| Also Known As: Calabro-sicilian,Sicilianu,Siculu
Description:
Sicilian (lu sicilianu, Italian: lingua siciliana, also known as Siculu or Calabro-Sicilian) is a Romance language. Its dialects comprise the Italiano Meridionale-estremo language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria (where it is called Southern Calabro); in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento (where it is known as Salentino); and Campania, on the Italian mainland, 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). Some assert that Sicilian represents the oldest Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin (Privitera, 2004), but this is not a widely-held view amongst linguists. For instance, Cipolla describes such a view as radical (2004, p. 151).
It is currently spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of Sicily and by emigrant populations around the world. The latter are to be found in the countries which attracted large numbers of Sicilian immigrants during the course of the past century or so, especially the United States, Canada, Australia and Argentina. In..... full article at Wikipedia |
