sabato 24 gennaio 2015

Lesson 1 - Articles

These articles are the most used words: they are always written before a word (in this case they are called proclitical articles), in particular nouns, and they give us informations about the name. Where do the articles come from? Like Italian, definite articles come from Latin illum (accusative case for ille) and illam (accusative case for illa) that literally mean that (male and female). The articles can be definite or indefinite.

Definite articles
In general, in Sicilian we can find four articles:
- 'u (short for lu, that comes from Latin illum) for masculine singular;
- 'a (short for la, that comes from Latin illam) for feminine singular;
- 'i (short for li, that comes from Latin illi) for masculine and feminine plural;
- l' (short for lu, la, li) for nouns that begins with a vowel BUT words that, in some dialects, lost j at the beginning.

Examples:

'u cani (the dog): it tells us that it's a masculine word, and it's just one;
'a casa (the house): it tells us that it's a feminine word, and it's just one;
'i pedi (the feet): it tells us that it's a masculine word, and that there's more than one (two at least);
l'ogghiu (the olive oil): it tells us that it's a masculine word, and it's just one;
'a (j)amma (the leg: in some dialects, letter j was lost, so the form l'amma is wrong.

The last letter of a word can sometimes be useful to understand whether the word is masculine or feminine, but there are some exceptions: for example, 'a manu (the hand) wants the article 'a because it's a feminine noun, so the correct form is 'a manu, not 'u manu.

Indefinite articles
In general, in Sicilian we can find four articles:
- un (sometimes also 'nu, from Latin unum) for masculine;
- 'na (short for una, from Latin unam) for feminine;
- 'n' (short for 'nu and 'na) when the last letter of the word before is a vowel and the first letter of the following word is a vowel. 

Examples:

un cani (a dog): it tells us that it's just one;
'na casa (a house): it tells us that it's just one;
"vitti 'n' avutru cani" (I saw one more dog): just to show the article 'n'.

Sometimes article can not be used, Italian has the partitive articles (Hai del pane? Do you have some bread? Vuoi della frutta? Do you want some fruit? Hai della vernice? Have you got some paint?), that is the plural form of the indefinite articles and they are usd to express quantities. In Sicilian you just need to use no article.

Examples:

ài pani? (do you have some bread?) vo' frutta? (do you want some fruit?) ài virnici? (have you got some paint?)

S.


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2 commenti:

  1. This is a great start. I'm so glad that you point out that 'u, 'a and 'i, etc. are SHORT FOR the actual articles as they were spoken by my family: li, lu, and la.

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