Take the Survey: "Macári vs Vidèmma" ( midemma ecc)

My family used macari (provincia di Catania). One thing I like about the word is that with just a small change in intonation, you can give it a variety of meanings, so that it can also be an exclamation to mean something similar to what we might say in English like: oh sure, or if only, or that'll be the day! etc. It's also rather nice that it has Greek origins.

Also, macari si = even if; and macari can also be used to denote conversational links such as moreover, etc.

But I like videmma too (I also like videmma; even I like videmma), which can replace macari in most constructions - but not all! Clearly, just as both Italian and English have more than one word to express similar concepts, it's great that Sicilian does as well.

 

This question reminds me that often in English we find more than one word to express the same thing, or variations of the same word, or slight spelling differences across different forms of English, or there are instances where the full form of a construction and the shortened form are both equally acceptable.

This often gets me thinking that as far as Sicilian is concerned, we too shouldn't be overly afraid of having different words for the same concept, or occasionally even slightly different spellings, or shortened/long forms being acceptable.

As one example, amongst many, to be found in English, in Australia and England we might spell this word ''materialise'' whereas in American English it will be spelt ''materialize''.

A ''thong'' in Australian English means something completely different to a ''thong'' in British and American English (the source of endless gags).

Also, in most situations, the statement ''I don't smoke'' would be just as acceptable as saying ''I do not smoke'', and no one would bat an eyelid either way.

But all of this must be within reason, so while I can point to isolated instances, the bulk of English is reasonably standardised.

As for Sicilian, where there are genuine 50/50 splits in how things are written/spoken, we probably have to let it go, but where a tiny fraction of the population uses a form which is clearly in the minority, you'd probably have to conclude that that form cannot be part of the standard, especially if it is deviating too far from a particular convention that is well known and used more often than not in the literature.

Further to that, there are certainly instances where you really don't like seeing a multitude of forms. Some of our common verbs can sometimes have up to three different forms of a particular conjugation. Personally, I don't think that is a desireable thing for a standard. AS a rule, you'd probably want no more than two forms of a conjugation being acceptable, and even then, you'd hope that's kept to an absolute minimum.