancy explanation for a feature that was simply inherited. 176.221.120.207 (talk) 20:51, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: Apparently it is referred in the work Giarrizzo, Salvatore (1989). Dizionario Etimologico Siciliano. Herbita Editrice. Someone should check this source. 79.117.153.178 (talk) 15:20, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I can confirm that it has an entry in Giarizzo, and covers the various older indo-european cognates.124.171.67.104 (talk) 22:30, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be worth to note Romanian dudă and Turkish dut. 95.76.57.42 (talk) 15:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The word ''dudda'' 

message: The article contains two statements about "Italic languages":  "Sicilian has the oldest literary tradition of the Italic languages", and "Sicilian became the first of the Italic languages to be used as a literary language".  Is this an erroneous substitution of the term "Italic" in place of "Romance"? Cicero, Virgil, and Horace all wrote in the first century BC, in Latin, an Italic language par excellence. Kotabatubara (talk) 21:09, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Usually the word Italic in this context is used to mean Italo-Romance/Italo-Dalmatian languages. You could say Italo-Romantic/Italo-Dalmatian I suppose, but generally I've seen the word Italic used for the Romance languages evolved from Late Latin in the Italian Peninsula and associated islands. There are several romance languages that were used in literature before Sicilian, but of the Italo-Romance languages its pretty early. I actually have heard this repeated a few times, and it does make some sense. Namely because Sicily was quite powerful at the time when Late latin dialects were beginning to be standardised and the Latin dialects were new to Sicily around that period, with their own interesting history. I've seen it cited a few different ways, with some being obviously poor quality research. That said, I can't actually confirm which phrasings would be most accurate. Paolorausch (talk) 08:20, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree with the above, the expression "Italic languages" clearly refers to the Romance languages of the Italian peninsular.  You can read about early Sicilian literature and the influence on the later emergence of written Italian in this article Sicilian School, see also Italic languages.  Fissatu (talk) 02:15, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: My first searches for the meaning of "Italic languages" came up with only Latin and its sister languages of antiquity:  Faliscan, Oscan, and Umbrian.  With some additional searching I did find that the term "Italic" is sometimes used as a synonym of "Romance" (not "romance" or "Romantic"!) languages.  If we must use the term "Italic" in this article, would there be any objection to saying "the _modern_ Italic languages", to resolve the ambiguity? Kotabatubara (talk) 14:33, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Reasonable solution.  πιππίνυ δ - (dica) 00:43, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Italic" languages? 

message: I'm confused by this section:
:Before the Roman conquest (3rd century BC), Sicily was occupied by populations considered indigenous, including Sicels (or Siculi, or Siculians—who arrived between the second and first millennia BC), Sicani, Elymians, and Morgetes, followed by Phoenicians (between the 10th and 8th centuries BC) and Greeks (from the 8th century BC). The Greek-language influence remains strongly visible, while the influences from the other groups are less obvious. What can be stated with certainty is that there remain pre-Indo-European words in Sicilian of an ancient Mediterranean origin, but one cannot be more precise than that. Of the three main prehistoric groups, only the Sicels were Indo-European, and their speech is likely to have been closely related to that of the Romans[23].
In particular, I can see either four or three "prehistoric groups": Sicels (or Siculi, or Siculians—who arrived between the second and first millennia BC), Sicani, Elymians, and Morgetes (four groups), versus "indigenous population", Phoenicians, and Greeks (three groups, the first of which has 4 subgroups). But in the three-split, there are two Indo-European groups (the Sicels, per the article), and the Greeks (because I know ;-). Can someone with knowledge or access to the sources clarify this?  --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:11, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you that "indigenous" is the incorrect word to describe any of the Sicani/Siculi/Elymians.  It's unclear whether the island was occupied before the arrival of the Sicani.  Also, there remains much debate about whether 1 or more of these groups were indo-european, much debate about where the Elymians came from (actually, much debate about all three) - an article on the language of island should rightly only touch on these discussions, it's too big a topic to cover here.  Having said all of that, there are a few words of a very early Mediterranean origin, pre-indoeuropean (usually names of plants or geographical features), that's worth mentioning as a matter of interest.  πιππίνυ δ - (dica) 21:33, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confused... 

message: Hello, first of all, my congrats to all the users which are working hard on this page, I am Sicilian and seeing this makes me really proud. Unfortunately I saw some "political" edits coming from user deeply involved in this article such as change of nationalities and an indiscriminate replacement of Italian terms/infobox/templates with Sicilian ones. Well, I don't know if you are scholars or simply Sicilians like me or Americans with Sicilian ancestry, my point is that this wonderful work on the Sicilian language shouldn't be confused and polluted by unreal political claims since it does not pertain to contemporary history as well as to modern Sicilian society.--80.104.150.166 (talk) 16:36, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're referring to another authors changing of the nationality of some authors on other articles. I saw your comments and I think there is in general in Italian Wikipedia a misunderstanding about the terms 'ethnicity' and 'nationality' in English. As we've seen the same issue with the Sicilian nationalism article and bigger ideas regarding the nationalisation of history and the 'antiquity of the italian nation'. In the anglophone scholarship such assertions are not taken without criticism, whereas in Italy to call pre-risorgimento Sicilians as "italians" would almost be insulting not to. It implies race overtones etc. The reality is that if someone was born and died before the annexation of the Kingdom of Sicily to Italy their 'nationality' would not have been Italian. One could argue any person proficient in italian language was of the italian ethnicity, but if we apply that definition I think it's obvious the ramifications, for example under that definition all Corsicans and Maltese just became Italians as well. Just like Archimedes wasn't "Italian". Realistically 'Italian' ethnicity is in fact an amalgamation of several ethnic identities, and is much better labelled a nationality than an ethnicity. Of course in the last 100 years things have changed a lot, and Italian ethnic identity is now quite strong within many areas of Italy. That said we should not be tempted to nationalise our history and apply just demonyms into the past. Finally, if you look at the edit history of that page you'll actually see that the article was created that way and has been an ongoing conflict, with references being deleted etc. Many sources prefer to use the correct polity of citizenship for the demonym rather than the politicised term "Italian" which implies that all citizenships of the modern Italian state were 'destined' to be in that polity based on an ancient italianità. I hope this provides more context for that discussion. thanks!Paolorausch (talk) 20:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

text: Agree with previous edit, quite clearly the Kingdom of Sicily existed for centuries as a nation-state prior to the formation of the modern Italian state, so someone like Antonio Veneziano, born, bred and died within Sicily in the 1500, quite obviously, cannot be Italian because the Italian state would not exist for another three hundred years.  The state into which he was born was Sicily, and therefore, he is Sicilian.  πιππίνυ δ - (dica) 23:45, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue becomes then what about people like Michele Amari? Who left Sicily and worked in Northern Italy and Naples (under the crown of aragon)? We have the issue that in the past borders and passports didn't exactly exist and the mediterranean had overlapping identities. I understand at least in the case of Northern Italians where the usage of Italian had for a long time been the primary lingua franca, whereas in Sicily and Sardinia other Mediterranean languages had strong value. But what do we do for people like him who operated in all of these spaces?Paolorausch (talk) 00:14, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Pretty inappropriate edits seem to be linked to the work of some users on this article

message: I would rather welcome a statement on what might have been the official language of Sicily used in the Parliament and official state correspondence at different points in the history of the Sicilian kingdom, particularly after its re-founding in the 12th C. This is an encyclopaedia where I would hope to find an answer to such a question. I am not really interested in whether there were Arabs or Jews or Gauls or Lombards etc living in Sicily but in what was the official language used in official correspondence by the Kingdom of Sicily once it was founded. As the official language of the Kingdom, I would have thought it would be something this article should provide some information about. Was it Latin? Old/Middle Sicilian? South Italian? Italo-Norman? Arabic? Skamnelis (talk) 16:46, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Skamnelis has just volunteered to do some work.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.1.178 (talk) 14:50, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Skamnelis, well this is complicated. I feel like you may be accidently projecting modern nationalism into the past. The Sicilian language only came to exist during the Kingdom of Sicily, and for it's early period Latin/Greek/Arabic were used as it's administrative languages. Sicilian only coming later as an evolution of "local Latin". It was used to increasing extent until the Aragonese/Catalan period where it starts to be replaced by a more Standard Latin and then Italian much later on. The last edicts issued in Sicily are around the jewish expulsion. Although of course the spoken language was already developing in exciting ways. Sicilian language is not the 'language of the Kingdom of Sicily" it's a language 'connected to it'. Those groups you mentioned are just as linguistically relevant as they form the people that would eventually develop into speakers of the modern Sicilian language, each contributing substantially. They are not 'minorities' or 'non-Sicilians', but rather linguistic communities that would slowly integrate into a range of variation, some of which have survived. I would suggest reading the articles about Arab-Byzantine-Norman Civilisation, the Kingdom of Sicily itself, as well as metcalfe's papers and books that are available online for a more clear answer. If you write on my wall I can send you some sources that you can use to cite in your work if you decide to edit the article.Paolorausch (talk) 16:55, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  What was the state language of the Kingdom of Sicily? 

message: Salentino dialect in its own article is described as a dialect of Sicilian language. Here it is only mentioned in the header, and not at all in the section on dialects. Could someone look at the issue and work a bit on it? noychoH (talk) 09:52, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Salentino dialect

message: On the 'Sicilian orthography' page (at 'Ḍḍ, ḍḍ'), I see that both /dː/ and /ɖː/ exist, so shouldn't /ɖː/ be added to the phonology table? Exarchus (talk) 12:26, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just added that. The consonant table seemed to have been copied from the Italian phonology article. It should absolutely be a separate phoneme. Teangacha (talk) 09:58, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  /ɖː/ to be added to phonemic consonants?