Si versu Siddu

I put up a similar conversation on the facebook page. I thought it was interesting enough to put here as well.

Here are the last few lines of the Luiggi Capuana poem, Sta Notti:

Vitti lu cori tò npettu viniri;
Ca siddu mi putìa arrisbigghiari,
Nun ti l’avissi cchiù lassatu jiri.​

Now, it's always dangerous to make too much of an example of language used in poetry, because often, the rythm and meter of the language is as important as grammatical niceties, but I did wonder about the use of siddu above.

The word siddu doesn't sound out of place, yet I have this question: are si and siddu always synonomous? Or does siddu actually come from s'iddu, meaning there must be a direct or indirect reference to the 3rd person singular (which isn't there in the above example, unless it's replacing an impersonal/passive construction such as: if by chance it had happened that... - see also Piccitto's entry below).

I have occasionally seen siddu written as s'iddu.

Camilleri shows both si and siddu as equivalent to Italian 'se'.

Giarrizzo says: SIDDU avv. Se, se mai. - Da si iddu, se lui (o se quella cosa, lat. illud), ed e' una forma impersonale (crf ted. man, fr. on), che si regula come avverbio vero o proprio.

Piccitto: siddu cong. se, semmai, nel caso in cui 2. tutt'al piu' , al massimo.

In summary, by sound I can sort of tell when it's ok to use ''siddu'', but I have to admit, I'm not sure of the grammatical rule (if there is a grammatical rule).

Interesting that Giarizzo calls it an adverb and Piccitto a conjunction. I have to admit, I'm able to make a bit more sense of Piccitto's explanation that that of Giarizzo, especially when he likens it to German man and French on.

I'd be interested in everyone's thoughts:

• are si and siddu synonomous, wholly or partly interchangeable
• is there a nuanced difference to using siddu (perhaps where s'iddu makes sense)
• does siddu have other uses over and above meaning "if'' as intimated by Giarizzo and Piccitto above, such as meaning ''if ever'', or where the ''if" is followed by an impersonal adverbial phrase such ''if it should ever be the case that''etc)

For completeness, here are some idiomatic expressions shown by Piccitto:

siddu vuàtri nun putiti, lassati stari (if you can’t do it, let it go – appears to mean simply ‘if’, to my eyes it could just as easily take si – or is siddu replacing a phrase such as: if it’s the case that…)

si tratta di vadagnàriti cchiù di na sinzalìa […] siddu u voi fari, annunca nenti! (not 100% sure of the transalation here, somethining like: it’s about earning more than a percentage…. if you want to do it, otherwise nothing! - once again, it seems to me that a simple si could work just as well, except sidd’u would roll off the tongue better than si u – is it more about elision than grammar?)

ti pari ca quantu ti porta? siddu dumila liri (how much to you reckon you have on you? 2000 lire at the most, or no more than 2000 lire – this is a different use of siddu, it’s being used more in the context of: you’d be lucky if you had…)


pi oi nun veni, siddu dumani (don’t come today, at worst tomorrow, i.e. at the worst it will be tomorrow, this use appears to carry the meaning: if worse comes to worst, we can… - so this ‘’if’’ does presuppose the existence of an adverbial phrase)

 

That's a good answer, thanks very much for that!