I learned Sicilian from my grandparents who immigrated from Palermo (the city) to the US the same year Mussolini marched on Rome. Our household spoke mostly Sicilian which was corrupted by many words borrowed from English and blended into a whole lexicon of creative neologisms I spoke Sicilian at home until I went to kindergarten and on and off until a few years ago when my mother passed. In a few months I will turn 82 and although the Sicilian I learned was “frozen in time “, I still was able understand nearly all of your story. Saluti da Florida.
I thought I would do better with the Sicilian, due to the fact that it was spoken at home by family from Bagheria? I understood maybe 70 percent of the Sicilian, and 95 percent of the Italian. Certain phrases I didn’t get completely in the Italian was but able to figure it out. What part of Sicily was your dialect reflective of??
Let's not jump to the wrong assumption that all, or even most, Sicilians speak the same way! There are ,mostly slight , differences in words, meanings but some are way off. Sicilian is mostly a spoken language- dialect with a simpler grammar and without a future tense. I always suggest to learn the five vowels, and since it is another phonetic language, like the main Italiano, it will be easier to understand it when and if you're reading it.. Several words have more than one meaning. A Palermo native, yes, from the city. Minni vaiu.
My father will be 82 this year, his mother born in Palermo (the city) and also raised by his grandparents with Sicilian as his first language. His cousin Rose later taught him to read and write it, and decades later, he taught me. We visited Sicily some years ago now, even saw the church they were married in over 100yrs ago now in Francofonte. My mom tells me I spoke fluent Sicilian with my dad as a toddler, but as I grew older and he didn’t/couldn’t consistently speak Sicilian with me (where we lived there were barely any other Italians, never mind Sicilians 🤦🏾♀️), I began to lose it… I can still read it aloud though not always understanding what I’m reading, while I still say and can understand other things… it’s funny what stays with you.
If you learn the basics of Sicilian it’s pretty easy to learn Sicilian. I speak pretty good Italian and can understand most of Sicilian after learning basic words because with more intermediate/advanced Sicilian words are just Italian words but conjugated a bit
I am Neapolitan, I speak a very old version of this language. I'm also fluent in three different languages. When you spoke Sicilian, I did not understand all the words, however, I understood what the story was about. Personally, it's the intonation, gestures, facial expressions are my main clues as to what was going on with your story. Interestingly, your intonation, gestures and facial expressions changed when repeating the story in Italian and English. This was a fun video to watch. Thank you for sharing.
there is a program presented by discovery channel that when you are speaking different languages your personality changes a little, but not much, the cause for this is, you are re wiring your brain to talk and express yourself with different ideas. we have to remember that the language is an expression of ideas and situations, and the defined cases in one language vary to the others and sometimes information is lost in the process of transaltion.
I speak Catalan and Spanish natively, and Portuguese, Italian and French just about fluently. When you spoke Sicilian, I could only understand that you wanted to eat something the Sicilian way, and then something about the family. That was it! 😂
Brazilian here and exactly the same. I don't speak Italian but at the very least, I understood most of what he said in Italian but almost nothing in Sicilian.
I'm Italian born and raised in Sardinia but my father is from Reggio Calabria, i am fluent in Reggio dialect which is considered to be an offshoot of the Sicilian language on the main land. Even if the pronunciation is different between reggino and palermitano I could understand every world that you said. Nice video, keep it up mate💪🏽
This was a fun exercise for me as someone trying to improve my understanding of Italian. I didn’t really understand any of the Sicilian, apart from a couple words that sounded close enough to Italian. I understood almost all of the Italian, but I had a little trouble understanding the threats in the story until I heard the English version and then went back to the Italian version.
I don't speak Italian nevermind Sicilian. Out of the first one I only understood, "do you understand?" in the end. And, "he works arduously all day to give food to his family" and "do you understand?" on the second one.
Great! I’m 70 years old and Italian-American from NY. Granted, I studied the major Romance languages and I heard “ Calabrian” and “ Neapolitan” as a kid and beyond. I decided to listen to the Sicilian 3 times before the Italian and certainly got the gist of the story and knew why you laughed. With the exception of some words and phrases, it’s very close to the way my father and his parents spoke ( Cosenza, Calabria). I do have a Learn Sicilian book that maybe helped too. Very entertaining!
Thank you...I love Sicilianu. My mother was Greek, but migrated to Sicilia as a girl. She grew up speaking both Italiano and Sicilianu...then she went to school in Napoli and picked up Napoletano also. It was funny cause my father was from Torino so he spoke Torinese and Piedmontese. They could speak standard but they didn't really like it, they were from a different generation. What I loved about mom is the more angry she got...the more Sicilianu we heard. Oh...our family is from Trapani, but we have a lot of family in Catania also. I understood like maybe 60-70% ;o) You threw me off at first. But as you kept speaking I started to get a feel for it. A few words caught me though. I caught what you were saying, but if you asked me the say the word, I would have said something else.
È una cosa tipica di noi italiani che più ci arrabbiamo e più passiamo dall’italiano standard al nostro dialetto. È difficile arrabbiarsi senza parlare nel proprio dialetto. Ma credo che sia un po’ la stessa cosa anche per altri popoli, di altri Paesi.
@@jason5737 My mother? Oh yes, she could speak Greek. My grandparents were Greek so it was the language of her house as she grew up here in Italy. But for my family, we didn't really speak it together. I learned words and phrases, and of course learned to communicate with family but I wasn't really a fluent speaker...I had enough versions of Italian and English back then to keep me busy. ;o) I started to speak more Greek when I returned to Greece for uni. I actually had to learn both classical and medieval Greek as I'm a historian with a concentration in Roman/Greek intercultural exchanges during the Middle Ages. But don't get me wrong, I'm a proud Italian...I just like to say I'm Italian with Greek influence. I came back to Italy years ago and have been helping support channels like Raff's here that like to promote languages, history, and in particular...Italian, Roman, and Greek topics to a new generation.
@@unarealtaragionevole thats interesting , i am greek thats why i asked haha, we arent very different culturally and geneticaly. Only the language is different , but still i view italians as something very close to my own kind. The genetic similarities are crazy by the way if you study them . Always wanted to visit.
Just ran into your video, and although I don't speak Italian or Sicilian, I understood 90% of the Italian version because I speak Spanish. I was completely lost when listening to the Sicilian version.
Fascinating. I speak Spanish and have less than one month of studying Italian on Duolingo and I was able to understand about 70% of the Italian, and perhaps 1% of the Sicilian.
Fascinating! I studied Italian for many years and could understand the Italian version, but the Sicilian version was very strange and incredible to hear. Looking forward to hearing from you with other varieties of Sicilian. I recently visited Palermo and loved it. Would like to explore other cities in the island next time.
My fist language is Spanish, I understood about 70% of Italian... but Sicilian, the cadence and words was just too mind blowing for me to understand a thing. It seems like the vocabulary gap between Sicilian and Italian is wider than Spanish and standard Italian.
I’m of Sicilian origin, born in México, and fluent in Italian, having studied it in university and beyond. I was somehow able to get part of the gist of the Sicilian, but could not say I really understood it until I heard the Italian version. However, the overall sound of Sicilian seemed familiar to me inits musicality. (I am also a musician.) Interestingly, on the morning of the day that my mother died, I had a dream in which there was a group of anziani that I didn’t know who were huddled in agroup speaking to each other in one appeared to be Sicilian. I didn’t really understand anythong they were saying, but I heard the same music in their voices. I guess, perhaps, my brain, or my soul, knows Sicilian somehow!
I always love when you show us the Sicilian language and even more so because you say that your from Palermo, I wish my grandfather would have never gotten sick and passed because I know i'd be showing him videos like this and begging him to teach me some things
I speak Spanish natively, French and Italian and Portuguese pretty proficiently and can usually understand most of the romance languages to a degree. Have understood other people speaking Sicilian from time to time and can pick up the Gist in movies that feature it. I was pretty lost with yours though. Maybe 25 or 30%. Fascinating!
His Sicilian from Palermo was spot on, maybe a tiny bit exaggerated but as a native from that city I understood almost all of it. His English is bad. Sabbenerica!!
@@jamesmule3035 are you busting his balls? Because, let me tell you, his English is flawless. Excellent pronunciation. Very little accent to speak of in his RP English..
I love this. I speak Spanish and only understood words here and there. I really think you could Continue the sicilian Videos. Sometimes I wonder if it should be it's own language on the educational and political level and why it's isn't taught separate from standard italian. I really do love it and hope to go to Sicily one day! Can't wait to hear more of you speaking Siciliano :)
The linguistic policies of Italy are simple. Italy is a young nation, dating back to only 1861, and we needed to unify populations that were very different culturally, to make a unified country of a very centrifuge population. One of the tools chosen for that is language. Besides, we speak a fairly small language, Italian counts for just over 60 million native speakers counting also the Swiss and the minorities in Croatia and Slovenia. If we pulverise it into some 40-50 dialects we end up in a babbel tower situation. And you would not be extremely happy about having to learn 5 completely different set of basic phrases if you come over on holiday with the intent of visiting Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome, and Naples.
I absolutely loved this! When I started to learn Italian at university, I found a coursebook on Sicilian written by an Italian-American. I've not been able to find it again since and I'm still gutted about it. It had a blue cover and used the grammar-translation method. Anyway, I'd love to know the words all Sicilians use in common and then delve into the differences. Looking forward to your future videos on Sicilian. Grazie mille!
As a native Rioplatense spanish speaker, I understood what the story was about in Italian besides a couple words, your Sicilian was much harder to understand.
Pistiare reminds the word hestia (εστία), meaning hearth, that is used for diner εστιατόριο. The goddess Εστία is the equivalent of Vesta in Latin. There's a Greek verb εστιάζω (meaning gather to eat). Anyway, as always, your videos are very interesting and fun (please don't headbutt me).
@@antoninoscro1834 There's a word like that in Yiddish and I think German also. It's pronounced in America, "fress." If you eat like a pig, you're a "fresser."
@@glittermama Don't forget that the Sicilian language contains the greek too!And "pistiari"says something about!Yes in german fressen,ein "fresser"sein!
This Sicilian you spoke definately struck me as being Palermitana. My roots are from Palermo and Agrigento. I always heard though, and understand, quite a lot of the dialect spoken in and around Agrigento. I certainly noticed it was quite a bit different than the way you spoke here. It was really great to hear. Thx.
Fascinante ! Tenho sangue siciliano, minha família os "Trigona" vem desta linda ilha ... faça mais vídeos sobre o idioma, não entendi nada hahaha mas é muito interessante ❤
I love this! My grandfather emigrated from Palermo and although I heard he and my grandmother speaking it (she was Irish, but learned it) I could understand some of it but couldn't speak it. When I was learning standard Italian, I was shocked at how different it was! So many Americans have Italian ancestry so you do hear Sicilian and the Naples dialect quite a bit here. Love this video and your work overall.
I would love to see a dedicated video about the Sicilian language and it’s varieties. There is so little content on the dialetti and even so there is like 100x more now than 5 years ago
I'm from the north of Italy (Lombardy) and I'm very surprised because I thought I would understand very little. I understood, I'd say, 80% or even more. Probably because I read all of Camilleri's books and I grew accustomed to a lot of Sicilian words! LOL
I understood, Italian 98%, Sicilian about a dozen words!! When I was in High School I had an Italian teacher who was Sicilian, she would teach us sometimes Sicilian poetry! She loved the poetry and helped us appreciate it. I can only remember one. I am not sure of the spelling, but here it goes " Quanta sei bella, quanta sventurata. Cara Sicilia, cula di poeti, ma non sempre sono gli anni tuoi piu lieti" I do remember what it means. I hope you recognize it. There are no more teachers like that! Sometime she would bring Sicilian treats for us to try. I am 74 now, this I learned when I was 17!!
Cumpà, troppu forti!!! Thank you so much for making this video, would love to see more content in sicilianu strittu, especially your beautiful palirmitanu ncarcatu accent! Also, glad to hear you use pistiari hahah granni sì!
Wow! Adoro il tuo primo canale, però come qualcuno chi è ossessionato con le lingue, questo tipo di contenuto è perfetto per me. Sono americano, ho 18 anni, e studio la lingua italiana da qualche anno. Mi piace poter dire che ho capito circa 70% di ciò che hai detto in Italiano. Ma del Siciliano, sfortunatamente zero lol. Spero di imparare la lingua Siciliana un giorno perché ho famiglia che veniva dell'isola, ma non ci sono le risorse online come per l'italiano. Grazie mille per aver postato questo video!
Imparare i dialetti (le lingue regionali) è divertente, ma ricorda che ovunque tu vada in Italia troverai gente che parla in italiano standard. Ormai il solo dialetto è parlato da pochi anziani e in alcune zone i giovani (sotto ai 50!) parlano solo in italiano.
I’m a serb who loved your channel before starting to work for an italian company. Right now, i can say that i understand 80 percent and maybe able to speak arround 60 percent of an everyday italian language. Aaaand i was working with genti siciliani. Non posso capire un cazzo de cosa parlano
The whole body speaks with! Makes easier to understand for me from Ticino, as well as having read Andrea Camilleri and watched the series made out if his books 😊
I could have understood more of the Sicilian if it was spoken a bit slower but I recognized some words and certainly got the gist of the story. I understood the Italian. Sono Americano ma la nostra famiglia è della provincia di Messina.
I speak Italian. And my family is from benevento so my comprehension of Neapolitan is pretty good. Sicilian was basically unintelligible at first. But after I listened to the Italian I listened to the Sicilian and understood. Interesting when you know what one is trying to say
I was so happy that I understood most of this story on the first try. After years of going to Sicily and hearing Sicilian spoken by my friends, I was able to get it, even while not understanding every single word. I am just so impressed with the Metatron's linguistic abilities. E' un mostro quando si tratta di capacita' linguistiche! I'm curious to know at what age he transferred from Palermo to London because his English is also phenomenal. I'm guessing that it was at a fairly early age.
Wow that was difficult to understand even for someone who speaks basically fluent Sicilian. My parents were from Sicily and I speak both standard Italian and Sicilian but my parents were from the Eastern side of the island. Metatron's cadence seems closer to the Napoletano cadence....with very soft vowels at the end of words. Looks like the cadence is very different East to West of the island. Let's just say I understood 100% of the Italian and English version of the story. Metatron could you do a video on cadence? Ciao da Boston
I am very proficient in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. My Italian is decent and I understood everything. Sicilian? Not more than a few words here and there. First time hearing Palermo-Sicilian. Fun to hear. Thanks.
Hello Metatron. Great videos. I am subscribed to all of your channels and I enjoy them all. I am from Greece. Would you find interesting to make a video about Chalcidian alphabet and its connection with Etruscan and Latin alphabet? Also I have a question about how much the latin vocabulary and ancient Greek vocabulary have influenced one another. Greetings from Greece my friend and wish you the best
Hi Metatron, wow... I was barely able to understand a couple of words in Sicilian. Whilst with Italian, well... I'm a Spanish speaker so it was easy to understand around 80-85% of what you said. Keep up the good work. Ciao
Native Sicilian speaker from the southwestern coast here. I could understand ~90-95% of the story. I struggled to understand certain words and also the accent made it harder to understand other words which are common also in my area.
I am Brazilian and both my father and my mother are from Italian families. I do speak Italian and I got the Italian part without any problem, but the Sicilian part I've only got a couple of words. It's completely different from other latin languages.
If you are form an Italian family that has arrived in the 19th in Brazil, probably your family speaks Venetian or another dialect from Northern Italy, while Sicilian is from the extreme South of the country. Those dialects can be quite different.
@@pseudomino3it's interesting that you say that Italian immigrants to Brazil usually came from the north of Italy. Here in the United States, the vast majority of Italian immigrants came from the south. I wonder why this difference would exist between the US and Brazil.
Sicilian went straight over my head but I'm learning standard Spanish and was able to gather that you were buying something listening to standard Italian.
My great grandmother was a LaBarbera from Sicily. Hearing her and all my great aunts converse when I was young, I was able to pick up the “idea” of the story. The Italian, which I studied in High School, I wasn’t able to grasp as easily. Strange what the brain recalls from childhood. (Btw, I’m 66 now).
My family is from Sicily, Patti, (Messina dialect) and i understood kinda everything apart from a few words. Fun fact about Sicilian Dialect: Uva (Ita), Raisin (Eng), Raisin (Fre) Rascina (Messina Dialect but i'm not sure if is only from Messina or from all Sicily to be honest). BTW beautiful video, thanks!
I am Italian from Brindisi and, perhaps because of the similarities with the Salento dialect, I understood 95% of what you said in Sicilian. Very interesting.
I lived in Catania from 1964 to 1977 and I can definitely say that your story was in perfect Parlermitano. And besides the different words, it is the intonation that makes it instantly recognizable.
Daca vorbesti fluent engleza la fel cum scri, e clar. Sterge dreacu comentariul ca te-ai facut de bacanie. O sti pe aia, Prostul daca nu e fudul parca nu e prost destul?
I've learned both Italian and Neapolitan (+ many other romance languages) and I still found this story to be very very hard to understand... only after hearing it in Italian and going back to listen again the Sicilian version I was able to get around 10% of what you said lol.
A few years back I saw an italian film and thought I could get by watching it without subtitles as I can somewhat understand italian. It was called Anime Nere and most of it is spoken in calabrese so, just like the parlance from Palermo in this video, my understanding went from 70% to 2% 😅
Italian is my second language. It seems, at least on the surface, very fair to consider Sicilian a separate language (although that's probably for natives/linguists to decide). I barely understood anything when you spoke Sicilian. I heard a few phrases but the impression I got was that you were having a meal and got into an argument with someone at your table. Then you spoke Italian and I started to laugh, realizing how inaccurate I was lol. Sicilian sounds really cool, still though I think I'll always hold Italian as the most beautiful language in the world.
I am from the central southern coast of Sicily, I understood everything except 1 or 2 words we don't use such as pistiari for example to say to eat. Then of course 100% Italian and also 100% English. I find it interesting to read the comments from speakers of other latin languages telling how much Sicilian they undestood , also what everybody think how sicilian sounds to them speakers of any other laaguage. Nice interesting video as usual! Ma dimm' na cosa, ma u testu tu scrissi Tony Sperandeo? hehehehe
I was born in Palermo and emigrated with my parents to Canada when I was nine. Although my parents were from different parts of Italy (Abbruzzese and Veneto) we spoke Italian/English at home. My grandmother, who was born in the Veneto region and moved to Sicily after marriage, learned to speak the true Sicilian and that's all I heard for my first 9 years. I am 75 years young and I can understand the "basic" Sicilian, and when I do I get this warm familiar feeling of being home. Never forgot my roots. 😢
My wife's dad was from Palermo and later this year I will be taking her back to look for family. I speak some Italian, but I see I have a lot of work to do! Thanks for the video.
Hearing the differences between italian and sicilian was so very cool. It's similar to hearing different groups of filipinos speaking in their different languages. It is so much fun watching from the outside as groups will sit separately and purposely speak so other grpups cannot understand each other for the most part. Then when they all join together everyone speaks a tagalog/english hybrid. I understand more than I can speak of the tagalog, and thanks to my wife can almost follow cebuano. Then they mess with me and switch to visayan, totally lost.
Hi, I'm from Brazil and also speak french pretty well, but I was lost in sicilian, except for a word here and there. Interestingly, I could understand you in italian.
You’re a legend ! When you speak veramente Siciliano more to the point Palermitano! You bring me back to a great time ! God bless paisano beddu ! Dio te benedica!
Today is my last day of Sicilian vacation.😢 This is my first day on the island, and I am blowen away. Regarding language. I've understood 100% of Italian aldo I have never learned it. That's something that I picked up from films, popular culture and from 2 years of Latin in gymnasium. Sicilian on the other hand is terra incognita or Spanish village as we in Serbia would say. In the last 10 days I heard one old man speaking Sicilian at bus station with driver, and in my hotel there are 2 waiters who often speak Sicilian to each other, and it is amazing. Metatron, I can't wait for more Sicilian language videos. PS word that you use instead of mangiare is great choice. It is like difference in Serbian between jesti i ždrati.
I'm Brazilian, could understand about 60% of the italian, enough to get the gist of the story, even the words whose meaning I don't know I was able to differentiate between verb, noun, pronoun...after listening to it in english it became even clearer, a lot of the words have similar sounding counterparts in my language with just slightly different or more specific meanings. As for sicilian, I understood almost NOTHING, about 3 words only. Keep up the good content! ✌️✌️
I learned to speak Sicilian from my parents. They immigrated to Montreal, Canada, and are from the small town called Cattolica Eraclea in the province of Agrigento. I understood about 70 to 80% of what you said and Cattolica isn't even far from Palermo. I always joke with my Italian friends over here when they say they don't understand me. I tell them sometimes we Sicilians don't even understand each other 😂.
My parents are from Carini, near Palermo, i speak sicilian (somewhat, lol), and that was almost spot on, I could hear some slight region differences, but easily understandable. Learning Italian in school wasn't easy, there were different words, though some thought I had it made
It felt like I was being spoken to by Don Fanucci, Clamenza, and GF2 Michael, respectively. It was quite an experience! Bravo, sir! A most interesting departure! 👍👍 P.S. I understood nothing specific from Fanucci or Clamenza, but I could still tell that my life was in danger.
I have lived in Berlin for years, but I was born in Sardinia to Sicilian parents (father from Catania and mother from Ragusa), from whom I also learnt Sicilian. I recognised the typical Palermo accent and noticed some differences from the Catania dialect in some words, but I understood everything. However, I would like to say that it would be nice if other themes were chosen to tell stories about Sicily, since the cinema already exports only an image of mafia and crime. Sicily is so much more and offers so many topics!!! Anyway, thank you for your work!
I am Sicilian-American, my relatives came from the Palermo area - Mezzojuso, Corleone, and Marineo, and even though transmission of Sicilian stopped with my grandparents' generation, I recognize very viscerally the intonation and gestured you use. Really reminded me of being a little kid at my grandparents' house.
I'm Uruguayan, and speak Spanish and Portuguese (almost as a native), English fluently, and I've studied French though I forgot most of it because it was a long time ago and didn't have to use it. I understood maybe 3 or 4 words from Sicilian. In Italian I could understand most of the story, but I could understand it completely only when you told it in English.
Quando voglio fare un esempio di Milanese faccio ascoltare Porta Romana. "In via Filangieri gh'è ona campana / 'Gni volta che la sona l'è 'na cundanna". Plus honestly he reminded me of good old Alex Drastico.
Man I luv this video of yours...thank you for sharing. And I also do love the etymological explanation about words you used. I definitely will follow and learn from you. Un abbraccio dalla California!!
Can’t explain it but I get this feeling of Byzantium heritage in the Sicilian language , that I don’t hear at all in Italian, or at least a lot of its ancient residue has been sanded over in the modern Italian language.
Native spanish speaker. I can also understand a large amount of italian, portuguese, and various other romance languages including grandpa Latin. I basically couldn't understand any of the Sicilian. Amazing.
I understood everything perfectly. It's almost the same Sicilian I was taught since childhood. There are subtle differences between the dialect of the city of Palermo and what my parents taught me which is in the province 20 kilometers away. Mostly accent and stresses on certain words but almost identical. I was taught to say "manciari" (mangiare) but when we do use "pistiari" it usually refers to a more aggressive connotation like if someone ate something by themselves without sharing, we would say "tu pistiasti tuttu"? "you crammed it down by yourself"? Also living in California and being exposed to Mexican Spanish, many of my Mexican friends would refer to going out drinking as "pistiar", of coarse it's drinking other than eating but I believe it refers to overindulging. I don't know if there is a connection. There are few borrowed Spanish terms in the local dialect.
Eu sou do Rio de Janeiro e já estudei francês e espanhol. Nunca estudei italiano, mas consigo entender talvez uns 40% do italiano falado (a língua escrita dá para compreender quase tudo). Por outro lado, entendi zero de siciliano! rs Acertei, por dedução, apenas a última frase "Did you understand?". Vou procurar um texto escrito em siciliano, mas acho que vai continuar difícil. 😅
I am American born raised in a Sicilian/Tuscan speaking home. I can not understand spoken Portugese, but I understood your written comment 100%. I speak Eastern Sicilian (Ragusa), and understood little of the Palermitan spoken in the video.
As a native Catalan speaker, I am obviously a lot more used to hearing Italian, so the first time I watched the Sicilian story, I didn't get much (interestingly, the parts about eating and the fighting words xD). I got 100% of the Italian, then revisited the Sicilian again and finally understood a lot more.
B2 Italian speaker. In the Sicilian version, understood only that the story was set in Palermo and that something to do with eating was involved (I remembered the verb "pistiari" from your old video comparing Italian and Sicilian). In the Italian version, I understood pretty much everything apart from the precise nature of some of the threats. On a separate note, would you consider doing a video on the Salentino dialect?
Native American English speaker, studied Italian all of my life, have relatives in Sicily and I understood all of your Italian but hardly any of your Sicilian. When I am with family in Sicily, they seem to speak Italian and Siclian (Agrigento) inter-mixed, so I seem to follow them better. I only heard Sicilian growing up, no one spoke it to me.
Il Commissario Montalbano was a good exercise...I understood 30-50% even if the 2nd part was too fast for me, but I got "isso se scantò" and everything was allright...😀😀
I'm from Sardinia and I understood only the searching for a place and that there was a discussion with someone I don't know why but threats (and in general speaking rude) said in each regional language sound more "true" and threatening
I'm from Italy, but I was born near Milan (Tradate). I could understand Sicilian about 30~40% of what you were saying at most, honestly. Even if I were to speak only in Italian and the other person to speak in Sicilian to me I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to sustain a conversation with them.
didnt understand a word but it sounded and looked cool , the gesticulations and facial expressions were excellent, I could listen to people speak to me in foreign languages all day even if I dont understand a word. I wish I'd paid more attention to languages in highschool, as a lowly Scot I've got English and speak Scots and some Gaelic but thats it. I had a girlfriend from Catalonia in university and she would speak to me in Catalan and I never understood a word but it was nice just to hear her speak it.
I learned Sicilian from my grandparents who immigrated from Palermo (the city) to the US the same year Mussolini marched on Rome. Our household spoke mostly Sicilian which was corrupted by many words borrowed from English and blended into a whole lexicon of creative neologisms I spoke Sicilian at home until I went to kindergarten and on and off until a few years ago when my mother passed. In a few months I will turn 82 and although the Sicilian I learned was “frozen in time “, I still was able understand nearly all of your story. Saluti da Florida.
Wow! I’m italin and couldnt understand anything!
I thought I would do better with the Sicilian, due to the fact that it was spoken at home by family from Bagheria? I understood maybe 70 percent of the Sicilian, and 95 percent of the Italian. Certain phrases I didn’t get completely in the Italian was but able to figure it out. What part of Sicily was your dialect reflective of??
Let's not jump to the wrong assumption that all, or even most, Sicilians speak the same way! There are ,mostly slight , differences in words, meanings but some are way off. Sicilian is mostly a spoken language- dialect with a simpler grammar and without a future tense. I always suggest to learn the five vowels, and since it is another phonetic language, like the main Italiano, it will be easier to understand it when and if you're reading it.. Several words have more than one meaning. A Palermo native, yes, from the city. Minni vaiu.
My father will be 82 this year, his mother born in Palermo (the city) and also raised by his grandparents with Sicilian as his first language. His cousin Rose later taught him to read and write it, and decades later, he taught me. We visited Sicily some years ago now, even saw the church they were married in over 100yrs ago now in Francofonte.
My mom tells me I spoke fluent Sicilian with my dad as a toddler, but as I grew older and he didn’t/couldn’t consistently speak Sicilian with me (where we lived there were barely any other Italians, never mind Sicilians 🤦🏾♀️), I began to lose it…
I can still read it aloud though not always understanding what I’m reading, while I still say and can understand other things… it’s funny what stays with you.
@@riccardoromeI’m Italian from Milano and I understood everything 😂
I’m Italian, from Umbria, and I did not understand hardly anything of the Sicilian! 😆
The next time he should try Tuscany dialects vs Umbria :D
Fuoco mio
If you learn the basics of Sicilian it’s pretty easy to learn Sicilian. I speak pretty good Italian and can understand most of Sicilian after learning basic words because with more intermediate/advanced Sicilian words are just Italian words but conjugated a bit
Praticamente arabo.
@@finmat95 Calabria e peggio
I am Neapolitan, I speak a very old version of this language. I'm also fluent in three different languages.
When you spoke Sicilian, I did not understand all the words, however, I understood what the story was about.
Personally, it's the intonation, gestures, facial expressions are my main clues as to what was going on with your story.
Interestingly, your intonation, gestures and facial expressions changed when repeating the story in Italian and English.
This was a fun video to watch.
Thank you for sharing.
nnapuletano viech? Addò si tu fra?
there is a program presented by discovery channel that when you are speaking different languages your personality changes a little, but not much, the cause for this is, you are re wiring your brain to talk and express yourself with different ideas. we have to remember that the language is an expression of ideas and situations, and the defined cases in one language vary to the others and sometimes information is lost in the process of transaltion.
The threats sound so much more powerful in Sicilian than English or standard Italian
Cosa Nostra 😂
Yes definitely much more scary in Sicilian
😂🤣
It helps that he affected a more gruff demeanor while speaking Sicilian.
He over sold it and overacted it, like a cheap mafia movie.. lol
I speak Catalan and Spanish natively, and Portuguese, Italian and French just about fluently. When you spoke Sicilian, I could only understand that you wanted to eat something the Sicilian way, and then something about the family. That was it! 😂
Aren't we Italians all about food and family anyway?
@@bededaventiquattro2073 my absolute favorite thing about your culture. 👍🏼
Do you speak English too?
Brazilian here and exactly the same. I don't speak Italian but at the very least, I understood most of what he said in Italian but almost nothing in Sicilian.
@@Ggdivhjkjl No.
I'm Italian born and raised in Sardinia but my father is from Reggio Calabria, i am fluent in Reggio dialect which is considered to be an offshoot of the Sicilian language on the main land. Even if the pronunciation is different between reggino and palermitano I could understand every world that you said. Nice video, keep it up mate💪🏽
The same for the Salentino, also considered offshot of Sicilian
U calabbrisi è cchiù bieddru però
This was a fun exercise for me as someone trying to improve my understanding of Italian. I didn’t really understand any of the Sicilian, apart from a couple words that sounded close enough to Italian. I understood almost all of the Italian, but I had a little trouble understanding the threats in the story until I heard the English version and then went back to the Italian version.
I don't speak Italian nevermind Sicilian. Out of the first one I only understood, "do you understand?" in the end.
And, "he works arduously all day to give food to his family" and "do you understand?" on the second one.
Great! I’m 70 years old and Italian-American from NY. Granted, I studied the major Romance languages and I heard “ Calabrian” and “ Neapolitan” as a kid and beyond. I decided to listen to the Sicilian 3 times before the Italian and certainly got the gist of the story and knew why you laughed.
With the exception of some words and phrases, it’s very close to the way my father and his parents spoke ( Cosenza, Calabria). I do have a Learn Sicilian book that maybe helped too.
Very entertaining!
Thank you...I love Sicilianu. My mother was Greek, but migrated to Sicilia as a girl. She grew up speaking both Italiano and Sicilianu...then she went to school in Napoli and picked up Napoletano also. It was funny cause my father was from Torino so he spoke Torinese and Piedmontese. They could speak standard but they didn't really like it, they were from a different generation. What I loved about mom is the more angry she got...the more Sicilianu we heard. Oh...our family is from Trapani, but we have a lot of family in Catania also. I understood like maybe 60-70% ;o) You threw me off at first. But as you kept speaking I started to get a feel for it. A few words caught me though. I caught what you were saying, but if you asked me the say the word, I would have said something else.
did she speak greek?
È una cosa tipica di noi italiani che più ci arrabbiamo e più passiamo dall’italiano standard al nostro dialetto. È difficile arrabbiarsi senza parlare nel proprio dialetto. Ma credo che sia un po’ la stessa cosa anche per altri popoli, di altri Paesi.
@@jason5737 My mother? Oh yes, she could speak Greek. My grandparents were Greek so it was the language of her house as she grew up here in Italy. But for my family, we didn't really speak it together. I learned words and phrases, and of course learned to communicate with family but I wasn't really a fluent speaker...I had enough versions of Italian and English back then to keep me busy. ;o) I started to speak more Greek when I returned to Greece for uni. I actually had to learn both classical and medieval Greek as I'm a historian with a concentration in Roman/Greek intercultural exchanges during the Middle Ages. But don't get me wrong, I'm a proud Italian...I just like to say I'm Italian with Greek influence. I came back to Italy years ago and have been helping support channels like Raff's here that like to promote languages, history, and in particular...Italian, Roman, and Greek topics to a new generation.
@@unarealtaragionevole thats interesting , i am greek thats why i asked haha, we arent very different culturally and geneticaly. Only the language is different , but still i view italians as something very close to my own kind. The genetic similarities are crazy by the way if you study them . Always wanted to visit.
Just ran into your video, and although I don't speak Italian or Sicilian, I understood 90% of the Italian version because I speak Spanish. I was completely lost when listening to the Sicilian version.
Fascinating. I speak Spanish and have less than one month of studying Italian on Duolingo and I was able to understand about 70% of the Italian, and perhaps 1% of the Sicilian.
Fascinating! I studied Italian for many years and could understand the Italian version, but the Sicilian version was very strange and incredible to hear. Looking forward to hearing from you with other varieties of Sicilian. I recently visited Palermo and loved it. Would like to explore other cities in the island next time.
My fist language is Spanish, I understood about 70% of Italian... but Sicilian, the cadence and words was just too mind blowing for me to understand a thing. It seems like the vocabulary gap between Sicilian and Italian is wider than Spanish and standard Italian.
I’m of Sicilian origin, born in México, and fluent in Italian, having studied it in university and beyond. I was somehow able to get part of the gist of the Sicilian, but could not say I really understood it until I heard the Italian version. However, the overall sound of Sicilian seemed familiar to me inits musicality. (I am also a musician.) Interestingly, on the morning of the day that my mother died, I had a dream in which there was a group of anziani that I didn’t know who were huddled in agroup speaking to each other in one appeared to be Sicilian. I didn’t really understand anythong they were saying, but I heard the same music in their voices. I guess, perhaps, my brain, or my soul, knows Sicilian somehow!
Pues eres un hermano Siciliano! 🙂
tiziano ferro "las mexicanas tienen bigote" xD
You're mexican Sicilian too?!
Eres Casi Argentino
😂😂😂 lol. You're mexican mate. You wish you were Sicilian. Hahahaha nice try
Even though I didn't understand a single word of Sicilian, at least I can say it was by far, the most intimidating version of the story
That's why they became the Mafia
I always love when you show us the Sicilian language and even more so because you say that your from Palermo, I wish my grandfather would have never gotten sick and passed because I know i'd be showing him videos like this and begging him to teach me some things
I speak Spanish natively, French and Italian and Portuguese pretty proficiently and can usually understand most of the romance languages to a degree. Have understood other people speaking Sicilian from time to time and can pick up the Gist in movies that feature it. I was pretty lost with yours though. Maybe 25 or 30%. Fascinating!
I'm from northwestern Italy. And I was pretty lost as well
@@Alby_Torino I feel much better now. 😆
His Sicilian from Palermo was spot on, maybe a tiny bit exaggerated but as a native from that city I understood almost all of it. His English is bad. Sabbenerica!!
Prove that YOUR English is better@@jamesmule3035
@@jamesmule3035 are you busting his balls? Because, let me tell you, his English is flawless. Excellent pronunciation. Very little accent to speak of in his RP English..
Even the gestures change.
Fascinating video Sir.
I love this. I speak Spanish and only understood words here and there. I really think you could Continue the sicilian Videos. Sometimes I wonder if it should be it's own language on the educational and political level and why it's isn't taught separate from standard italian. I really do love it and hope to go to Sicily one day! Can't wait to hear more of you speaking Siciliano :)
King ROGER 2 made Sicilian the official language of his court in 1102 AD .
@@bertsparacino714so what
The linguistic policies of Italy are simple. Italy is a young nation, dating back to only 1861, and we needed to unify populations that were very different culturally, to make a unified country of a very centrifuge population. One of the tools chosen for that is language. Besides, we speak a fairly small language, Italian counts for just over 60 million native speakers counting also the Swiss and the minorities in Croatia and Slovenia. If we pulverise it into some 40-50 dialects we end up in a babbel tower situation. And you would not be extremely happy about having to learn 5 completely different set of basic phrases if you come over on holiday with the intent of visiting Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome, and Naples.
I absolutely loved this! When I started to learn Italian at university, I found a coursebook on Sicilian written by an Italian-American. I've not been able to find it again since and I'm still gutted about it. It had a blue cover and used the grammar-translation method. Anyway, I'd love to know the words all Sicilians use in common and then delve into the differences. Looking forward to your future videos on Sicilian. Grazie mille!
As a native Rioplatense spanish speaker, I understood what the story was about in Italian besides a couple words, your Sicilian was much harder to understand.
Pistiare reminds the word hestia (εστία), meaning hearth, that is used for diner εστιατόριο. The goddess Εστία is the equivalent of Vesta in Latin. There's a Greek verb εστιάζω (meaning gather to eat). Anyway, as always, your videos are very interesting and fun (please don't headbutt me).
Pistiari significa mangiare a sazietà,mangiare come gli animali,divorare.
@@antoninoscro1834 There's a word like that in Yiddish and I think German also. It's pronounced in America, "fress." If you eat like a pig, you're a "fresser."
@@glittermama Don't forget that the Sicilian language contains the greek too!And "pistiari"says something about!Yes in german fressen,ein "fresser"sein!
It's very interesting video ! Thank You very much ! 😊
This Sicilian you spoke definately struck me as being Palermitana. My roots are from Palermo and Agrigento. I always heard though, and understand, quite a lot of the dialect spoken in and around Agrigento. I certainly noticed it was quite a bit different than the way you spoke here. It was really great to hear. Thx.
Fascinante !
Tenho sangue siciliano, minha família os "Trigona" vem desta linda ilha ... faça mais vídeos sobre o idioma, não entendi nada hahaha mas é muito interessante ❤
I love this! My grandfather emigrated from Palermo and although I heard he and my grandmother speaking it (she was Irish, but learned it) I could understand some of it but couldn't speak it. When I was learning standard Italian, I was shocked at how different it was! So many Americans have Italian ancestry so you do hear Sicilian and the Naples dialect quite a bit here. Love this video and your work overall.
I would love to see a dedicated video about the Sicilian language and it’s varieties. There is so little content on the dialetti and even so there is like 100x more now than 5 years ago
I'm from the north of Italy (Lombardy) and I'm very surprised because I thought I would understand very little. I understood, I'd say, 80% or even more. Probably because I read all of Camilleri's books and I grew accustomed to a lot of Sicilian words! LOL
Interessante!
I understood, Italian 98%, Sicilian about a dozen words!! When I was in High School I had an Italian teacher who was Sicilian, she would teach us sometimes Sicilian poetry! She loved the poetry and helped us appreciate it. I can only remember one. I am not sure of the spelling, but here it goes " Quanta sei bella, quanta sventurata. Cara Sicilia, cula di poeti, ma non sempre sono gli anni tuoi piu lieti" I do remember what it means. I hope you recognize it. There are no more teachers like that! Sometime she would bring Sicilian treats for us to try. I am 74 now, this I learned when I was 17!!
Cumpà, troppu forti!!! Thank you so much for making this video, would love to see more content in sicilianu strittu, especially your beautiful palirmitanu ncarcatu accent! Also, glad to hear you use pistiari hahah granni sì!
Wow! Adoro il tuo primo canale, però come qualcuno chi è ossessionato con le lingue, questo tipo di contenuto è perfetto per me.
Sono americano, ho 18 anni, e studio la lingua italiana da qualche anno. Mi piace poter dire che ho capito circa 70% di ciò che hai detto in Italiano. Ma del Siciliano, sfortunatamente zero lol.
Spero di imparare la lingua Siciliana un giorno perché ho famiglia che veniva dell'isola, ma non ci sono le risorse online come per l'italiano.
Grazie mille per aver postato questo video!
Imparare i dialetti (le lingue regionali) è divertente, ma ricorda che ovunque tu vada in Italia troverai gente che parla in italiano standard. Ormai il solo dialetto è parlato da pochi anziani e in alcune zone i giovani (sotto ai 50!) parlano solo in italiano.
I’m a serb who loved your channel before starting to work for an italian company. Right now, i can say that i understand 80 percent and maybe able to speak arround 60 percent of an everyday italian language. Aaaand i was working with genti siciliani. Non posso capire un cazzo de cosa parlano
The whole body speaks with! Makes easier to understand for me from Ticino, as well as having read Andrea Camilleri and watched the series made out if his books 😊
I could have understood more of the Sicilian if it was spoken a bit slower but I recognized some words and certainly got the gist of the story. I understood the Italian. Sono Americano ma la nostra famiglia è della provincia di Messina.
Such a beautiful language! Please teach us more about it!
Also, it can be noticed how you gesticulate differently while speaking it.
I speak Italian. And my family is from benevento so my comprehension of Neapolitan is pretty good. Sicilian was basically unintelligible at first. But after I listened to the Italian I listened to the Sicilian and understood. Interesting when you know what one is trying to say
I was so happy that I understood most of this story on the first try. After years of going to Sicily and hearing Sicilian spoken by my friends, I was able to get it, even while not understanding every single word. I am just so impressed with the Metatron's linguistic abilities. E' un mostro quando si tratta di capacita' linguistiche! I'm curious to know at what age he transferred from Palermo to London because his English is also phenomenal. I'm guessing that it was at a fairly early age.
Fantastic explanation and examples. Thank you for sharing.
Wow that was difficult to understand even for someone who speaks basically fluent Sicilian. My parents were from Sicily and I speak both standard Italian and Sicilian but my parents were from the Eastern side of the island. Metatron's cadence seems closer to the Napoletano cadence....with very soft vowels at the end of words. Looks like the cadence is very different East to West of the island. Let's just say I understood 100% of the Italian and English version of the story. Metatron could you do a video on cadence? Ciao da Boston
I am very proficient in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. My Italian is decent and I understood everything. Sicilian? Not more than a few words here and there. First time hearing Palermo-Sicilian. Fun to hear. Thanks.
That was great! You're absolutely amazing!
Love from an English/Genoese fan
Hello Metatron. Great videos. I am subscribed to all of your channels and I enjoy them all. I am from Greece.
Would you find interesting to make a video about Chalcidian alphabet and its connection with Etruscan and Latin alphabet? Also I have a question about how much the latin vocabulary and ancient Greek vocabulary have influenced one another.
Greetings from Greece my friend and wish you the best
Hi Metatron, wow... I was barely able to understand a couple of words in Sicilian. Whilst with Italian, well... I'm a Spanish speaker so it was easy to understand around 80-85% of what you said. Keep up the good work. Ciao
Native Sicilian speaker from the southwestern coast here. I could understand ~90-95% of the story. I struggled to understand certain words and also the accent made it harder to understand other words which are common also in my area.
I am Brazilian and both my father and my mother are from Italian families. I do speak Italian and I got the Italian part without any problem, but the Sicilian part I've only got a couple of words. It's completely different from other latin languages.
If you are form an Italian family that has arrived in the 19th in Brazil, probably your family speaks Venetian or another dialect from Northern Italy, while Sicilian is from the extreme South of the country. Those dialects can be quite different.
@@pseudomino3They are both separate languages (Venetian and Sicilian)
@@TheAtomoh Yes. Although they are traditionally called dialects, they are in facto two separate languages.
@@pseudomino3it's interesting that you say that Italian immigrants to Brazil usually came from the north of Italy. Here in the United States, the vast majority of Italian immigrants came from the south. I wonder why this difference would exist between the US and Brazil.
Sicilian went straight over my head but I'm learning standard Spanish and was able to gather that you were buying something listening to standard Italian.
My great grandmother was a LaBarbera from Sicily. Hearing her and all my great aunts converse when I was young, I was able to pick up the “idea” of the story. The Italian, which I studied in High School, I wasn’t able to grasp as easily. Strange what the brain recalls from childhood. (Btw, I’m 66 now).
My family is from Sicily, Patti, (Messina dialect) and i understood kinda everything apart from a few words.
Fun fact about Sicilian Dialect: Uva (Ita), Raisin (Eng), Raisin (Fre) Rascina (Messina Dialect but i'm not sure if is only from Messina or from all Sicily to be honest). BTW beautiful video, thanks!
I am Italian from Brindisi and, perhaps because of the similarities with the Salento dialect, I understood 95% of what you said in Sicilian. Very interesting.
I lived in Catania from 1964 to 1977 and I can definitely say that your story was in perfect Parlermitano. And besides the different words, it is the intonation that makes it instantly recognizable.
I'm Romanian who studies Italian and is fluent in English and I understood:
5% Sicilian
90% Italian
100% English
Great video 🤗
Daca vorbesti fluent engleza la fel cum scri, e clar. Sterge dreacu comentariul ca te-ai facut de bacanie. O sti pe aia, Prostul daca nu e fudul parca nu e prost destul?
You should create a Sicilian course (or courses) . I'd pay a lot of bucks for that♥️.
I've learned both Italian and Neapolitan (+ many other romance languages) and I still found this story to be very very hard to understand... only after hearing it in Italian and going back to listen again the Sicilian version I was able to get around 10% of what you said lol.
Awesome video. The Sicilian dialetti sound so beautiful to me even though I don't understand them at all.
A few years back I saw an italian film and thought I could get by watching it without subtitles as I can somewhat understand italian. It was called Anime Nere and most of it is spoken in calabrese so, just like the parlance from Palermo in this video, my understanding went from 70% to 2% 😅
Italian is my second language. It seems, at least on the surface, very fair to consider Sicilian a separate language (although that's probably for natives/linguists to decide). I barely understood anything when you spoke Sicilian. I heard a few phrases but the impression I got was that you were having a meal and got into an argument with someone at your table. Then you spoke Italian and I started to laugh, realizing how inaccurate I was lol. Sicilian sounds really cool, still though I think I'll always hold Italian as the most beautiful language in the world.
I am from the central southern coast of Sicily, I understood everything except 1 or 2 words we don't use such as pistiari for example to say to eat. Then of course 100% Italian and also 100% English. I find it interesting to read the comments from speakers of other latin languages telling how much Sicilian they undestood , also what everybody think how sicilian sounds to them speakers of any other laaguage. Nice interesting video as usual! Ma dimm' na cosa, ma u testu tu scrissi Tony Sperandeo? hehehehe
I was born in Palermo and emigrated with my parents to Canada when I was nine. Although my parents were from different parts of Italy (Abbruzzese and Veneto) we spoke Italian/English at home. My grandmother, who was born in the Veneto region and moved to Sicily after marriage, learned to speak the true Sicilian and that's all I heard for my first 9 years. I am 75 years young and I can understand the "basic" Sicilian, and when I do I get this warm familiar feeling of being home. Never forgot my roots. 😢
My wife's dad was from Palermo and later this year I will be taking her back to look for family. I speak some Italian, but I see I have a lot of work to do! Thanks for the video.
Hearing the differences between italian and sicilian was so very cool.
It's similar to hearing different groups of filipinos speaking in their different languages.
It is so much fun watching from the outside as groups will sit separately and purposely speak so other grpups cannot understand each other for the most part.
Then when they all join together everyone speaks a tagalog/english hybrid.
I understand more than I can speak of the tagalog, and thanks to my wife can almost follow cebuano. Then they mess with me and switch to visayan, totally lost.
Yeah, what they call "dialect" here in the philippines is more akin to different languages.
Hi, I'm from Brazil and also speak french pretty well, but I was lost in sicilian, except for a word here and there. Interestingly, I could understand you in italian.
You are priceless! ItaloAmericana qui; ho studiato a Perugia, 1963, and I love to hear you speak.
I loved the hand gestures btw. Even though I didn't get the Sicilian I knew at some point you were hungry or threatening someone. 😂
You’re a legend ! When you speak veramente Siciliano more to the point Palermitano! You bring me back to a great time ! God bless paisano beddu ! Dio te benedica!
Today is my last day of Sicilian vacation.😢 This is my first day on the island, and I am blowen away.
Regarding language. I've understood 100% of Italian aldo I have never learned it. That's something that I picked up from films, popular culture and from 2 years of Latin in gymnasium.
Sicilian on the other hand is terra incognita or Spanish village as we in Serbia would say.
In the last 10 days I heard one old man speaking Sicilian at bus station with driver, and in my hotel there are 2 waiters who often speak Sicilian to each other, and it is amazing.
Metatron, I can't wait for more Sicilian language videos.
PS word that you use instead of mangiare is great choice. It is like difference in Serbian between jesti i ždrati.
I'm Brazilian, could understand about 60% of the italian, enough to get the gist of the story, even the words whose meaning I don't know I was able to differentiate between verb, noun, pronoun...after listening to it in english it became even clearer, a lot of the words have similar sounding counterparts in my language with just slightly different or more specific meanings.
As for sicilian, I understood almost NOTHING, about 3 words only.
Keep up the good content! ✌️✌️
Mentre parlavi siciliano, capivo solamente tre parole. 😆 Fantastico! 😄
I learned to speak Sicilian from my parents. They immigrated to Montreal, Canada, and are from the small town called Cattolica Eraclea in the province of Agrigento. I understood about 70 to 80% of what you said and Cattolica isn't even far from Palermo. I always joke with my Italian friends over here when they say they don't understand me. I tell them sometimes we Sicilians don't even understand each other 😂.
It's also sad that most Sicilians don't know how to write in Sicilian. My parents have no idea.
My parents are from Carini, near Palermo, i speak sicilian (somewhat, lol), and that was almost spot on, I could hear some slight region differences, but easily understandable. Learning Italian in school wasn't easy, there were different words, though some thought I had it made
It felt like I was being spoken to by Don Fanucci, Clamenza, and GF2 Michael, respectively. It was quite an experience! Bravo, sir! A most interesting departure! 👍👍 P.S. I understood nothing specific from Fanucci or Clamenza, but I could still tell that my life was in danger.
I have lived in Berlin for years, but I was born in Sardinia to Sicilian parents (father from Catania and mother from Ragusa), from whom I also learnt Sicilian. I recognised the typical Palermo accent and noticed some differences from the Catania dialect in some words, but I understood everything.
However, I would like to say that it would be nice if other themes were chosen to tell stories about Sicily, since the cinema already exports only an image of mafia and crime. Sicily is so much more and offers so many topics!!! Anyway, thank you for your work!
I am Sicilian-American, my relatives came from the Palermo area - Mezzojuso, Corleone, and Marineo, and even though transmission of Sicilian stopped with my grandparents' generation, I recognize very viscerally the intonation and gestured you use. Really reminded me of being a little kid at my grandparents' house.
Si Marinisi?Comu ti chiami?
I'm Uruguayan, and speak Spanish and Portuguese (almost as a native), English fluently, and I've studied French though I forgot most of it because it was a long time ago and didn't have to use it.
I understood maybe 3 or 4 words from Sicilian. In Italian I could understand most of the story, but I could understand it completely only when you told it in English.
Proprio un bell'esempio per diffondere un'immagine positiva e pulita dell'Italia e della Sicilia.
Quando voglio fare un esempio di Milanese faccio ascoltare Porta Romana. "In via Filangieri gh'è ona campana / 'Gni volta che la sona l'è 'na cundanna". Plus honestly he reminded me of good old Alex Drastico.
Man I luv this video of yours...thank you for sharing. And I also do love the etymological explanation about words you used. I definitely will follow and learn from you. Un abbraccio dalla California!!
This is why I’m a FAN of your channel because you’re Siciliano 😊
The Received Pronunciation of your English example just sounded so polite even the face breaking bit 😂. Much more intimidating in Sicilian.
What an english as well, man, really well spoke you are👏👏👏👏 bravo! Bravíssimo!
Bro these examples dialogs are perfectly welcoming for tourists
Can’t explain it but I get this feeling of Byzantium heritage in the Sicilian language , that I don’t hear at all in Italian, or at least a lot of its ancient residue has been sanded over in the modern Italian language.
Native spanish speaker. I can also understand a large amount of italian, portuguese, and various other romance languages including grandpa Latin. I basically couldn't understand any of the Sicilian. Amazing.
I understood everything perfectly. It's almost the same Sicilian I was taught since childhood.
There are subtle differences between the dialect of the city of Palermo and what my parents taught me which is in the province 20 kilometers away. Mostly accent and stresses on certain words but almost identical.
I was taught to say "manciari" (mangiare) but when we do use "pistiari" it usually refers to a more aggressive connotation like if someone ate something by themselves without sharing, we would say "tu pistiasti tuttu"? "you crammed it down by yourself"?
Also living in California and being exposed to Mexican Spanish, many of my Mexican friends would refer to going out drinking as "pistiar", of coarse it's drinking other than eating but I believe it refers to overindulging. I don't know if there is a connection. There are few borrowed Spanish terms in the local dialect.
there are actually many Spanish words in Sicilian dialects, Ciao!
Eu sou do Rio de Janeiro e já estudei francês e espanhol. Nunca estudei italiano, mas consigo entender talvez uns 40% do italiano falado (a língua escrita dá para compreender quase tudo). Por outro lado, entendi zero de siciliano! rs Acertei, por dedução, apenas a última frase "Did you understand?". Vou procurar um texto escrito em siciliano, mas acho que vai continuar difícil. 😅
I am American born raised in a Sicilian/Tuscan speaking home. I can not understand spoken Portugese, but I understood your written comment 100%. I speak Eastern Sicilian (Ragusa), and understood little of the Palermitan spoken in the video.
I'm shocked! I could barely understand just a few words - and only after having listened to the Italian and English versions! 😵💫
As a native Catalan speaker, I am obviously a lot more used to hearing Italian, so the first time I watched the Sicilian story, I didn't get much (interestingly, the parts about eating and the fighting words xD). I got 100% of the Italian, then revisited the Sicilian again and finally understood a lot more.
B2 Italian speaker. In the Sicilian version, understood only that the story was set in Palermo and that something to do with eating was involved (I remembered the verb "pistiari" from your old video comparing Italian and Sicilian). In the Italian version, I understood pretty much everything apart from the precise nature of some of the threats.
On a separate note, would you consider doing a video on the Salentino dialect?
Native American English speaker, studied Italian all of my life, have relatives in Sicily and I understood all of your Italian but hardly any of your Sicilian. When I am with family in Sicily, they seem to speak Italian and Siclian (Agrigento) inter-mixed, so I seem to follow them better. I only heard Sicilian growing up, no one spoke it to me.
Il Commissario Montalbano was a good exercise...I understood 30-50% even if the 2nd part was too fast for me, but I got "isso se scantò" and everything was allright...😀😀
I'm a native Spanish speaker. I understood 2 words in Sicilian and 70 to 80 percent of Italian.
I'm Chilean, I understood about 80% of the Italian, but only "eat" and "family" in Sicilian.
Sicilian is a beautiful, and unique language, I hope to learn it.
Beautiful video bro
I'm from Sardinia and I understood only the searching for a place and that there was a discussion with someone
I don't know why but threats (and in general speaking rude) said in each regional language sound more "true" and threatening
Very interesting! Thank you!
Glad I found your videos! Love your presentation!
Thanks so much
I need to practice sicilian more. It's embarrassing how my italian level is so much higher despite having family that speaks sicilian
my Italian is not that good, but I definitely recognised the accent as portrayed by some characters in "Il giovane Montalbano" hah
I'm from Italy, but I was born near Milan (Tradate). I could understand Sicilian about 30~40% of what you were saying at most, honestly. Even if I were to speak only in Italian and the other person to speak in Sicilian to me I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to sustain a conversation with them.
I hail from Palermo, and I must say, not many would have grasped your meaning... your politeness was excessive for that situation! 😄
didnt understand a word but it sounded and looked cool , the gesticulations and facial expressions were excellent, I could listen to people speak to me in foreign languages all day even if I dont understand a word. I wish I'd paid more attention to languages in highschool, as a lowly Scot I've got English and speak Scots and some Gaelic but thats it. I had a girlfriend from Catalonia in university and she would speak to me in Catalan and I never understood a word but it was nice just to hear her speak it.
Loved this video. It was really fun. I am jealous of your perfect English.