14 Facts About Sicilian language

Sicilian is a Romance language that is spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands.

Ethnologue describes Sicilian as being "distinct enough from Standard Italian to be considered a separate language", and it is recognized as a minority language by UNESCO.

Sicilian language is spoken by most inhabitants of Sicily and by emigrant populations around the world.

Such efforts began in the mid-19th century when Vincenzo Mortillaro published a comprehensive Sicilian language dictionary intended to capture the language universally spoken across Sicily in a common orthography.

In Sicily, it is taught only as part of dialectology courses, but outside Italy, Sicilian language has been taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Brooklyn College and Manouba University.

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Furthermore, the Sicilian language would be protected and promoted under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The first term refers to the fact that a form of Sicilian language is spoken in southern Calabria, particularly in the province of Reggio Calabria.

The Greek-Sicilian language influence remains strongly visible, while the influences from the other groups are less obvious.

Sicilian language was used to record the proceedings of the Parliament of Sicily and for other official purposes.

Since the Italian Unification, the Sicilian language has been significantly influenced by (Tuscan) Italian.

The combination of these factors means that the Sicilian language continues to adopt Italian vocabulary and grammatical forms to such an extent that many Sicilians themselves cannot distinguish between correct and incorrect Sicilian language usage.

Unlike Standard Italian, Sicilian language uses the same standard plural ending -i for both masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives:, ("doors" or "harbors"), ("tables").

In terms of the written Sicilian language, it is mainly restricted to poetry and theatre in Sicily.

Outside Sicily and Southern Calabria, there is an extensive Sicilian language-speaking diaspora living in several major cities across South and North America and in other parts of Europe and Australia, where Sicilian language has been preserved to varying degrees.