…it’s l-i-n-g-u-a!

Ciao tutti, 

(la lingua italiana = the Italian language)

I absolutely loved our trip through southern Italy. One of the most rewarding aspects for me was putting my Italian skills to the test. Arguably the biggest thing I’ve accomplished while being abroad is developing my proficiency with the Italian language, and this trip with my family was a great way to culminate all that I’ve learned so far.

I also found it fascinating to experience first-hand all the different southern dialects. I had learned in my Italian classes about the various dialects throughout Italy, but until I heard them in person I did not realize how strange and different they actually sound compared to standard Italian! Siciliano and napolitano (the dialects from Sicily and Naples, respectively) are almost completely separate languages from standard Italian, to the point where even native Italians find these dialects incomprehensible (northern Italians even need to watch Sicilian and Neapolitan movies with Italian subtitles!)

For me, it was enjoyable to sit back and just listen to locals conversing with each other. Most of the time, it was like listening to jibberish; but it was interesting to pick up slight differences. For example, most people in the South of Italy tend to use the “sh” sound instead of “ch”. Take the word for “Sicily”: it Italian, they say Sicilia (pronounced see-CHEEL-ya), but in southern colloquial Italian it is pronounced see-SHEEL-ya. That’s just a simple example of a regional dialectal difference, comparable to the “southern twang” in the U.S. or the harsh vowel pronunciations in Chicago or Boston accents.

I also noticed how people in Naples would tend to break off the end of words. Maybe that is not necessarily a Neapolitan trait, but it is at least what I noticed when listening to several people talk in dialect there. Pretty much every Italian word ends in a vowel (to say “I went” is “sono andato”). In Naples, I remember hearing a lot of “son’ andat’…”

Those are the types of colloquialisms that I appreciated because I was able to still understand the gist of what people were saying. But when it comes to full-on napolitano or siciliano, I’m completely lost.

??. I got nothing.
It's something in Sicilian written on a shirt outside of a store in Cefalù, Sciliy.
Sicilian uses a lot of "u" instead of "o" (e.g., troppo, which means too much, becomes troppu).

Luckily, most everyone we encountered on our trip sown South were still able to speak standard Italian, and thus I was able to converse with them and translate the information to my family J

Ciao for now,

Augusto