Gallo-Italic of Sicily

Gallo-Italic of Sicily
Italian: Gallo-italico di Sicilia
Native to Northwest Italy
Region Central and eastern Sicily
Native speakers
 60,000 (2006)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
Glottolog None
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) is a group of Gallo-Italic languages found in about 15 isolated communities of central eastern Sicily. Forming a language island in the Sicilian language,[2][3] it dates back to migrations from northern Italy during the reign of Norman Roger I of Sicily[4] and his successors.

Towns inhabited by the new immigrants became known as the "Lombard communities" (Latin: oppida Lombardorum, Sicilian: cumuna lummardi). The colonizers, known as the Lombards of Sicily, were from northern Italy (including the Piedmont, Liguria and Emilia) as well as present-day Lombardy; "Lombardy" was the name for 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.

History

Illustration from a 14th-century French poem
Adelaide del Vasto, third wife of Roger I of Sicily

Although Roger I took 30 years to take complete control of Sicily (from 1061 to 1091), by 1080 he had effective control of much of the island. During this conquest, large areas of central Sicily became depopulated as much of its Muslim population was expelled. Roger and his Norman successors encouraged migration to the region, especially by those closely allied with the Latin Church. Most of the migration was from northern Italy, particularly from his wife's family holdings in Piedmont and Liguria.

Areas spoken

The languages are spoken primarily in the following areas:

Wooded, mountainous township under a blue sky
Fondachelli-Fantina, where Gallo-Italic is spoken

Other linguistic communities also existed in:

In some of these towns, the northern Italian influence on the local varieties of Sicilian is marked; in others, the Lombard communities did not influence the local dialect. Similar communities have survived outside Sicily in Basilicata in southern Italy, which was subject to similar influences; the dialects spoken there are known as Gallo-Italic of Basilicata.

Bibliography

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Fiorenzo Toso, Lingue d'Europa: la pluralità linguistica dei paesi europei fra passato e presente, Baldini Castoldi Dalai, Milano 2006, p. 158. (In Italian)
  2. ↑ Salvatore Carmelo Trovato, La Sicilia, in Cortelazzo et al. I dialetti italiani, UTET, Torino 2002, p. 882. (In Italian)
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ Ann Katherine Isaacs, Immigration and emigration in historical perspective, Edizioni Plus, Pisa 2007, p, 71.
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