Quote:
Originally Posted by Apache
Even Italian Dialects can be radically different from Italian. At least it is according to my wife's family.
Apache
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There's an EXCELLENT discussion of this here
https://youtu.be/zUlNhs8rJ_g?t=126
He makes the point that the various "dialects" are not dialects of modern standard Italian, since that was largely a "creation" of Dante, resulting in a Florentine variant becoming the prestige national standard. He argues that if they are dialects of anything, they're all dialects of Latin, not Italian. On my first visit to San Marino, my friends there taught me a few words and phrase in sammarinese (basically romagnolo) and a few of them surprised me by seeming more French than Italian.
In the case of Sicilian, though, the differences are even more extreme. Given the very low esteem in which the various "dialetti" are held in Italy, I was surprised to learn that Sicilian has official Italian government recognition as a language proper, but its geographic isolation and the impact of Arabic etc have clearly made it even more distinct than other regional variants. The tour guide I mentioned had said of a plant we were driving past "I don't know the English or the Italian word for it, I only know the Sicilian" and proceeded to apologize for that "failing", which I didn't think a failing at all.
