The Extreme Southern Italian[1][2][3] dialects are a set of languages spoken mainly in Sicily, southern Salento, southern Cilento, and most of Calabria with common phonetic and syntactic characteristics such as to constitute a single group. These languages derive, without exception, not from Tuscan but from Vulgar Latin; therefore it follows that the name "Italian" is a purely geographical reference.
Today, Extreme Southern Italian dialects are still spoken daily, although their use is limited to informal contexts and is mostly oral. There are examples of full literary uses with contests (mostly poetry) and theatrical performances.
Background
The areas where Extreme Southern dialects are found today roughly trace that same territory where both Ancient Greek and Medieval Byzantine hegemonies happened to be the strongest.[4]
Varieties
Sicilian, spoken on the island of Sicily: Western Sicilian; Central Metafonetica; Southeast Metafonetica; Ennese; Eastern Nonmetafonetica; Messinese.
Sicilian dialects on other islands: Isole Eolie, on the Aeolian Islands; Pantesco, on the island of Pantelleria.
Calabro,[5] or Central-Southern Calabrian:[5] dialects are spoken in the central and southern areas of the region of Calabria.
The main distinguishing characteristics, which all Extreme Southern dialects have in common, and which differentiate them from the rest of the Southern Italian dialects, are:[6]
Sicilian vowel system, a characteristic not present, however, in many dialects of central-northern Calabria;
presence of three well-perceptible word-final vowels in most dialects of this area: -a, -i, -u; however -e and -o can also be sometimes found in Cosentino, southern Cilentan and southern Salentino.
clear cacuminal or retroflex pronunciation of -DD- (ultimately deriving from -LL-).
maintenance of voiceless occlusive consonants after the nasals: the word for "eats" will therefore be pronounced mancia and not mangia. However, this phenomenon is absent in Cosentino;
absence of apocopated infinitives spread from the Upper Mezzogiorno to Tuscany (therefore one has cantare or cantari and not cantà). Also in this respect the Cosentino dialect is an exception;
use of the preterite with endings similar to the Italian remote past and the non-distinction between past perfect and past past; however, this phenomenon is absent in central-northern Calabria (north of the Lamezia Terme-Sersale-Crotone line).
Gerhard Rohlfs, Dizionario dialettale delle tre Calabrie. Milano-Halle, 1932-1939.
Gerhard Rohlfs, Vocabolario supplementare dei dialetti delle Tre Calabrie (che comprende il dialetto greco-calabro di Bova) con repertorio toponomastico. Verl. d. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., München, 2 volumi, 1966-1967
Gerhard Rohlfs, Vocabolario dei dialetti salentini (Terra d'Otranto). Verl. d. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., München, 2 volumi (1956-1957) e 1 suppl. (1961)
Gerhard Rohlfs, Supplemento ai vocabolari siciliani. Verlag der Bayer, München, Akad. d. Wiss., 1977
Gerhard Rohlfs, Historische Sprachschichten im modernen Sizilien. Verlag der Bayer, München, Akad. d. Wiss., 1975
Gerhard Rohlfs, Studi linguistici sulla Lucania e sul Cilento. Congedo Editore, Galatina, 1988 (translation by Elda Morlicchio, Atti e memorie N. 3, Università degli Studi della Basilicata).
Gerhard Rohlfs, Mundarten und Griechentum des Cilento, in Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 57, 1937, pp.421– 461
References
↑According to the classification of Giovan Battista Pellegrini, see Archived 26 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine
12Calabrian in Italian: Calabrese (pl. Calebresi). Synonyms: Calabro, Calabra, Calabri, calabre (m., f., m.pl., f.pl.). Sicilian: calabbrìsi, calavrìsi.
↑Giovanni Alessio (1964), I dialetti della Calabria, pp.27–34
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