#i might self rb this again tomorrow bcos.... whoA language stuff !!

[redbeanboi]

How different is Sicilian, Neapolitan and regular Italian? I don’t know much of any dialect so I’m guessing it’s probably the spelling and pronounciation? 🧐

HNNGbdhhs there are so many things..... you are about to unleash the knowledge I have accumulated in the past 22 months for my writing—

Disclaimer: I’m not a native speaker. Just learning! I’m including some notes/charts I’ve made for myself.

All three languages share Latin origins. Standard Italian is readily available to study so I won’t focus on that too much. Neapolitan, on the other hand has Greek, Spanish, and French influences, etc. Sicilian has massive influences of Ancient Greek, Spanish, Arabic, Catalan and French. That being said they are all rather different from one another, not only with pronunciation but grammar too! 

Anyway I could go on and on about the differences for like years. I’ll just point out a few things I’ve noticed and learned as I’ve (sort of) independently studied these languages.

You most likely won’t encounter full-on Sicilian unless you go into the smaller villages or rural areas. Cities generally use Standard Italian at work, etc., though it will definitely be spoken with a Sicilian accent. Same goes for Neapolitan: people won’t really speak it outside of social settings and will not speak it to a tourist/”foreigner.”

Neapolitan 

Word endings are usually cut off (usually a vowel), so you’ll get stuff like omm’ a merd’ (’man of shit,’ if you’ve read BBP Ch. 8) or a phrase like Ssì brutt’ quant’ 'o ddébbit’ (meaning ‘you’re as ugly as debt/you’re ugly’). 

Non-stressed vowels → “uh.” These vowels take on the schwa sound that you see pretty often in English. Capa, or head, is pronounced with this schwa sound, so it sounds less like the “Kah-pah” you’d hear in Standard Italian and more like “Kah-puh.” 

“Gi” → “J.” So giornata becomes jornata, and because j’s sound like “y,” you would pronounce it “Yor-nata.” ( I like to think Don Elio pronounces “Giorno” as “Jorno” instead, just to be extra rude. )

Plural forms are pretty much the same for nouns, regardless of their gender. (’a and ‘o endings → ‘e)

Pronouns are different:

The same goes for conjugations! Very different. I’ll use the present indicative tense for the verb èssere (“to be”)

Some of my favoriteeee Neapolitan phrases/sayings include:

“Stongo chino ‘e suonno” — literally “I’m full of sleep” which I think is cute

“Ttiene ‘a capa ppè spartere ‘e rrecchie“ — literally “he/she [only] has a head to keep his/her ears apart,” i.e. very rude way to call someone stupid. Can be considered a funny way of telling a friend to be careful.

Sicilian

This one’s got a lot of interesting little things I’ve noticed as I’ve (attempted) to learn it.

Same non-stressed vowel rule applies (see above). Stressed “a” will make an “ah” sound and an unstressed “a” will make an “uh” sound.

Sicilian has some consonant sounds that do not occur in Italiano or Napulitano, the most famous example being the double D or “dd.” Generally this occurs when there is a double L in Italiano. One of the many retroflex consonants unique to Siciliano (there’s more in the Phonology section on this page if you’re interested!) 

Example: bello and cavallo → beddu and cavaddu

There are a number of Greek and Arabic influences on specific vocabulary, including: sciàbaca or sciabachèju, (“fishing net”) from sabaka (Arabic). Likewise, the Sicilian word for ram is “crastu,” from the Greek kràstos and cufinu (basket) comes from kophynos. There’s plenty more but if I kept going I wouldn’t be able to stop. Wikipedia actually has an extensive list of Sicilian words by their origin.^^

Again, Pronouns are different from Italiano:

Same goes for conjugations; for the purposes of comparing to both Italiano and Napulitano, I’ll show the conjugations (present tense) for essiri (”to be”):

Some of my favorite Sicilian phrases include:

Chiù nniuri ri mezzannotte nun pò fari — “It can’t get any darker than midnight”

Vidi Palermu e gori, vidi Napuli e poi mori — “See Palermo and enjoy it, see Naples then die” (lol I feel like this is something everyone in the Signora’s family would say before the events of BBP)

That’s really just the tip of the iceberg, but I hope this was helpful!! I’m enjoying every second I spend trying to learn these three, and getting to make a little post about it was very fun lol.

There’s actually more where that came from so please dm if you’re looking to sprinkle this into your VA fics and want a study buddy

#anon #answered #this got long but uhhhhh yeah #thank you for sending this in!! #I like talking about these things :-) #research.notes #lowkey nice to have this all in one place lmao i have not been good at keeping my notes on this together.... #my italian notebook is a mESS #one page is standard italian #then two pages later is neapolitan #and then the next page is sicilian lmao #this is very handy for me and i hope its interesting to read... if youre bored or anything lmao #i might self rb this again tomorrow bcos.... whoA language stuff !! #v neat #lol but in all seriousness you guys seem to really enjoy the little nods i give to these three diff languages in the fic so :-D #hope you enjoyed getting a peek at my notes ! #fic:notes #notes