Are Southern Italian dialects like Sicilian and Neapolitan "Western" or "Eastern" Romance dialects?

[Sikeliot]

Well, that's interesting if true. I'd like to hear some linguists' opinions.

Sicilian might be closer to Italian, but I think it is further removed from Spanish and French and is comparatively closer to Romanian than any of those. I know that if you click the link I posted in the first post here, Romanians commented and said that it sounded like Romanian to them.

[Coolguy1]

I wonder if southern Italian dialects have any Greek influence. Also Sikeliot, do you know when the Greek language started to decline in southern Italy? I know there is still a Griko community and in the past they were a far larger group.

[Sikeliot]

I wonder if southern Italian dialects have any Greek influence. Also Sikeliot, do you know when the Greek language started to decline in southern Italy? I know there is still a Griko community and in the past they were a far larger group.

In terms of the phonology, yes. Listen to Sicilian and then Greek, and then to standard Italian. The intonation of Sicilian is the same as Greek -- very flat, with a lot of emphasis on the last few syllables of words and less on the beginning. Romanian should be similar.

Vocabulary wise I am unsure. I know that Greek was spoken in Sicily until the 1400s.

[Profileid]

No. Italian is not my ancestral language, Sicilian is.

And if Italian is a "western" Romance language (close to French, it is) and Sicilian is in fact an "eastern" Romance language, I might as well learn Romanian instead.

>:|

You could've just said "Yes Etain, I've thought about it".
Sicilian is often considered a dialect of Italian and Sicilians are ITALIANS.

[Sikeliot]

>:|

You could've just said "Yes Etain, I've thought about it".
Sicilian is often considered a dialect of Italian and Sicilians are ITALIANS.

I didn't say it because it would not be true. Sicilian is a separate language, not a dialect.. and not one of my relatives spoke Italian. Italian as a language is as relevant to my ancestry as German or Finnish.

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Post some Neapolitan and Sicilian songs if possible, I will tell you if I find them to be easier to understand than Romanian.

[Seya]

this is true. i do speak napoletano and italian and i can tell u that napoletano and all south italian dialects are very close to romanian language. there are entire expressions used in napoletano that are the same in romanian language. an example: "leave me alone" in romanian and napoletano sounds the same, no difference at all: "làssame in pace/lasa-ma in pace"..while in italian is "lasciami stare"...many words that are identical in romanian and napoletano are different in italian...an example "head" in italian would be "testa" while in romanian/napoletano would be "cap/cap'" (there is "capo" in italian but it means "chief" ..an so on...

[Herr Abubu]

>:|

You could've just said "Yes Etain, I've thought about it".
Sicilian is often considered a dialect of Italian and Sicilians are ITALIANS.

Not exactly true. Italy is an aggregation of many countries and different populations who were united by force by the Freemason Garibaldi, who worked for Anglo interest. The British wanted Italy to be unified under a national-liberal Republican state to weaken Bourbon-Habsburgs power in Europe, which was opposed to the risen liberal political order by principle. The Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, which basically means what is now Southern Italy and Sicily, were during this time actually the richest country in the whole of Europe, and it was a country based on agriculture. It was the north of Italy that was poor and backwards. What happened thereafter, with the unification of Italy, was that wealth was taken from the South and brought to the North. Your conception of Italy as a country and as a people never existed until the 19th century, and it was foreigners and aristocrats—against the peasants and the royalty—who stood for it. What Sikeliot shows are some counterrevolutionary tendencies I really like.

[Mens-Sarda]

Well, that's interesting if true. I'd like to hear some linguists' opinions.

At a first look one of the main features (among many others) that differentiates Western Romania from Eastern Romania is how the plurals work

Eastern Romania : Italian, Corsican, Italian "dialects" (north and south), Romanian, Aromanian = plurals ending with "I" or "E"; rarely with "A"
Western Romania : French, Provençal, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Ladin, Friulan, Sardinian = plurals ending with "S"


p.s.
surprisingly Romanian and Sardinian even if separated by a huge geographic distance have a lot of vocabulary in common, a lot of terms survived from classical Latin or evolved in the same way are present only in these two Romance languages

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

this is true. i do speak napoletano and italian and i can tell u that napoletano and all south italian dialects are very close to romanian language. there are entire expressions used in napoletano that are the same in romanian language. an example: "leave me alone" in romanian and napoletano sounds the same, no difference at all: "làssame in pace/lasa-ma in pace"..while in italian is "lasciami stare"...many words that are identical in romanian and napoletano are different in italian...an example "head" in italian would be "testa" while in romanian/napoletano would be "cap/cap'" (there is "capo" in italian but it means "chief" ..an so on...

Can you post here a simple paragraph in Napolitano and one written in Romanian with the same text?