Gallo-Italic of Sicily

Gallo-Italic of Sicily
Italian: Gallo-italico di Sicilia
Siculo-Lombard
Native toSicily
RegionCentral and eastern Sicily
Native speakers
60,000 (2006)[1]
Early forms
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
GlottologNone
Gallo-Italic is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
See caption
Linguistic map of Italy; Gallo-Italic of Sicily are the small, light-green areas on Sicily.

Gallo-Italic of Sicily, (Italian: Gallo-italico di Sicilia) also known as the Siculo-Lombard dialects, (Italian: Dialetti siculo-lombardi) is a group of Gallo-Italic languages found in about 15 isolated communities of central eastern Sicily. Forming a language island in the otherwise Sicilian language area,[3][4] it dates back to migrations from northern Italy during the reign of Norman Roger I of Sicily[5] and his successors.

Towns inhabited by the new immigrants became known as the "Lombard communities" (Latin: oppida Lombardorum, Sicilian: cumuna lummardi). The settlers, known as the Lombards of Sicily, actually came principally from the Aleramici fiefdoms of southern Montferrat, comprising today south-eastern Piedmont and north-western Liguria, "Lombardy" being the name for the whole of northern Italy during the Middle Ages. In addition to a common place of origin, the colonizers brought their Gallo-Italic languages. These languages added to the Gallic influence of the developing Sicilian language (influences which included Norman and Old Occitan) to become the Gallo-Italic of Sicily language family.

Gallo-Italic of Sicily evolved from Old Lombard, and thus related to Lombard more closely than other Gallo-Italic languages.[citation needed]

  1. ^ Toso, Fiorenzo (2006). Lingue d'Europa: la pluralità linguistica dei paesi europei fra passato e presente [Languages of Europe: the linguistic plurality of European countries between past and present] (in Italian). Milano: Baldini Castoldi Dalai. p. 158.
  2. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2023-07-10). "Glottolog 4.8 - Piemontese-Lombard". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7398962. Archived from the original on 2023-10-29. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
  3. ^ Salvatore Carmelo Trovato, La Sicilia, in Cortelazzo et al. I dialetti italiani, UTET, Torino 2002, p. 882. (In Italian)
  4. ^ Toso, Fiorenzo (2010). "Gallo-italica, comunità". Enciclopedia dell'Italiano, Treccani, 2010 (in Italian). Treccani. In Sicilia (Trovato 1998) si tratta dei dialetti di almeno ventiquattro località. Trovato (2002) tuttavia riconosce come ancora schiettamente gallo-italici solo i dialetti che condividono, tra le altre isoglosse settentrionali (➔ isoglossa), la dittongazione in sillaba libera tonica o davanti a palatale di ĕ ed ŏ latino: si tratta delle parlate di San Fratello (con l'ex-frazione di Acquedolci), San Pietro Patti, Montalbano Elicona, Novara di Sicilia (con l'ex frazione di Fondachelli-Fantina) in provincia di Messina; di Randazzo in provincia di Catania; di Nicosia, Sperlinga, Piazza Armerina e Aidone in provincia di Enna; di Ferla, Buccheri e Cassaro in provincia di Siracusa.
  5. ^ Ann Katherine Isaacs, Immigration and emigration in historical perspective, Edizioni Plus, Pisa 2007, p, 71.