And currently what is the standard dialect of Italy? How is the Sicilian dialect different from the Roman or Tuscan dialect? For example, how would you say the word "twenty" in those three dialects? Before the Spanish dominated Italy in the 16th century did Italian sound a lot different? Because today Italian sounds a lot like Spanish. To address "mister and "mrs." in Italian was it always "Signore" and "Signora"? Or did that come after the Spanish domination? Schools in the U.S. that teach Italian as a foreign language which dialect do they usually teach? P.S. Is there an online English to Sicilian dictionary? or even an English to Calabrian dictionary.
Languages - 3 Answers
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1 :
Of what I've heard, Italians all speak dialects, (in Itlay they have around 400 different dialects) but when they go to school they have to learn Italian, only in a few regions they speak Italian as their first language, and yes it sounds like Spanish or Portuguese and even sometimes french because those languages are all derived from the Latin. At schools they do not teach any Italian dialect, they only teach Italian (at least in South Florida). My Italian teacher was Sicilian and she use to tell us, that her brother didn't speak Italian at all, only the Sicilian dialect which lead us to believe that it was very different from the Italian teach at schools.
2 :
Just as in the U.S, an accent is simply a different kind of inflection (people from the South "sound different" than people from the North). However, there are different ways of saying things in the South than in the North as well. There are idiomatic expressions unique to particular regions as well as some words that only are found in particular regions, which is why it's often difficult for those from one region to understand those from another region even though they are purportedly speaking the "same" language. You really have to put some time in with a particular dialect to understand the differences between that & other dialects. However, both in the U.S. and in Italy, there's a "standardized version" which dominates the media. Most people can understand both the standardized version and their own local dialect, which may still not help them much with another local dialect. Schools in the U.S. will usually teach the standardized version unless a particular teacher is extraordinarily fond of a particular local dialect. The same is true of English as a foreign language (which also has the "benefit" of being spoken somewhat differently in the U.S. than in England or Canada or Australia as well as having various dialects within each of those countries).
3 :
In Italy there is not a standard dialect. We have standard Italian that's the language thaught in the school and spoken all over Italy when we need to understand each other. Any region (and inside of any region any single area and even any single village) has its own dialect that cannot be understood in mostly case by other regions' people. Besides of the dialect In Italy we have also a different accent (or inflexion) that identifies for instance a tuscan from a sicilian even while they are both speaking standard Italian. In the different dialects there are however many words that are unchanged respect to the standard Italian but the regional inflexion makes them sounding different to our hears. Back to other questions the word twenty is venti in standard italian , venti in both roman and tuscan dialect and vinti in sicilian but even if ,excluded the sicilian, the writing is exactly the same the way of saying it changes depending on the region. Standard Italian has a closed "e" ,as well as roman, while tuscan has a slightly open "e". Just natives or from longtime residents can appreciate these small differences. Spanish didn't influence that much Italian language (probably some more in southern regions), Italian has evolved mostly by itself.Italian sounds similar to Spanish mainly because both have evolved from Latin. You can take as example your question. Mister and Mrs. are in Italian "signore" and "signora" but this is not because Spanish is Señor and Señora. Both are coming from the Latin "senior" (older man). Schools in US (as well as in Italy) are teaching the standard Italian, not the dialect. Btw the dialect from tuscany is the closest to the standard Italian. As far as I know there is none online English to an Italian dialect dictionary
