San Fratello
REIS: Sicilian Intangible Heritage Register Expressions
Gallo Italico (Spoken Alloglotta): San Fratello
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Gallo Italico (Spoken Alloglotta): San Fratello

Property included in the Register of Intangible Heritage of Sicily (REIS)nicosia-sanfratelloThe Gallo-Italics of Sicily (or Gallo-Italics of Sicily) are an alloglot linguistic island within central and eastern Sicily composed of dialects in which characteristics, above all phonetic, typical of northern Italian dominate, that is, belonging to the speeches of the linguistic group Gallo-Italic, in which there is a Gallo-Celtic substrate and a Germanic superstrate, widespread in much of Northern Italy and historically belonging to the macro-region south of the Alps that the Romans called Cisalpine Gaul.

The formation of these linguistic islands in Sicily dates back to the Norman period, in which the Altavilla favored a process of Latinization Sicily by encouraging an immigration policy of people coming from France (Normans, Provençals and Bretons) and northern Italy (mainly Piedmontese and Ligurians) with the granting of lands and privileges.

The speech of these settlers coming from northern Italy has been maintained for a long time in Sicily, even if the linguistic islands created have begun to be eroded by the impact, first, with the Sicilian dialects, and in more recent times, with that of television and of compulsory school, envisaging the concrete danger of a disappearance of this ancient and precious historical and glottological Sicilian testimony.

The places included in the REIS - "Sicilian Intangible Heritage Register" - Book of Expressions - Speech Alloglotta Gallo Italico - established by the Sicilian Region I'm:

Nicosia, Sperlinga, Piazza Armerina and Aidone in the province of Enna; San Fratello and Novara di Sicilia in the province of Messina.

Other places, although not included in the REIS, are interested in the spread of the Gallo-Italian language among these, to remain in the province of Messina:

  • Fondachelli Fantina
  • Francavilla di Sicilia
  • St. Sunday Victory
  • Roccella Valdemone
  • San Piero Patti
  • acquedolci

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5 Technical data sheets prepared by: Region of Sicily - Department of cultural heritage and Sicilian identity - CRicd: Regional center for inventory, cataloging and documentation and Sicilian regional film library

 
Technical data sheet n. 17 (San Fratello)
17
Gallo Italico (Speech Alloglotta)
REI - Book of Expressions
25-01-2006
Expressive practice
Messina
San Fratello (in dialect San Frareau or San Frareu)
San Fratello
Vernacle of San Fratello
In the hinterland of the provinces of Messina, Catania and Syracuse, as well as in the internal province par excellence, namely Enna, it is possible to find urban centers where, even today, Gallo-Italian is spoken, or where it is possible to identify its traces in phonetics and vocabulary. These are settlements positioned in such a way as to want, it seems, to create a buffer zone (an area that separated the Arabs of the east coast from those of the center and west coast), from which the Norman conquerors could proceed to consolidate their recent conquests. and relatinize and rechristianise Sicily.
Among these cities we remember: San Fratello and Novara di Sicilia, Sperlinga and Nicosia, Aidone and Piazza Armerina.
As for the other towns mentioned above, the inhabited center of San Fratello is characterized by the presence of the Gallo-Italic, a direct consequence of the same Arab domination. Historical sources attest that the village of San Fratello was repopulated or founded scratch between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. Sicily in those years was affected by migratory movements of populations from northern Italy who came to conquer the island with Count Ruggero d'Altavilla.
Following the hypothesis of repopulation, scholars believe that the northern settlers settled in a village (Apollonia) already populated by indigenous people, equipping it with a fortified fortress between 1061 and 1090.
The foundation of the Castle of San Filadelfio dates back to 1116, and historians place the birth of the modern city of San Fratello in the same year.
It is probable that the first centuries of the city's life were characterized by a multi-ethnic presence in its territory. Normans, natives, Byzantine Greeks, Franks, Jews and Muslims populated the territory of the island in a peaceful coexistence, the result of the good government of Roger II.
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The Sanfratellano dialect has contaminations deriving from the heterogeneity of the founders. In fact, traces of Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian and Provençal French are found in it.
Due to its isolated position, the linguistic traces have not been erased, maintaining, as for the towns of the province of Enna, the original Gallo-Italic language. The same cannot be said for other Gallo-Italian colonies in Sicily where there is a process of disintegration of the ancient local dialect.
The Sanfratellani, still today, are considered almost foreigners, so much so that they are called "the Lombards" or "the francisi”(The French), which in the Sanfratellano dialect is translated i frances.
The case of San Fratello, and indirectly of the Gallo-Italian dialect of Sicily, interested scholars, linguists, linguists, anthropologists and historians, who confronted each other between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Among this group of experts emerge the names of the linguists Giacomo De Gregorio and Whilelm Meyer Lübke, the historian M. Amari and the anthropologist G. Pitrè.
Unlike the cities of Piazza Armerina and Aidone, where the spoken language was already perceived as archaic at the end of the XNUMXth century and its use limited only to the lowest social spheres, in San Fratello the linguistic alterity of Gallo-Italian, compared to the surrounding Sicilian languages , is particularly intense and coexists with the Sicilian component.
The following poem, in Sanfratellano dialect, is taken from a work by Benedetto di Pietro:
 
Dune china
U cutan dî cchjupp
ch'artulìa ntê ccî
it makes me remember
who your alustràusg ninetygn
dèan n means ô tamp
who ntristìsc
more the lgic fìni.
But you ghji crari daveru
whoever wants to say chercàusa
if you leave me ancara
of na duna strazzära
who vèa anann n gir ntô zzièu
more curpìr to whom the urda fixes?
Quänt ghji pà u fätt d'avàr mparèa
arriptì ô heart
the magarìa
without mei sbaghjer na parada?
If a duna alùstr di na quinta e dièsma
cau meu pìghja ancara rribàur
eu rruculier si fèa a nduòi
n grir of dulàur
in the last prize.
It is u sclamer of sàntir
u sciàr
of the sciàur of li vièrgini
chi ntô mas by Mei s'adärga
and the swim was made cautious.
 
Plenilunio
Cotton from poplars
whirling in the courtyards
suggests to me
than your lucid ninety years
make sense of time
that saddens
for the logical purpose.
But you really believe
that death means something
if you talk to me again
of a torn moon
that goes around the sky
to strike those who stare at it?
How much can he have learned
repeated to the heart
the magic formula
without ever getting a word wrong?
If in the light of the full moon 1
that evil still takes substance
and the howl differs
in a cry of pain
in extreme prayer.
 
 
Bonanno, Carmela and Giovanni, Perrotta. 2008. Apollonia: archaeological investigations on the Monte di San Fratello, Messina. Rome: The Herm of Bretschneider,
 
Console, Vincent. 2013. Lunaria. Milan: Oscar Mondadori.
 
DeGregorio, James. 1886. Affinity of the dialect of San Fratello with those of Emilia. Turin: Ermanno Loescher.
 
By Leo, Maria Adele. 1997. Popular festivals of Sicily. Rome: Newton & Compton.
 
Petracco Siccardi, Julia. 1966. The northern phonetic and morphological elements in the Gallo-Italic dialects of the south. In Bulletin of the Sicilian Philological and Linguistic Studies Center, X, Palermo, Mori.
 
Pitre, Giuseppe. 1969. Sicilian folk tales and legends. Bologna: Forni publisher
 
Roll, Benedict. 2014. Dictionary of the Gallo-Italian dialect of San Fratello. Milazzo: Lombardo editions.
 
Toso, Florence. 2008. Linguistic minorities in Italy, Il Mulino, Bologna
 
Tropea, John. 1974. Considerations on the trilingualism of the Gallo-Italian colony of San Fratello. Pisa: Pacini.
 
Found it, Salvatore. 1989. Galloitalici Project, Essays and Materials, Department of Medieval and Modern Literary Philological Linguistic Sciences, University of Catania
 
Found it, Salvatore. 2002. Sicily. In Italian dialects. Turin: UTET.
 
 
Luigi Vasi, priest of San Fratello, was one of the leading scholars of the city. His production consists of a set of literary texts and strictly linguistic considerations on the Gallo-Italian dialect of San Fratello.
The primary objective of his work was to demonstrate the belonging of the dialect in question to the neo-Latin lineage by comparing the Sanfratellano dialect with the Tuscan, bringing out the numerous traits common to the two languages.
Among the most important works by Vasi it is necessary to remember the pamphlet Of the Origins and Events of San Fratello dated 1882. It contains 39 poems in Sanfratellano dialect and the corresponding glossary-index.
Frances Maria Riccobene
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