Is Sicilian Italian?

Image: Erin O'Malley on Flickr

By Elizabeth Lorentzen

Elizabeth Lorentzen is a senior from Arlington Heights, Illinois, studying Speech and Hearing Sciences. She is also completing a minor in Italian Studies.

With approximately 5 million speakers, the Sicilian language is vigorously used throughout Sicily and its satellite islands (Lewis, 2016). However, there are still numerous people who believe Sicilian is merely a dialect of Italian, not its own distinct language; the Italian parliament has failed to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and Sicilian is not recognized by the national law 482 which recognizes and protects 12 languages and dialects spoken in Italy.

Additionally, Sicilian is not standardly used in schools, nor is it commonly written or read by the people who use it in daily life. According to the UNESCO rankings, Sicilian is a vulnerable language, meaning there is limited language use at home by a portion of the population; meanwhile, Italian is the national language of Italy, used in schools, government, business, media, etc. (Moseley, 2010). Sicily’s history consists of many different groups ruling its land, leading to many different languages being brought to the island. With influences from Latin, Arabic, French, Catalan, Spanish, Albanian, Greek, and more, do the people of Sicily speak their own language or simply a dialect of Italian?

Considering that Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, separated from Italy by a body of water, it should not be surprising that this land has developed a unique language. Throughout the years, Sicily was populated by many different groups, most notably the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arab people. During the Greeks’ rule over Sicily, a variety of dialects were spoken on the island. These Greek influences are still largely reflected in present day Sicilian words. Some examples of these language similarities can be seen in the following words: ‘cherry,’ in Sicilian ‘cirasa’ and ‘boy’ in Sicilian is ‘carusu.’ In addition to strong Greek language influences, when the Roman Empire took over Sicily, Latin swept through the land. Latin and Greek influenced each other, creating new vocabulary and grammar rules, but Greek still remained the dominant language in general (Mallette, 2003, p. 155). Eventually, Arab settlers arrive, and so did their language, further mixing with the already existing Greek and Latin. The Arab people played a large role in Sicilian language and cultural development; many Sicilian words related to cooking and agriculture have an Arabic base, for example, ‘zaffarana’ for saffron (Bonner, 2003, p. 33).

The Italian language has greatly influenced the Sicilian language, specifically in recent history. Since Sicilian is not used in schools, it is becoming more common to hear standard Italian on the streets, specifically among younger generations (Cruschina, 2013, p. 25). This is an example of how the 2 languages influence each other, continuous mixed use. Over the years, it seems as though Sicilian will continue being modified due to strong use of Italian in schools, mass media, and young people overall.

Based on its vast differences in syntax, vocabulary, and grammar, Sicilian seems to be its own, unique language, not simply a dialect of Italian. The history behind how the language was formed also makes its case for why Sicilian should be considered a stand-alone language. Although Sicily is a region of Italy, more specifically the fifth most populated and largest in geographic size, there has been a long history of cultural disconnect and lack of nationalism for the Sicilian people; many people who live in Sicily think of themselves first as Sicilians while, their Italian identity takes second rank. There is also a widespread phenomenon in Italy that the Northern Italians view themselves as superior to the Southern Italians. This plays a role in negative attitudes about the Sicilian language, people claim it is a dialect of the superior language, Italian, and that it is spoken by the poor and uneducated. In more recent times, the connection between Sicily and Italy has grown stronger, mainly in the younger generations, due to mass media, improved education systems, business, increased travel, and more; however, the languages still have unique traits that maintain that Sicilian is its own, minority language, not a dialect.

References

Bonner, J.K. (2003). Principal differences among Sicilian dialects, Part 1. IUANA (4) 29-38.

Cruschina, S. (2013). The expression of evidentiality and epsitemicity: Cases of grammaticalization in Italian and Sicilian. Probus 27 (1) 1-31. De Gruyter Mouton: NY.

Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F Simons, and Charles D Fennig (eds.). 2016. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Nineteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

Mallette, K. (2003) Translating Sicily. Medieval encounters, (9.1) 140-163.

Moseley, Christopher (ed.). 2010. Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn. Paris, UNESCO Publishing. Online version: http://www.unesco.org/culture /en/endangeredlanguages/atlas

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Could sound-change in language contact situations threaten a language? The case of Spanish-Catalan bilingualism

Photo by Jorge Guerrero, courtesy of Yahoo!

Could sound-change in language contact situations threaten a language? The case of Spanish-Catalan bilingualism

By Stephanie Landblom

Stephanie Landblom wrote this blog entry for the course “Language and minorities in Europe” (FRIT 418) in Spring 2016. She is a graduate student in Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include second language acquisition with a focus on second language phonological acquisition.
Despite the fact that bilingualism and multilingualism is a common phenomenon across the world, it is often mired in controversy. For instance, much has been said about whether being bilingual puts speakers at a cognitive advantage or disadvantage, which is especially relevant to parents trying to raise their children in a global society, immigrant parents, as well as for governments considering linguistic educational policies. Decades ago, it was widely believed that being bilingual only put speakers at a disadvantage. Nowadays, however, research arguing for cognitive advantages have been increasingly popular in the media (eg. The New York Times' article, "The Bilingual Advantage" and Psychology Today's article, "When Does Bilingualism Help or Hurt?").

Cognitive advantages or disadvantages may not be the only issue of importance in deciding when to raise children bilingually or to foster a bilingual society, and it may not even play a role at all. More importantly, identity may play a role, especially when a group feels their cultural and linguistic identity may be threatened by a larger, more dominant ethnic or linguistic group. Sometimes it is not so important that a society is not bilingual, but rather not bilingual in their regional language and the other language perceived as a threat.

We can see this to an extent in Spain. Pau Vidal, a philologist, has published a book entitled El Bilingüisme Mata (Bilingualism Kills). In an interview he gives to infowelat.com, he describes bilingualism as a transitional stage to substitution, specifically believing that Spanish-Catalan bilingualism in Catalonia is paving the way for Spanish to replace Catalan. Also, because all Catalan speakers will speak Spanish, it will be contaminated from contact with Spanish. It is well established that languages in contact tend to change, but how does this happen? One linguistic level on which this can occur is at the level of pronunciation. The knowledge of other languages can influence how you speak a second language, and in some cases can even change your pronunciation of your mother tongue. There has been a lot of interest and research carried out in Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in order to answer some of the questions about bilingualism. We will now take a look at what those studies show, specifically regarding bilinguals’ pronunciation of Catalan.

Photo Courtesy of Amazon

There are vowel contrasts present in Catalan and not in Spanish. For example, the words néta (granddaughter) and neta (clean) in Catalan are differentiated by the pronunciation of the ‘e’, a difficult contrast for Spanish speakers. Researchers have examined how bilinguals can hear, pronounce and process words with this sound. One factor affecting their ability to hear the contrast is language dominance, by which I mean whether the speaker was raised in mainly a Spanish speaking or Catalan speaking environment, despite the fact they may be quite proficient in both languages. There are Spanish-dominant Catalan speakers, who have perhaps grown up in Spanish speaking homes and were exposed to Catalan at a slightly older age than Spanish. Conversely, there are Catalan dominant bilinguals, who speak Spanish at a native or near-native level but were exposed to Catalan at birth. Although these speakers may have similar fluency in Catalan and speak predominantly Catalan at home, Bosch & Ramon-Casas (2011) have shown that there are differences in the two groups. They had participants complete a production task, in which they were asked to record sentences with words with this vowel contrast. Results showed that both groups did produce two different vowels, however, the pronunciation of each group was slightly different. They also found that when producing words, the Spanish-dominant speaker group often produced the wrong vowel for that word. That is, it seemed as though they were unsure which vowel was supposed to occur in specific words, much more so than the Catalan-dominant groups.

This can extend into processes of lexical recognition, or the recognition of words in spoken speech, as well. Pallier, Colomé & Sebastián-Gallés (2001) showed that Spanish-dominant bilinguals, but not Catalan dominant bilinguals processed minimal pairs (words differing in only one sound) in Catalan as homophones when they contain such vowel contrasts as the one discussed above. This means that they did not differentiate between words with these two different vowels, but rather heard them as the same word, or as a homophone.

Such studies do not seem to represent a bleak outlook for bilingualism killing a language, especially if the threatened language is most speakers’ dominant language. If it is not, however, it seems that language change could indeed occur. However, as mentioned before, it is undeniable that language contact can induce language change. Therefore, more studies than these presented would have to be examined. Additionally, other linguistic areas would have to be examined, such as how bilingualism can affect the sentence structure or vocabulary. While it is important to preserve languages, we must be cautious in determining the true threats to the language, and be cautious by carefully measuring the pros and cons of bilingualism.

References

Dreifus, Claudia. “The Bilingual Advantage.” The New York Times. N.p. 30 May 2011. Web 15 Mar. 2016.

Bosch, Laura, and Marta Ramon-Casas. "Variability in vowel production by bilingual speakers: Can input properties hinder the early stabilization of contrastive categories?." Journal of Phonetics 39.4 (2011): 514-526.

Olson, Kristina R. & Guirgis, Sara. “When does bilingualism help or hurt?” Psychology Today. N.p. 27 April 2014. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.

Pallier, Christophe, Angels Colomé, and Núria Sebastián-Gallés. "The influence of native-language phonology on lexical access: Exemplar-based versus abstract lexical entries." Psychological Science 12.6 (2001): 445-449.

“Pau Vidal: Bilingualism Kills.” Infowelat.com. May 06, 2015. Web. 1 Apr. 2016.

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English Usage by Dutch Speakers on Facebook

English Usage by Dutch Speakers on Facebook

By Andrew Van Marm

Andrew Van Marm wrote this blog entry for the course “Language and minorities in Europe” (FR/IT 418) in Spring 2016. He is a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign majoring in Political Science, and has a special interest in the geographic and linguistic history of the European continent. Minority languages are particularly interesting to his work, as they represent the cultures of Europe that were once widespread.

Among the countries of the European Union, English holds a special place in the Netherlands. According to the European Commission (2012), "at a national level English is the most widely spoken foreign language in 19 out of the 25 [EU] Member States." Out of these 19, the Netherlands has one of the highest proportions of English speakers at 90%. In comparison, the percentage of English speakers in the United States is 94%. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007) This makes the Netherlands a particularly unique case when it comes to English usage on the Internet. Furthermore, the Netherlands has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in European Union (94%), which accounts for 16 million of their 17 million population. (Internet World Stats, 2014) Of this approximate sum, 9 million are reported to have visited the popular social networking website Facebook. (Azevedo, 2013)

Image Courtesy of comScore MMX

According to the demographic profile presented above, the proportion of Dutch Facebook users is fairly evenly split among different age groups. (Azevedo, 2013) This is relevant, as it is assumed that older users would be less accustomed to using English. However, as no official statistics appear to exist on the subject of language usage by Dutch Facebook users, I shall embark on my own investigation.

Many years ago when I had first created my account on Facebook, I happened to search my last name on Facebook. Unlike other surnames, such as 'Brown' and 'Smith,' the name 'Van Marm' is entirely unique, which means all those with it are at least somewhat related. Although the Van Marm's of the United States are few in number (originating with my great-grand father Cornelius who came over through Ellis Island), a significant number remain in the "old country" of the Netherlands. Surely enough, some of my Dutch relatives happened to turn up on the social media site. Over time, more and more of them created accounts, and though I had yet to speak to a majority of them, I was quick to establish contact.

The very first of the Dutch relatives I had spoken to was Britta, who is a student not much younger than myself. As with the others, she is assumed to be a cousin of some sort. Naturally, she speaks excellent English, as the language was taught and used extensively throughout her education. However, while surveying her Facebook page for the purposes of this blog post, it was observed that a significant majority of her Facebook statuses were in Dutch while a few others were in English. One day was "Sunday funday with the flamingos" while earlier she had "even twee dagen relaxen!" (only two days to relax!) In brief, she appeared to flip between the two languages, using Dutch for longer, more complex statements and English for shorter, casual ones. The comment sections, on the other hand, remain exclusively the domain of Dutch. This is because communication is directed towards specific friends and family. According to Britta, there are a few factors that affect her choice of language:

Actually, for me it depends on the thing I am posting. Since I'm having more and more international friends on Facebook, I post more things in English, but if I write something that is especially for my Dutch friends, I will do it in Dutch. Besides that, the most important thing for me is: in which language can I express with better verbage. Sometimes things sound better in Dutch or English.

In summary, the factors involved are her audience, which contains international, non-Dutch speakers (such as myself), personal social interaction between her friends, and the perceived aesthetic differences between Dutch and English. She further stated that her own age plays a role, as her parents would not be comfortable enough with English to use it extensively on the Internet.

It is especially curious that Britta mentioned age as a factor, as her aunt Helena (who is about twice her age) represents the most prolific English user among my Dutch Facebook family. As a semi-professional photographer with a Facebook page dedicated to her work, Helena uses English in almost every single one of her statuses. When I asked why she used English so extensively, she responded by saying,

That's because I've a lot of foreign friends! And sometimes for me it is easier to say it in English than in Dutch. Although I've been born in The Netherlands I think more in English than I do in Dutch. I know it's weird haha. And because I use Facebook as a platform for my photography I also want to reach a lot of people outside The Netherlands.

Beyond the broad appeal of English that compliments her desire to share her photography with as many individuals as possible, Helena has developed a personal connection to English that has led her to use the language quite often in her day-to-day life. Naturally, this has carried onto the Internet, where Dutch is largely confined to comment sections that are populated by other Dutch speakers.

Photo Courtesy of Helena van Marm Photography on imgur

The exchange between Dutch and English in the Netherlands certainly represents an interesting case of language shift by speakers of a strong, state language. Although English is not the sole language at play, its presence is felt nearly everywhere. This makes sense, as Facebook is primarily an English-language website, having been developed in the United States. For the two Dutch speakers, there were both practical and personal motives behind their language usage on Facebook. Although lingua francas are not said to be born as a result of perceived aesthetic qualities, both Britta and Helena considered English to have special value beyond its mere ability to facilitate wider communication. The vast majority of their friends on Facebook, after all, were Dutch. However, when Helena shared her excitement for the upcoming season of the English-language television series “A Game of Thrones,” it only made sense to express such in English. Considering the wide appreciation for English-language media across the globe, it comes to no surprise that English has become the language of digital culture.

Bibliography

Azevedo, H. (2013, June 19) Who Uses Social Networks in the Netherlands? ComScore. Retrieved from https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Data-Mine/Who-uses-Social-Networks-in-the-Netherlands

U.S. Census Bureau. (2007) Language Use in the United States: 2007. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/acs/ACS-12.pdf

European Commission. (2012) Eurobarometer 386. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_386_en.pdf

Top 50 Countries with the Highest Penetration Rates. (2013) Internet World Stats. Retrieved from http://www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm

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Exploring the Erasmus Experience: Participating on exchange may impact intercultural competency

Exploring the Erasmus Experience: Participating on exchange may impact intercultural competency

By Juliane Micoleta

Julianne Micoleta wrote this blog entry for the course “Language and minorities in Europe” (FRIT 418) in Spring 2016 as a rising senior, majoring in Political Science and minoring in Global Studies.

Boasting a budget of 14.7 billion euros and more than four million opportunities to study, train, gain experience, and volunteer abroad, the European Union’s Erasmus Program works towards providing life-changing experiences to thousands of Europeans every year.

First established in 1987 by the EU, the premise of the Erasmus program is to provide students, registered in higher institutions, within the EU foreign exchange options to study abroad, according to the Erasmus program website.

Now, nearly 30 years later and set to last until 2020, the Erasmus program does not have opportunities for just students anymore. Combining seven other programs, it now houses opportunities for a wide variety of individuals and organizations including universities, education and training providers, think tanks, research organizations, and private businesses. The overall goal of the Erasmus program is to contribute to the Europe 2020 strategy for growth, jobs, social equity and inclusion along with meeting the goals outlined of the ET2020, the EU’s strategic framework for education and training, according to the European Commission.

Since its inception, the Erasmus program, especially the higher education component, has grown significantly. With more than 4000 students involved in the program at any one time, it allows the opportunity to build cross-border cooperation between states, aid the growth of international studying, and provide hundreds of mobility options for students to build cross-cultural understanding.

According to some scholars, a possible byproduct of participating on an Erasmus exchange is an increase in intercultural competency, that is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with people of other cultures.

Photo Courtesy of Jare Jarvinen

Take, for instance, Jare Jarvinen, a third year Politics and International Relations student at the University of Aberdeen, who spent one year on an Erasmus exchange at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Lille in Lille, France. According to Jarvinen, he was motivated to go on exchange to further his studies on the French language and to learn more about French culture.

“I really enjoyed my Erasmus experience,” Jarvinen said. “It was the best year of my life so far. I learned so much about a different European culture and made life-long friendships with people from all over the continent. I think it also enhances my employability.”

He also agrees that his experience studying in Lille had some positive effect on his intercultural competency.

“I now know much more about other Europeans and I am more aware of what unites and separates us,” Jarvinen said.

Other studies also point out that participating on an Erasmus exchange can possibly help foment a European identity.

Photo Courtesy of Jare Jarvinen

“This experience definitely fostered my European identity,” Jarvinen said. “The whole program is genius as it creates these life-lasting connections between young people and shows us the benefits of working together.”

However, Jarvinen’s experience was not always easy. He was exposed to some cultural differences that he believes are so deeply rooted that will be difficult to overcome any time soon. He also noticed the economic discrepancies in Europe more. Despite this, he did not completely see this as a negative thing and feels that his Erasmus experience generally had a very positive impact on him.

“In a way, I leaned that the European integration process is much longer than I expected and somehow also felt unsure if the differences are too big to really integrate in the near future,” he said. “But it's not necessarily a bad thing. I think that we don't really need a single European culture, but that these cultural differences are what make us special. Like the EU motto goes ‘United in diversity,’ it's definitely true.”

Sources:

Erasmus Programme. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2016, from http://www.erasmusprogramme.com/

Erasmus - European Commission. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2016, from https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/about_en#tab-1-0

European CommissionEurope 2020. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2016, from http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/index_en.htm

Schartner, A. (2015). The effect of study abroad on intercultural competence: A longitudinal case study of international postgraduate students at a British university. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37(4), 402-418. doi:10.1080/01434632.2015.1073737

Jacobone, V., & Moro, G. (2014). Evaluating the impact of the Erasmus programme: Skills and European identity. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(2), 309-328. doi:10.1080/02602938.2014.909005

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Internet Interference: The Linguistic Ambidexterity of the World Wide Web and the Dying Languages

Internet Interference: The Linguistic Ambidexterity of the World Wide Web and the Dying Languages

By Rebecca Demski

Rebecca Demski wrote this blog entry for the course “Language and minorities in Europe” (FRIT 418) in Spring 2016. She is a sophomore in Communications at UIUC, and is particularly interested in telecommunications and linguistics.

It’s no mystery that the introduction of the Internet in the 1990s revolutionized the world; its genesis was akin to that of the printing press. Communications were an obvious target susceptible to change and with communications, so to, languages. Approximately 3 billion people have access to the Internet (Chang). A little less than half of the global population has formed and made a digital footprint, so to speak, simply by means of existing. What about the other three-fifths?

The other excluded 4.2 billion people are threatened because they have no voice in the ‘conversation’ amongst users taking place. Only about 300 of the 7,100 languages in existence are present on the Internet according to a report from the United Nations Broadband Commission in 2015 (21). Of the 10 million most popular websites, the English language is utilized for 55% and the remainder of the majority are in Russian, Japanese, German, Spanish and French for about 6% of websites. What about the rest?

At-risk languages are estimated, according to UNESCO’s website, to be around 2,500 and approaching 3,000 in total. In order for a language to be resurrected, or at best preserved, it requires utilization and documentation. The modern tool which allows this is the Internet. In order to nurture languages and prevent digital language death, an environment must be established first for viability. “The classical studies of language death lay down one absolutely unbreakable rule: no community, no survival” (Kornai 5).

Image Courtesy of Language in the News

The unfortunate reality of digital linguistic ascension is that over 95% of languages no longer have this capacity (2). But all is not lost! Manx was declared ‘extinct’ since 1974 when its last native speaker died. Within the last five years there have been efforts to resuscitate it. The linguistic revival of Manx is an example other dying languages should follow.

Manx has not graced the realm of the Internet until recently. A revival project through Viki, a global television site on par with Wikipedia, and the Living Tongues Institute explores the current state of the language on the Isle of Man. Children are learning Manx and are the seedlings for revival. Despite a very limited number of speakers, the Internet allows for linguistic maintenance regardless of the speaker’s location, age, and affluence. Essentially, the introduction to the global conversation by means of the Internet can resurrect languages. The potential for digital preservation, as in the case with Manx, dramatically impacts the vitality of a language.

Image Courtesy of Isle of Man Department of Education & Children

Increasing global Internet access would help to quell the threat of losing more languages and potentially help restore the status of many endangered languages. Although the bulk of the responsibility for improving technological capabilities and development rests in the government, the remainder of the burden falls on websites of the Internet.

Google took initiative to fund the Endangered Language Project in 2012. The web portal allows contributions from worldwide users such as esteemed linguistics or even high-school freshmen. Contributions include alphabets, photos and videos, history, vocabulary, and sound bites. Over 3,000 languages are recorded on the website. Whether this has any long term benefits is unknown at this time but for the time being it increases linguistic awareness and learning.

Image Courtesy of Ethnos Project

Twitter is a social media website that potentially could shift interpersonal communication if it made the right adjustments. Features such as language selection would help to improve communications. Twitter currently “does not offer support for translation or features for strengthening connections between language groups” (Eleta & Golbeck, 431). If linguistic modification to unite communities were afforded by website developers and computer scientists, then perhaps the digital linguistic disconnection would be eliminated.

It would be nearly impossible to rescue every endangered and dying language from digital death but the possibilities with the naissance of the Internet bring hope. The Internet functions in two ways: one, it kills off weak languages and accommodates the thriving ones, or two, it includes the old and feeble languages and ensures a greater chance of linguistic diversity and most importantly, survival.

References:

"Atlas of Languages in Danger | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization." Atlas of Languages in Danger | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. N.p., 2010. Web. 14 Apr. 2016.

Chang, Lulu. "On the Web Right Now? You’re in the Minority — Most People Still Don’t Have Internet." Digital Trends. N.p., 24 Sept. 2015. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/4-billion-people-lack-internet-access/

Eleta, Irene, and Jennifer Golbeck. "Multilingual Use of Twitter: Social Networks At The Language Frontier." Computers In Human Behavior 41. (2014): 424-432. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2016.

Kornai, András. "Digital Language Death." Plos ONE 8.10 (2013): 1-11. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2016.

"Manx: Reviving a Language: Official Viki Channel." Viki. The Living Tongues Institute, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2016. https://www.viki.com/videos/1061865v-manx-reviving-a-language

The Broadband Commission for Digital Development, comp. "The State of Broadband 2015." (2015): 1-100. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

"The Endangered Languages Project." Endangered Languages Project. The Alliance for Linguistic Diversity, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2016. http://www.endangeredlanguages.com

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