A current list of Sicilian language projects: Cadèmia Siciliana: WordPress in Sicilian Firefox in Sicilian Translation Volunteer FB Group Cadèmia Siciliana GitHub General Projects: http://scn.wikipedia.org (contact @fissatu) http://scn.wiktionary.org If you'd like to volunteer for any projects either post there, or in the organisation's project!
It has been a very, very long time since I did any editing in the Sicilian wikipedia, but if anyone needs any help getting around, or would like a bit of a sounding board in writing an article, etc - I'd be very happy to help out. These are some useful pages you'll find in the Sicilian wikipedia about the orthography the early group of editors decided to use (all supported by decent references), plus you'll also find a very handy grammar, which is worth a look for those not used to writing in Sicilian. Please note that it's mostly written in Sicilian (the vocab translates sicilian words into Italian and English): Cumpenniu Stilìsticu - https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cumpenniu_Stilìsticu Grammàtica - https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Grammàtica Mutivi dî nostri scigghiuti ortugràfichi - https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutivi_dî_nostri_scigghiuti_ortugràfichi Vucabbulariu - https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vucabbulariu
After many years away from the Sicilian wikipedia, I got up the courage the other day to create my first article in nearly 9 years! For those who are thinking of dipping their toes in the water, but don't know where to start, I thought I'd go over quickly what I did in the hope that it might help some (especially if you've had nothing to do with wikipedia in the past). You have to have a start, and mine was checking to see if there was an article on labbirintu (labyrinth). I did a search for the word. If you're on the paggina principali (https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pàggina_principali) you'll see a little search box on the right [Risciduta]. There was no page called Labbirintu, but the word was mentioned in a few other articles. That was good. Every wikipedia article must be connected to another article. So I went to the first mention there was, here: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_di_Luciu and you'll see the word labbirintu near the bottom of the page. I clicked the tab "Cancia surgenti" and that takes you to a page which you can edit, found the word labbirintu and enclosed it within [[...]] - and that's all you need to create a link. That word now changes from black to blue, is now hyperlinked, and if I click that word, it takes me to an empty page called Labbirintu. And you're now ready to create a new page. What I did then was on a separate tab looked up the equivalent word in the Italian wikipedia, just copied over the first sentence, translated that in approximate terms, and the article is now started, a page now exists called Labbirintu. I decided to add a few more things. For each heading to another paragraph, you enclose the title in these == ==. Not only does that create a title for your para/section, but once you have 3 or 4 of these, it automatically generates an index for your article. Anyway, that's a rough and ready guide on how to get started writing articles in wikipedia. This is how mine looks: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labbirintu I'm sure there are plenty of mistakes in it, so if you're interested in proofreading it and fixing it, simply go in, cancia, and save.
Further to the above, I just wanted to add one more important point. Note that I just translated the first sentence of the Italian wiki, and then added a couple of things myself (from info I had handy). Don't fall into the trap of trying to translate some humungous article from the italian wiki, or from anywhere else. These larger wikis have 100s of people collaborating on specific subjects - you can't hope to replicate that on your own, and you'll get tired of doing so. Do smaller articles, tick them off, the pages then exist if anyone else ever wants to come along and add extra stuff - it is far more satisfying completing smaller chunks than taking months to finish off one article (unless of course you prefer to work on the one thing for extended periods of time).
Speaking of Wikipedia, I have been involved in a robust discussion today on the facebook page about the spelling of technical terms and the like, and I thought it would be worthwhile to bring that discussion to this thread where hopefully more people can contribute and the various discussions can be kept together a lot better than what would happen on facebook. Some context, about half a dozen of us kick started the Sicilian wikipedia exactly 13 years ago (Oct 2004). The usual discussions about orthography and preferred vocab were had at the time, but one of biggest questions was the words we were to use to describe technical and academic terms, the kind you will regularly come across in an encyclopedia, when more than likely such terms had never, or rarely, been used in written Sicilian. All of this involved a lot of discussion, lots of compromise, people came and went, and we ended up putting together a reasonable wikipedia and managed to avoid the massive in-fighting that other smaller language wikis had descended into back then. But with the birth of the Cademia Siciliana, with serious work being done on formalising a standard, there is no doubt that whichever way things fall, the Sicilian wikipedia MUST align with the Cademia Siciliana, namely because there are already 25,000+ articles and so much of it is fully searchable, there must be consistency between the two. It's a long time ago, but the general principles we worked with was: was there evidence of the word, or something similar (such as the root), existing in written Sicilian? with widely accepted prefixes and suffixes used across all the major languages, was there merit in sticking with these even when they differed from the usual Sicilian pronunciation rules? although highly Italianised, we also sometimes referred to Camilleri's Italian-Sicilian dictionary, which includes many modern terms; and in rare circumstances, you'd find a useful word in Piccitto, but technical and academic words are far and few between in that collection. Anyway, it's a good time to revisit, and to kick start things, I thought I would put up the original list of broad subject areas we translated back in the day, and where there exists a consensus to change, I would go about undertaking the painstaking work for making the changes (after first reaching agreement with the current wikipedians, one of whom I know from 13 years ago). There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of such words in wiki, but this is a good starting point (from this page: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Enci2 ):
So on the Facebook page, Carlo Mattia has put forward the following suggestion to improve the above, with his reasonings (and I'll add a personal view in brackets), and then thereafter I'd love to see some discussion on these names (I haven't done the accents, but normally, I would use accents as required). Cultura -> Curtura - L + consonant - 1. r as in artaru 2. u as in sautari 3. dropped as in vota (me: sound reasoning, the principle certainly applies to many Sicilian words, italianisation has seen much of this change in the last few decades...but....personally speaking, to use "curtura" sort of grates on me and sounds a bit too much like the Sicilian word for cooking, plus, there is no evidence of the this form ever having existed in Sicilian; Camilleri has cultura). Folklori - not even close to a possible Sicilian pronunciation (me: that's certainly true. It is a word used by Arba Sicula for decades now, so was probably used for that reason) Fotugrafia -> Futugrafia - unstressed o becomes u (me: no problem with the general rule, obviously widespread in Sicilian; in this case, you generally only see the shortened form fotu, so I guess it's an open question as to whether you keep the word intact as a prefix, or you do the usual thing of changing the o to u, worth noting that Bonner shows: fotografia). Scultura -> Scurtura - same reasoning as above (me: no contrary argument from me really, except it's one of those case where the sound of the word sort of grates; Camilleri has scultura; Piccitto has neither; this form has probably never been used before) Turismu -> Turisimu - epenthetic i between sm (me: this is certainly observable in Sicilian, in fact I'm pretty sure it came up in discussion more than once back in the day, I can only imagine we went with -ismu because it was the more modern practice; Camilleri has turismu) Antropoluggia -> Antrupuluggia - as argued above for unstressed o (me: no real contrary view, I'm not sure why we went with that except perhaps it was to preserve the original Greek prefix άνθρωπος, I note that that article was written by one of our on-island Sicilians) Archioluggia -> Archiuluggia - as argued above for unstressed o (me: no contrary view; Camilleri shows a very italianised form; started by the same author as the last one) Dipromazzia -> Diprumazzia - as above (me: I remember this one, one of the few words I found in Piccitto, who shows Ddipromazzia) Econumia -> Acunumia - unstressed e becomes a like aducazzioni and alittronica (me: I remember this one as well, Piccitto has the word economicu, so it seemed ok to keep the eco- prefix) Psicoluggia -> Pissiculuggia or S(s)iculuggia (me: no real views on this one, don't really know one way or the other; I note that Camilleri has Pissicologia) Sociuluggia -> Suciuluggia - as above (me: I can only think that we saw merit in keeping the prefix sociu-) Agricultura -> Agricurtura - as above (me: a natural aversion to cultura becoming curtura; Camilleri shows agricultura) Bioluggia -> Biuluggia - as above (me: pretty comfortable using a common prefix like bio-, but understand the reasoning to change) Note: another poster suggested vituscenza. Internet -> no suggestion, need Sicilian word (me: I like the idea of looking for Sicilian words, especially if it helps resurrect long forgotten words, on the other hand, with these ultra modern international words....) Ticnoluggia -> Ticnuluggia or Ticchinuluggia (me: no really strong view; there is the custom of adding an extra syllable in these constructions, for example, tecchinica, from Camilleri, although getting to six syllables becomes a bit of a mouthful) Biografia -> Biugrafia (me: once again, keeping the prefix bio-, Camilleri has Biografia) One last suggestion from another poster was having tirruscenza for giugrafia. All views welcome.
Ciau Peppe Prima di tuttu, cci poi riggistràriti, e poi lassi nu missaggiu ntô cìrculu, ccà: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Circulu pi ntrodùciriti a tutti l’utenti. Iddi nn’hannu sempri nu bisognu pi chiddi chi ponnu dàricci n’ucchiata ogni tantu. Cc’è sempri quarchiccosa pi mintiri giustu. Chiossai di chissu, quannu veni appruvatu dû cumitatu lu ducumentu dâ scrittura prifiruta, cc’è la pussibbilitati c’avemu a fari tanti canciamenti ntâ Wikipedia p’assicuràrini dâ cuirenza ntra tuttidui. Facirmenti ti cci vidu ddà quarchi tempu! Salutamu. ps hai quarchi opinioni dî noma dî suggetti chi scrissi ccà supra
This is incredibly useful information. We've been speaking with a few editors there, but I think we finally have enough support within scn.wikipedia.org to make such an alignment a reality. This week I will be working on Cadèmia stuff full time and I'll reach out to you.
Peppi Talìa ca lassai na mmàggini dâ wikipedia c’ammustra li noma di tanti suggetti e disciplini pi sicilianu.
Hi Paul Returning to scn.wiki, I note that one of the earliest members, Peppi Melfi, is still active, so that's 13 years of continuous activity on his part, which is incredible. He has lived in Switzerland for a while, but returns to Sicily regularly. He is from pruvincia di Rausa, and so speaks Sicilian with the typical idiosyncracies of that zone, e.g. ciavi instead of chiavi, etc, but he willingly accepted the need for a written standard back then and would have had to fight off some very strong instincts in doing so (as many native Sicilians need to do in accepting a written standard). He's a good guy, very collaborative, I can't recall ever having any issues with him whatsoever, so he, above all others, needs to be a priority in terms of liaising with scn.wiki. He is the one who has kept it going for 13 years now. This is his user page: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utenti:Gmelfi
Just wanted to bring to this forum a bit of a discussion we were having on the facebook page. As I tried intimating above, there are a zillion ways to collaborate on the sicilian wikipedia, writing articles is just one way, but there are many, many other ways which above all else, requires you to know you're way around a wikipedia a tiny bit. One thing we've been discussing recently is the concept of lists. Lists within a young and growing wiki like the Sicilian wiki have many benefits, for both the wiki, but also for the language as a whole: 1. groups of people can work on, reflect on, proofread, the correct words for a particular theme, with no other goal than to have the correct word, correct spelling, etc. 2. such a word, once agreed and placed in a list becomes a placeholder for a future article - it can stay as a placeholder indefinitely 3. even as a placeholder, it's fully searchable, both within the wiki, but even via a basic google search, so there is a huge benefit in having the correct form of a word existing within the wiki...and it's there forever. To give people an idea of what I am talking about, here are some lists from the sicilian wikipedia, some are relatively complete, some are only partial (we can add to lists any time, as easy as pie): A list of the nations of the world: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_dî_Paisi_dû_Munnu the continents: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuntinenti mammals: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalia the regions of Italy: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riggiuni_d'Italia Sicilian vocab: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vucabbulariu Days and months in Sicilian: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jorna_e_misi List of prefixes: https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavuledda_dî_prifissi_custanti False friends (between Sicilian and Italian) https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fàusi_amici_ntâ_lingua_siciliana and that's just a sample, you get the idea, it can be expanded 100 fold - every imaginable theme can begin life by a mere list where the starting point is agreeing and working out the correct spelling for words which fall within a particular theme - and down the track, these might give rise to a future article. Even if you had a list of words, grouped within a theme in either Word or Excel, very easy to dump it in a page in wiki, and I can then come up behind you and wikify it, and bang, we have our list ready to review, edit, expand, search, whatever - qual'egghie!
Ciau Fissatu aju pruvatu a trasiri nda wikipedia e ndo wikiziunariu je mi dicia ca jé bloccatu di Vituzzu.. ci poi parrari tu? Accussì mi ci scrivu macári jú t'arringraziu!
Zoccu facisti ca ti càpita ca si bluccatu! Prova nautra vota picchì spissu si tratta di n’ammarrata pruvvisòria ps Peppe - mi poi chiamari joey o pippu
