The Language of Andrea Camilleri

If you are reading Camilleri in Italian, you will immediately notice that something is strange. Camilleri writes in a mixture of standard Italian “contaminated” (to use Gadda’s term) by Sicilian dialect. There is a long tradition of using dialect in Italian literature, and it has many uses. It is very frequently used in Italian for comic effect (in English we sometimes mock local ways of speaking, too, to make fun of “hillbillies” or “yokels,” but this use is much more common in Italian). It is sometimes used for realistic effect, just as the American television series The Wire used Baltimore dialect—it made it seem like you were looking inside a private world that outsiders didn’t get to see, and this is often how Italians understand dialectical speech, something private rather than public. The problem with writing serious literature in dialect, however, is that people from other places in Italy might not be able to understand it; this is especially true for certain dialects, like Sicilian and Venetian, that are very far removed from standard Italian. (Another complication, unlike the English usage of dialect—some Italian dialects have much more prestige when written than others: Roman dialect, for complicated historical reasons, has a fairly low level of social prestige; Sicilian dialect, because it is so strongly associated with early courtly love poetry, does not automatically have a low social status, however.)

Camilleri, who is the best-selling Italian writer pretty much ever, didn’t have any trouble making himself understood. Why not? I have argued that this is because Camilleri writes in “glocal” Italian, a language halfway between dialect (local) and Italian (global)—more importantly, Camilleri’s large structures are all Italian, while the local differences are just a handful of Sicilian words that quickly become familiar. Let me give a more familiar example for English speakers: Spanglish. If a speaker uses a Spanish word inside an English expression, the meaning is usually pretty clear, even to people who speak no Spanish. If someone calls a handsome Latino actor a corazón-throb, you can immediately infer that corazón is Spanish for “heart.” Note that the expression appears 50% English (throb) and 50% Spanish (corazón), but the structure of the expression is 100% English. If I offered you the half-English, half-Spanish expression rompe-hearts, however, you’d have no idea what it meant at all, because its structure is 100% Spanish. Essentially, Camilleri keeps his structures all Italian, but allows in local vocabulary. In context, Camilleri’s use of Sicilian is trivially easy for Italians to understand, and pretty easy for you, too.

Spelling:

You’ll notice a lot of spelling changes that reflect the way Sicilians pronounce Italian. There are three basic kinds: 1) vowels change to “nearby” sounds (vowels are arranged, high to low: i e a o u, so an e becomes an i or an a, for example, but it won’t become a u); 2) some consonants will change to obviously related, general simplified, sounds (scia becomes ssa, for instance); this happens especially with nd, so that faccenda becomes facenna; 3) words spelled with single consonants in standard Italian will become doubled consonants in Sicilian, reflecting the overall pattern of more singles in the North, more doubles in the South. Sometimes the reverse will happen, too, though. “Gli avevano detto di lasciare il numero di telefono” becomes “Gli avivano ditto di lassare il nummaro di telefono”—or maybe even “tilifono,” depending on how strong the person’s accent is! (Catarella always says “tilifono,” although the actual Sicilian is tilèfunu…)

Vocabulary:

This is what looks hard in Camilleri, but really isn’t. Take susire, a verb you’ve never seen before. You don’t know what it means! It’s not in the dictionary, because it’s Sicilian! Worse, it’s reflexive and in the passato remoto: si susì. But here’s what Montalbano actually writes: “Montalbano si susì dal letto.” Montalbano somethinged from the bed. First thing in the morning, he somethinged himself from bed. Well, now you know what this verb is: alzarsi. Here’s another one: spiare. “Doesn’t that mean ‘to spy’“? you ask. Not in Sicilian! But here’s the sentence that Camilleri gives you: “‘Ma com’è possibile‘? Livia spiò a Salvo.“ Obviously it means something like “to say, to respond, to ask, to query…” Some kind of talking verb, and pretty soon you discover that it means chiedere. In fact, sometimes the Sicilian will be closer to English than the Italian: maritato = married, assittato = seated, travagliare = to work, like the English travail, and so on. Spanish won’t hurt, either: you’ll see tener gana, apprendere, and lots of the “personal a” in Sicilian!

Structure:

As you’d expect from what I’ve said, virtually nothing changes at the level of structure. A Sicilian verb like taliare (which doesn’t mean tagliare, by the way) is conjugated exactly as if it were standard Italian. io talio (present), ho taliato (passato prossimo), lui taliò (passato remoto), loro talierebbero (conditional), and so on. Sicilians often put the verb at the end of the sentence, but in Camilleri, this is limited to one phrase only: “Montalbano sono” (“I am Montalbano,” or “this is Montalbano”). Sicilians (as is typical in southern Italy) use the passato remoto in speech, to refer to even the very recent past, but of course this presents no difficulty to Italians, who are used to reading the passato remoto all the time, as are you, since you’re Italian majors.

Help!

If you want to see how different real Sicilian is from Camilleri's language, check out the wikipedia page. For fun, or for help, you might consult wikizziunariu, a Sicilian wiktionary that has translations of terms into Italian (talianu) and sometimes English (ngrisi)—but as you’ll quickly see, Camilleri isn’t writing in Sicilian, so he’s often using forms much closer to standard Italian (santiare instead of the real Sicilian santiuni). Best of all, check out the Vigàta dictionary of Camilleri's language.

Finally, you just gotta roll with it. And remember that Catarella (Cataré) is a comic character, and speaks very strangely even for a Sicilian!

Vocabulary List to get you started:

s’arrisbigliò: si risvegliò

si era sbafàto: mangiare in fretta e in quantità

addiventato: diventato

aggilàta: gelata, fredda

*taliò fòra: guardò fuori (taliare = guardare)

si ricurcò: ri ricoricò

virrìna: succhiello

*nèsciri: uscire (nescire, niscire = uscire)

santiare: bestemmiare

*arriniscì: riuscì (arriniscire = riuscire)

nìvuro di siccia: nero di seppia

*trasì: entrò (trasire = entrare)

scimunito: scemo

travagliare: lavorare

l’omo: l’uomo

la fìmmina: la donna

*si spiò: si chiese (spiare: chiedere)

*assittato: seduto (assittare = sedere)

allato: al lato, accanto

*macari: magari

maritato: sposato

*pigliare: prendere

*gana: voglia

nasche: narici

putìa: bottega

a mano mancina: alla sinistra; a mano dritta: alla destra

*darrè: dietro, indietro

*manco: neanche

*accattare: comprare

’nzinga: segno

quatrare: inquadrare

*babbiare: scherzare

accusì: così

*cangiare: cambiare

vastasa: maleducata

seggia: sedia

mogliere: moglie

accanuscio: conosco (accanuscire or canuscire = conoscere)

*cataminare: muovere

quarchiduno: qualcuno

scinni e vitti: scesi e vidi

*catafero: cadavere

sciatu: fiato

tuppiare: bussare

camurrìa: fastidio, noia

*piccirillo: piccolino (picciliddru = piccolino, piccino)

feto d'abbrusciato = odore di bruciato

*nirbùso: nervoso

schetto/a: scapolo, nubile

scanto: spavento, paura

’mbriaco: ubriaco

scarmazzo: aria calda, soffocante

anta: door frame (stipite di porta)

*apprese: imparò (apprendere = imparare)

scugnandosi: scugnare = rompere

*taliò il ralogio: guardò l'orologio

*sentire pititto: avere fame (pititto = appetito)

* frequently used—you should learn these