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I have searched this sub to see if there are resources for learning Sicilian, and only found threads in response to this question discussing whether a person should learn Sicilian or not. I'd like to ask what resources are available for learning it. So far, I have found the book with CD "Learn Sicilian" by Dr. Gaetano Cipolla and the app "Learn Sicilian." Someone mentioned that the Montalbano series was also in the Sicilian language, though I have not looked into that yet.
Are there any books about learning Sicilian or films, or TV series in Sicilian? Programs for children? Dare I ask-- software? And have any of you tried any of these resources? I realize this is a sub for learning Italian, but, hey, it's the closest I can get.
And I will go ahead and tell you, before I get barraged with the question, why I personally am interested in learning Sicilian is because 1) my grandmother was Sicilian 2) I plan to go there in the near future and of course I want to communicate with my elderly distant relatives by being able to say basic things at least 3) I love history and like the idea of preserving languages 4) I have neighbors from Calabria and may be able to at least practice sometimes (I hear the dialects are similar). I don't speak Italian, but I took Latin in school.
I have the book from Cipolla, but so far it seems to be more geared toward documenting the language, as versions of words from different dialects are mentioned, which is obviously not as straightforward for learning (even if it is more realistic than choosing one regional dialect and sticking with it).
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Pro tip: When people are asking you why you’re doing something just say “because I like it.“
Sometimes I don’t even know why I’m learning Italian but I know I like it.
If you look at the previous two threads in this sub asking the same thing, it was like the Spanish Inquisition or people trying to talk the poster out of it... I felt like getting that out there avoids the barrage of opinions (it seems to happen a lot in many reddit topics)...
Agree. Liking something is a good enough reason for doing it.
So here’s my dumb question as a person learning Italian from a teacher that’s from northern Italy....
How different is Sicilian than Italian? Is it another version of Italian or does it have a different vibe altogether?
It's a completely different and older language, though both do mainly come from Latin, like the other Romance languages.
It's NOT completely different. My parents speak Sicilian and I understand it. So when I hear Italian, most words are the exact same, if not you can catch on to what they're saying. I hate when people post "opinions" they googled.
I don't know sources to learn Sicilian, but I can tell you Montalbano isn't a good one, because it's basically in Italian spoken with Sicilian accent and sprinkled with some Sicilian words and phrases. The language they speak is a kind of artificial literary language created by Andrea Camilleri with an Italian base combined with Sicilian.
There is a Discord server for learning Sicilian:
https://discord.gg/S4K8hWr
Noooooo waaaaaaaaaaaaay ahahaha that's amazing!
You aren't going to find much at all on that front: Montalbano is a sort of literary Italo-sicilian hybrid, and most redubs of movies I know of are basically made as a joke. Children's programming and books are also out of the question. Literature is scarce, most of what you can find is poems collections, prose books in Sicilian aren't very common.
In music there are many options to be sure, ranging from pure folklore to more intellectual fare, but it's also true it's hard to make out words when they are sung.
Windows and wikipedia have a Sicilian option, but I'm not sure if all gaps have been bridged on that front.
There's a wikipedia in sicilian to practise your reading
https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A0ggina_principali
You might try some sicilian films to practise your listening, there's "ragazzi fuori" in which characters speak quite a realistic dialect.
Yeah this one helps a lot but doesn't have everything :(
Realistically I'm not sure this will be helpful to you. This is the best I could do. It was for a person interested in Calabrese, but it is probably as useful to you since the suggestions I made were mostly for Sicilian ( since she came from the Sicilian speaking part of Calabria)
Grammar
https://docplayer.it/58077855-Vito-lumia-la-nostra-grammatica-siciliana.html
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pbA_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT360&lpg=PT360&dq=grammatica+siciliano&source=bl&ots=zvAiM_6SKP&sig=ACfU3U1l4ewQjm2nLSStyvWBH8-vfsEipQ&hl=it&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj9rIOa8ZnuAhUHa8AKHfDACxw4ChDoATAIegQICBAC#v=onepage&q=grammatica%20siciliano&f=false
Poems and Literature
http://www.trapaninostra.it/libri/ninobarone/Petri_senza_tempu/Petri_senza_tempu.pdf
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7uBJWUVqVAkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kLoDAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false
You will find the Divine Comedy translated in every possible Italian regional language or dialect.
Here is in Calabrese Sicilian
http://elea.unisa.it/jspui/bitstream/10556/288/1/tesi%20G.%20Basile.pdf
There is a pretty famous version from this guy (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommaso_Cannizzaro) in the wiki page you find the incipit of his divine comedy, I suggest I read if you can find it.
Dizionario
https://it.glosbe.com/scn/it Dizionario moderno
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P6ICAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false Dictionary from 1889
Books
Verga, Sciascia, Camilleri all write in an Italian infused with Sicilian terms, but I can't think of any book completely in Sicilian at the moment. There definitely are, maybe ask or r/Italy or r/libri
Edit: I have read your question better, I hadn't quite realized you don't know italian. Maybe you should go to r/italianamerican, realistically they will have better knowledge of English to Sicilian resources. Here you will probably just get Italian to Sicilian resources because of the demography of this sub
I vaguely remember that theres some publication by an italian or Sicilian american society that's basically a journal written in sicilian and if you Google search it looks like you can find quite a few dictionaries/grammars and websites that go from Sicilian to English (look up Arab sicula). I also once came across an almanac in Italy written in sicilian, so (you may have to write in italian here) searching on the internet for weird dialect publications like that might help. The one thing you should worry about is what specific version of sicilian you're learning. You mention calabrian is considered very similar, but actually I bet you an eastern sicilian dialect and calabrian are much closer than an eastern and far western Sicilian dialect (although, again, I dont really know first hand).I'm not sure what the publication I mentioned is written in, and frankly I dont know myself how much sicilian varies so it may be that I'm blowing this point out of proportion.
Frankly though I'd still reccomend getting a grounding in italian (you dont have to be fluent but learn about it a bit...) there are way more resources going from italian to Sicilian than Sicilian to English. It may be there are still enough english resources (lots of americans are sicilian which cant be said for something like romagna) but I still think getting a grounding in italian is a good idea... the problem with sicilian (as I was alluding to earlier) is that, like most dialects, it varies a lot with both area but also time. A sicilian woman once told me that her american cousin (who is the son of Sicilian emigrants) speaks only in dialect and he sounds like hes from the 1950s or something because that's how his parents spoke and the dialect in sicily itself quickly changed because it's not written and increasingly italianized.
You might easily end up learning a dialect that is not the same as the one where your family is from. You also might end up learning a weird koine if you rely on the internet. And you might end up learning the dialect of where your family is from only to find that your elderly relatives speak a strange, archaic version of it.
If you know some italian it'll be a lot easier for you to stitch resources from different dialects together because Italian is very similar and so learning sicilian from italian is mostly a matter of knowing how words and grammar change between the two. Youll also be able to actually learn a standardized language with tons of resources that lets you internalize how italian works, and because italian is very similar to sicilian it'll help internalize Sicilian to an extent, too. Also frankly in the event you try to talk to a sicilian in dialect and you're ways of speaking are just too different (or god forbid they dont even know dialect) you'll have a way of figuring out what the hell the other guy is saying. Finally, most people probably speak sicilian in an italianized way, so knowing italian might actually bring you closer to how they talk (although if you're relatives are old this may not matter...) you dont have to get fluent in Italian but getting a quick grounding might help.
Anyway given that rant that you didnt want to hear you can also check out
https://www.csfls.it/res/ although it's in italian and a pain to navigate (it's a non profit that works to preserve Sicilian in Italy... if you go on their wikipedia page in Italian you can find a publication list. Also wikipedia has some stuff written in sicilian, although I'm not sure If it's a koine or palermitano or something)
https://cademiasiciliana.org/ this site also has some resources. It has some books but most of them seem to be 200 years old at the moment (which is probably, for dialect, quite out of date) and it's still under construction (and only in italian/sicilian) but you can click around there and see I'd anything shows up.
If you go on the italian page for Sicilian on wikipedia it also lists (albeit somewhat dated) films in dialect
https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AGramm%C3%A0tica?wprov=sfla1 this is a detailed page on Sicilian grammar (although it's written in sicilain... that said if you know how to read italian you can understand it) but maybe you can work through this as you learn more about the language.
Anyway I think wikipedia is good to look at in general (although I would still ask someone who knows Sicilian what exactly it's written in. As someone who speaks Italian I find it quite "inoffensive" so it may be a koine but I really dont know.) And Arba sicula Is an american (so english speaking) organization that I see cited a lot.
Edit: in general you can always find comedies (of varying quality...) in dialect like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6XRDUdezlQ except the recording is usually so bad you'll never understand it unless you already know the language. (just search commedie in dialetto siciliano)
Also facebook has some weird communities https://www.facebook.com/Dialetto-palermitano-1475227272804198/ so you could poke around there and see if anyone would help you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sud_Sound_System This group sings in dialect a lot. They're technically from Puglia but I believe the southern part of Puglia (more or less where they're from) is considered to be speak a form of sicilian (or something very close to it).
yeah arba sicula lol
I don't know how to help but I wanted to say good luck OP!I'm Sicilian native and I was thinking about giving lessons on Italki or stuff like that, I didn't even know that some people were actually interested in learning Sicilian.
I love the Sicilian language
I don't think there are many resources, if there's any they often propose a very Italianized version of Sicilian, also the way it's written doesn't seem to have a standard that everybody follows, anyway there's a page on Instagram called "Cademia Siciliana" which probably you'll find interesting
I'm Sicilian, we can speak whenever you want
There are some Sicilian teachers on italki if that would interest you
If you find anything else I would definitely be interested as well!
Since English music and television helped me, you could try the band Tinturia, or the tv series Il capo dei capi.
I read a book a few years back, by Andrea Camilleri, Il Cuoco dell'Alcyon. It had some Sicilian dialogue in it, depending on your Italian level you should give it a try, the novel reads easily. Some others have said that his books wouldn't be the best methods but trying doesn't hurt.
I'm Sicilian myself but unfortunately can't think of many suggestions right now. Wikipedia lists some of the words derived from Arabic still used today. Here are also words derived from Spanish and Catalan (and French too in the comments) still in use (now that I think about it, facebook groups are something you could look into). Unfortunately none of this will teach you how to conjugate verbs. The best advice I can give you is to learn how to conjugate indicativo presente and passato remoto* in Italian because sicilian verbs generally follow similar rules (though instead of ending in "o", both verbs and adjectives sometimes end in "u") and those two are the ones you're gonna hear the most. Also It's a small sub but you could try asking on r/sicily too.
*and futuro semplice, I forgot lol
The second list you linked to (the one from Facebook) has a column for Spanish that is mostly wrong/archaic words. Just a few “Ajer” should be “ayer” “Anxova” should be “anchoa” On second thought, this might actually be Catalan and not Spanish. Maybe someone who speaks Catalan could confirm.
I haven't touched Spanish since middle school so I'll take your word on some of them being wrong but some of them being archaic should go without saying, given that the kind of Spanish that influenced the language obviously isn't the one spoken today. The Bourbons have left island quite a while ago lol (a lot of the Arabic words we inherited probably aren't used today in arabic-speaking countries anymore either, I'm guessing. This is to say that these "fusions" are the result of historical events so current Spanish and Arabic haven't influenced the language). The Sicilian column's correct though so if op wants to learn Sicilian that part's still useful.
Sicilian Wiktionary has conjugations. https://scn.wiktionary.org/wiki/P%C3%A0ggina_principali
This is the deal, dialects in Italy survive as an oral tradition from certain communities. The lingua franca is standard Italian. So you need to learn that first, then if you want to learn some local dialects by hanging out with locals, it's ok. Italians don't mind when foreigners learn standard Italian (they love it), but I can see them getting quite protective of their local dialects, be ir Roman, Neapolitan, Calabrese, etc. I.E. the reason these dialects have survived is an FU to outsiders. It's a badge of local pride, but standard Italian is what's spoken in the open, particularly with foreigners.
I've heard that, too. But it can't always be true. The Moroccan guy at our local pizzeria speaks Sicilian to his co-worker. And whether one is considered a foreigner if one has extended family there is really like a question of jus sanguinis vs jus solis, right? I've heard explaining that one has a Sicilian forebear sometimes helps. Would you agree?
Learning Sicilian is fine, but I bet that the Moroccan guy speaks standard Italian too. My advice is to learn standard Italian first, then Sicilian or any other dialect. If you show up in Italy with only Sicilian, you're gonna have a hard timer. The issue is that Italo- Americas mostly think of Italian as Sicilian, and or Calabrese, and they think that's all they need to speak in Italy, when you really need standard Italian to get around, then use dialects in local areas if you wish.
Immigrants in Italy often learn to speak the local dialects, especially in those regions where dialects are still widely spoken, but they learn them out of "necessity" through immersion and social integration into the local community. To be honest I don't know what would be the reaction to someone who is learning the local language for a personal interest, because it's very unusual. Probably some people would be flattered and would appreciate the effort while others could get a bit protective.
I'm Sicilian and neither I nor anyone I know would be offended if someone were to try to learn Sicilian. On the contrary it'd be flattering if someone were to put in the effort to learn our niche language. Discouraging potential learns from learning it isn't protecting the language in any way. Considering that less and less Sicilians speak it the more time goes on (I'm not even fluent myself unfortunately and that's despite being born and raised here), if foreigners want to learn it, they're more than welcome to. Languages can and should be shared, they're not limited goods that will diminish and disappear if the number of people who want to partake in them increases.
That's fine, but foreigners should learn standard Italian first, then Sicilian or any other dialect. Otherwise they're going to have a hard time. This guy was saying that he only wanted to learn Sicilian.
That's a different matter that depends on the fact that Sicilian draws quite a lot from Italian and that there are a lot more resources to learn Italian than Sicilian (though, who knows, perhaps learning only a rudimentary Sicilian is not quite the impossible task that it seems and it's absolutely possible to get around Sicily knowing English but not Italian if you only come for a visit and don't plan on living here). It's got nothing to do with native speakers supposedly being hostile to new learners.
But would my knowledge of Latin, though rusty, not help me?
Standard Italian or even Spanish would help more. Once you know basic standard Italian then the Siccilian words would be easy to add to a basic fluency of standard Italian. It's like already knowing English and then you learn English Cockney rhyme and slang on top of it. You would have a hard time learning Cockey rhyme and slang before learning English. Plus stand Italian is more useful outside Sicily.
Latin would help. Spanish would help more than knowing Italian.
Learn standard Italian first, then add a bit of Sicilian. Otherwise you'll be putting a lot of effort for a language with very little usage outside of Sicily an Italians will really not appreciate someone that only speaks a dialect and not standard Italian as most young people are not bothering to learn dialects anymore.
Who cares what the northerners think? Sicilians will appreciate it and its closer to other southern languages.
What a nice idea!
Unfortunately, in practice it would be VERY difficult to learn Sicilian (or any other local language of Italy) without knowing Italian first.
That's because of a few distinct reasons:
most Italian local languages (called dialetti in Italy, even though they are not technically dialects of Italian, ie they are Italian's "cousins", not Italian's children) lack a standard, shared, commonly understood written form. Usually a written form technically exists (ie, in some scholarly treatise about it), but very few people actually know or understand it, since dialetti are mostly spoken, and rarely written
almost no one today speak dialetto in isolation. Usually dialetto is (more or less heavily) supplemented by Italian words, recent "loans" from Italian, and "dialectized" Italian words. If you learn a "pure" dialect, e.g. you learn Sicilian as they would have spoken it in 1800 or in 1950, when you actually talk to a Sicilian you'll realize they use a LOT of words you don't know (Italian words).
Every local language (including Sicilian) actually has its own even-more-local dialects, that can be quite different from each other. There is no such thing as "standard Sicilian". So the question would become: which Sicilian would you study exactly?
Compared to Italian, you will have a very very hard time finding online lessons, dictionaries, books or movies to learn the language.
Honestly, the best way to achieve your goal might be to study a little bit of Italian, and then learn a few dozen specific words or idioms in Sicilian.
Btw, unless your distant relatives are like 100 years old AND they have lived their whole life in an exceptionally remote and underprivileged hamlet AND they never watch TV or radio, they will understand Italian perfectly. (it is possible, though, they will not be fluent in speaking it, ie they may talk Italian with a very heavy Sicilian accent, insert Sicilian words here and there, and so on).
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The effects of fascism are not a reason to give in and give up on the Sicilian language.
We should create a new subreddit for it. I'm in some FB groups for it and I know some online resources but I'm still keeping my eyes peeled for other media.
This one is defunct and could be requested to moderate: r/sicilian
We need someone with enough karma and who speaks Sicilian...
Yeah of course
bruh, i thought, this was a chess subreddit
The Learn Sicilian app has probably the most up to date resources and you can choose between different dialects which is handy. A lot of other platforms and books out there only provide resources in one particular dialect which isn't always helpful.
https://learnsicilian.com/