Extreme Southern Italian


The Extreme Southern Italian dialects are a set of languages spoken mainly in Sicily, southern Salento, southern Cilento, and most of Calabria with common phonetic and syntactic characteristics such as to constitute a single group. The name "Italian" refers to the fact that these languages are spoken in Italy, not that they are dialects of the Italian language.
Today, Extreme Southern Italian dialects are still spoken daily, although their use is limited to informal contexts and is mostly oral. There are examples of full literary uses with contests and theatrical performances.

Background

The areas where Extreme Southern dialects are found today roughly trace that same territory where both Ancient Greek and Medieval Byzantine hegemonies happened to be the strongest.

Varieties

  • Sicilian, spoken on the island of Sicily: Western Sicilian; Central Metafonetica; Southeast Metafonetica; Ennese; Eastern Nonmetafonetica; Messinese.
  • Sicilian dialects on other islands: Isole Eolie, on the Aeolian Islands; Pantesco, on the island of Pantelleria.
  • Calabro, or Central-Southern Calabrian: dialects are spoken in the central and southern areas of the region of Calabria.
  • Salentino, spoken in the Salento region of southern Apulia.
  • Cilentan, spoken in the Cilento region of southern Campania.

    Phonological features

The main distinguishing characteristics, which all Extreme Southern dialects have in common, and which differentiate them from the rest of the Southern Italian lects, are:
  • Sicilian vowel system, a characteristic not present in many dialects of central-northern Calabria;
  • * presence of three well-perceptible word-final vowels in most dialects of this area: -a, -i, -u; however -e and -o can also be sometimes found in Cosentino, southern Cilentan and southern Salentino.
  • clear cacuminal or retroflex pronunciation of -DD-.
  • maintenance of voiceless occlusive consonants after the nasals: the word for "eats" will therefore be pronounced mancia and not mangia. However, this phenomenon is absent in Cosentino;
  • absence of apocopated infinitives spread from the Upper Mezzogiorno to Tuscany. Also in this respect the Cosentino dialect is an exception;
  • use of the preterite with endings similar to the Italian remote past and the non-distinction between past perfect and remote pluperfect; however, this phenomenon is absent in central-northern Calabria.