Who is the most similar CULTURALLY to Sicilians?

[Sikeliot]

I think this is an obvious one with an obvious answer, but that is just me. With all factors taken into consideration. I am excluding mainland southern Italy from the equation, though.

[alfieb]

Maltese.

[Sikeliot]

Maltese.

I think that's fairly obvious, or it would be to a Sicilian or a Maltese, that no one is culturally closer except if you bring Calabria into the mix possibly. But I'm curious what others will think.

[Newsboy]

In my opinion, Maltese first, continental Southern Italians second. Not really Greeks because Greeks are Orthodox and nowhere near as stylish as Italians (North and South).

[ChocolateFace]

Northern and Central Italians

[Sikeliot]

I'm interested in hearing other answers whatever they may be, but to me there is only one logical one.

[Aredhel]

Maltese

[alfieb]

It's really not like there's a lot of room for discussion. Maltese are the most similar under any criteria.

The closest language to Sicilian is Maltese (excluding the Sicilian dialects on the Italian mainland). While it follows an Arabic structure, Maltese can understand just about anything in written Sicilian, and can make themselves understood by Sicilians.
The biologically closest are the Maltese.
The culturally closest are the Maltese.
The closest in terms of shared history are the Maltese, whose history was identical with Sicilians for thousands of years.

[Anglojew]

Jews.

[alfieb]

Jews.
Should be on the list, no doubt.

[Sikeliot]

Jews.

I'll add that to the poll if you want to vote for it.

[Sikeliot]

I put Jews on the list, both Ashkenazis and Sephardis.

[Newsboy]

I put Jews on the list, both Ashkenazis and Sephardis.

Why would anyone think Jews are culturally similar to Sicilians? Sicilians are Catholic Europeans and they are not circumcised.

[Sikeliot]

Why would anyone think Jews are culturally similar to Sicilians? Sicilians are Catholic Europeans and they are not circumcised.

Well maybe not Jews elsewhere but here in the US, a New York or New Jersey Sicilian is closest to the Jews in the same area than to anyone else. And they look fairly similar, too.

[Anglojew]

Should be on the list, no doubt.


I'll add that to the poll if you want to vote for it.


I put Jews on the list, both Ashkenazis and Sephardis.

I'm friends with a few Italian-Australians and they (they're Sicilian or Calabrian) are almost identical to Jews in culture eg family, food etc. Probably the major difference is the migrants from Italy here came from rural areas whereas a lot of the Jews came from more urban ones but otherwise very similar.

[alfieb]

Why would anyone think Jews are culturally similar to Sicilians? Sicilians are Catholic Europeans and they are not circumcised.
Thousands of years of history, which only ended when the Spanish deported all of Sicily's Jews circa 1500 AD. Also because when the Sicilians and the Jews came to America (putting them on equal footing as migrants, rather than Jews being wanderers and Sicilians being stationary), they clustered together almost immediately. I know more people of mixed Sicilian-Jewish descent than Sicilian-Greek, Sicilian-Albanian, etc.

[Newsboy]

Well maybe not Jews elsewhere but here in the US, a New York or New Jersey Sicilian is closest to the Jews in the same area than to anyone else. And they look fairly similar, too.

I agree. They look alike. Jews and Italians mix well in Brooklyn, NY.

[Anglojew]

Thousands of years of history, which only ended when the Spanish deported all of Sicily's Jews circa 1500 AD. Also because when the Sicilians and the Jews came to America (putting them on equal footing as migrants, rather than Jews being wanderers and Sicilians being stationary), they clustered together almost immediately. I know more people of mixed Sicilian-Jewish descent than Sicilian-Greek, Sicilian-Albanian, etc.


I agree. They look alike. Jews and Italians mix well in Brooklyn, NY.



They mix well in Australia too. I know a few Italian-Jewish marriages here and several "Pizza-Bagels" (Jewish/Italian mixed people).

[Sikeliot]

"Jewish" phenotypes are not rare in Palermo because if you think about it, Ashkenazis are Levantines with some Western European/Nordic admixture, and Palermitans are basically Neolithic Middle Easterners with Italic and Norman influence.. their Phoenician is similar to Israelite, and their Norman is similar to the ancestry Ashkenazis picked up in the Rhine Valley.

[Sunphq]

I like the Jews, but I'm going to have to go with the only sensible answer - Central and Northern Italians, and Greeks to a lesser extent.

[alfieb]

They mix well in Australia too. I know a few Italian-Jewish marriages here and several "Pizza-Bagels" (Jewish/Italian mixed people).

We use that term here as well. It's not considered a slur, as they use it to describe themselves. :lol:


I like the Jews, but I'm going to have to go with the only sensible answer - Central and Northern Italians, and Greeks to a lesser extent.

Perché?? Do you know anything of Malta, frati? They are our blood brothers, separated only by politics.

[Sikeliot]

I like the Jews, but I'm going to have to go with the only sensible answer - Central and Northern Italians, and Greeks to a lesser extent.

Not the Maltese?

Anyway this is my opinion, putting all emotion aside and using my common sense.. the groups most similar, in order..

1) Maltese
2) Southern Italians from Calabria, Apulia, and Lucania ("Magna Graecians")
3) All other Italians
4) Greeks
5) Other Latin Europeans, except maybe Portuguese and Romanians (although the language is similar to Romanian a bit).

[Sunphq]

Perché?? Do you know anything of Malta, frati? They are our blood brothers, separated only by politics.

Modern Sicilians are thoroughly Italianized. I'm not saying they are identical in culture or looks, but just like here in England, Southern English people share more commonality with Northerners than they do anyone else, despite the differences.

I'll put Malta second.

[Maleficent]

The Maltese, of course. Sardinia should be in the poll too. No?!

[Sikeliot]

Sardinia should be in the poll too. No?!

No. Their culture is very Catalan influenced.

[Maleficent]

No. Their culture is very Catalan influenced.
Okay, thanks for telling me. I didn't know that.

[Sicilianu101]

Accidentally I put Greek. I meant maltese

[Sikeliot]

Bump

[alfieb]

It's not even close. Doesn't matter if we have five votes or fifty. Maltese are Sicilians, everyone else listed here are not.

[P-Chan]

North and central Italians, it's obvious. Sicily is an Italian region.

[Stormer99]

It's a toss up between North and Central Italians and Maltese.

[alfieb]

North and central Italians, it's obvious. Sicily is an Italian region.
And Puerto Rico is an American region, but they'll have a lot more in common with Dominicans than they will with Texans. :yawn:

Kosovo was a region of Serbia. Look how well that worked out.

[Sikeliot]

Maltese people ARE Sicilians. So the logical answer is the Maltese.

[ABest]

1) Maltese
2) Northern and central Italians
3) Greeks

... the rest

But I voted N + C Italians accidentally.

[P-Chan]

And Puerto Rico is an American region, but they'll have a lot more in common with Dominicans than they will with Texans. :yawn:

Kosovo was a region of Serbia. Look how well that worked out.


Sicily is close to Italian peninsula, and its history and culture are primarily related with Italy. Now and in the past.
Sicilian dialect for example is easily understandable by Italian native speakers because it's related with other Italian dialects of Southern and Central Italy. Sicilians are not considered a minority group and they generally identify themselves as Italians! It can be proved easily checking the political parties Sicilian people use to vote....PD, PDL, M5S, not nationalist and separatist movements as it happens in Südtirol or Valle D' Aosta.

[alfieb]

Sicily is close to Italian peninsula, and its history and culture are primarily related with Italy. Now and in the past.
Corsica and Malta have also been tied to Italy in the past.

Here's the difference. Malta was first settled by Sicilians around 5000 BC. From then until around 1800 AD, the two were one entity, whether de-facto or de jure. Sicily was never part of Italy in the Roman Empire (it was its own province, while all of Italy was another province), it was never part of Italy in the Byzantine Empire, it was never part of Italy in the Holy Roman Empire, and it was never part of Napoleonic Italy. It wasn't until 1861 that Sicily was ever legally considered to be part of Italy, while Malta was part of Sicily until 1798. The Maltese language of today is the surviving dialect of the Siculo-Arabic language from 1,000 years ago, with large influences from modern Sicilian.



Sicilian dialect for example is easily understandable by Italian native speakers because it's related with other Italian dialects of Southern and Central Italy. Sicilians are not considered a minority group and they generally identify themselves as Italians! It can be proved easily checking the political parties Sicilian people use to vote....PD, PDL, M5S, not nationalist and separatist movements as it happens in Südtirol or Valle D' Aosta.
Are you sure of this, or speculating? I, for one, am a Sicilian-speaker who had to learn standard Italian when I was living in Rome, because only Sicilian and Calabrese migrants could understand me. I had many Romans asking me to speak English, and it was the same in Milan.

I can understand a Maltese person, and they can understand me, but a Northern Italian who only speaks standard Italian and their local language will not be able to understand me very well, nor will I be able to understand them.

Whether it's language, traditions, religiosity, blood, Maltese are much closer. We have the same surnames, and the same food.

[Sikeliot]

Anyone with the surname Camilleri, Borg, Spiteri, Vella, or Faraci is descended from a western Sicilian. And those surnames alone probably cover about 1/3 of all Maltese.

[alfieb]

Not to mention Attard/Attardo (Agrigento) and Falzon/Falzone (Caltanissetta), among other very common surnames.

Take the vowel off the end of a Sicilian surname, and you've become Maltese. :naughty:

[Sikeliot]

A lot of Maltese surnames seem to come from Agrigento. Any of the ones ending in -eri.

Vassallo is another one, but that is from Palermo .

[alfieb]

Just for fun.

President of Malta: George Abela. Abela is a surname from Caltanissetta.

Prime Minister of Malta: Joseph Muscat. Muscato is a surname from Palermo.

Speaker of the House of Malta: Anglu Farrugia. In Sicilian, his name would be Angelu Farruggia. Farruggia is a surname from Agrigento.

[Stormer99]

After thinking this over, I would have to say Maltese.

[P-Chan]

Are you sure of this, or speculating? I, for one, am a Sicilian-speaker who had to learn standard Italian when I was living in Rome, because only Sicilian and Calabrese migrants could understand me. I had many Romans asking me to speak English, and it was the same in Milan.

I can understand a Maltese person, and they can understand me, but a Northern Italian who only speaks standard Italian and their local language will not be able to understand me very well, nor will I be able to understand them.

Whether it's language, traditions, religiosity, blood, Maltese are much closer. We have the same surnames, and the same food.

-I' m a native Italian speaker, not from Sicily, Calabria or Southern Italy, but I understand quite well Sicilian dialects, and anyone from Italy can agree with me.
-We are speaking of a dialect with the same syntactic structure of Tuscanian (so the same of Italian language) and words are usually quite similar to Italian.


In this video a man speaks Sicilian, ask an Italian (from the north, centre, south and Sardinia) if he doesn't understand him....I doubt anyone could answer no.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK0CAK63cLI


Another man speaking Sicilian, read subtitles and translation into Italian, don't you see any similarities? They seem almost the same language, only articles, some prepositions and few words are different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0kJVjur9sg

[Drawing-slim]

If you consider albanians the be the closest to greeks, then we're even closer to sicilians! For greeks are kinda funny and albanians just like sicilians mean buisiness and litle more old school.

[YeshAtid]

jews

[alfieb]

If you consider albanians the be the closest to greeks, then we're even closer to sicilians! For greeks are kinda funny and albanians just like sicilians mean buisiness and litle more old school.
Catholic Albanians and Sicilians clearly shared a lot, or we wouldn't have intermixed as much as we have (in Palermo, anyway, not really the rest of Sicily)

[Sikeliot]

Most of the Sicilians from Palermo I share with score "Balkan" on 23andme in modest amounts whereas most of the eastern Sicilians do not so therefore it has to be assimilated Arbereshe and not Greek.

[alfieb]

Most of the Sicilians from Palermo I share with score "Balkan" on 23andme in modest amounts whereas most of the eastern Sicilians do not so therefore it has to be assimilated Arbereshe and not Greek.
Right. There aren't really any other options. Even if one believes the Elymians-as-Anatolians-theory, that wouldn't be Balkanite.

[Sikeliot]

Right. There aren't really any other options. Even if one believes the Elymians-as-Anatolians-theory, that wouldn't be Balkanite.

I still believe the, Elymians/Sicanians/Sikels were genetically one Neolithic people but culturally different due to different influxes from elsewhere like Italics and Anatolians and whatnot.

[Spacchiu]

the indigenous inhabitants in Sicily were italics, the sicels were correlated with latins, osco umbri and other italic peoples. the sicanians were probably pre indoeuropean people and in the findings of the skeletons, this people had light hair with dark blond or red hair and many peoples in center Sicily has light red and dark blond hair.
the anatolian origins of elymians is a legend by Virgilio, the same legend by roman=anatolian troian, in reality there is no evidence but elymians was indigenous italics and correlated with ancient ligurian

[Sikeliot]

Elymian language was supposed to share features with both Phoenician and Greek but rather that could have been due to that once both groups landed, the Elymian language incorporated Phoenician and Greek words into it rather than that it started off with them.

It's uncertain how much of a genetic impact the original three groups had on Sicilian genetics, but my personal belief is at least in eastern Sicily, not all that much. Genetically, people in Enna, Catania, Messina, Ragusa, and Syracuse are almost identical to Greek islanders and Cretans.

[Sikeliot]

Btw as far as coastal vs inland Sicilians go, I have heard about half of the people who have been throughout the island say the inland is darker and then the other half say the inland is darker with more blonde, blue eyes, redheads etc.

I personally have found a lot of inland Sicilians like in Enna and Caltanissetta are if anything darker, whereas on the coast you find more light people since I'd assume most people who came from the north to the island (like Normans for instance) stayed by the coast. But I may be wrong.

[Sikeliot]

Bump

[wvwvw]

Albanians...same mafia mentality

[alfieb]

Albanians...same mafia mentality

Russians have mafia. Serbs have mafia. Irish have mafia. Jews have mafia.

But you dislike Albanians, so you try to insult them and us at the same time. :yawn:

We have a lot of shared history with Albanians, but we probably have more different than in common.