The Sicilian language is mentioned in Privitera 's book released in 2004 .
It is also spoken in southern and central Calabria ( where it is called Southern Calabro ) , in the southern parts of Apulia , Salento ( where it is known as Salentino ) , and Campania , on the Italian peninsula , where it is called Cilentano ( Gordon , 2005 ) .  Ethnologue ( see below for more detail ) describes Sicilian as being `` distinct enough from Standard Italian to be considered a separate language '' ( Gordon ) and is in fact recognized as a `` minority language '' by UNESCO : it : Lingue parlate in Italia # Gruppo siciliano.  ? name=News & file=article & sid=38 Some assert that Sicilian represents the oldest Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin , but this is not a widely held view amongst linguists , and is sometimes strongly criticized.