Not to mention the substantial Greek population of southeastern
Italy and Sicily, which was only gradually absorbed after the
Byzantines had finally pulled out for good. Greeks had been there
for nearly a millenium and their numbers were constantly reinforced
by new Greek immigrants to Neapolis (Napoli, Naples) etc. Western
Sicily was populated by Sicels who in Roman times assimilated and
began speaking Latin, but I would imagine there was a significant
Sicilian substrate. On the mainland, you had several Italic
dialects overlain with Latin and several non-Indo-European languages
similarly replaced, each surely leaving their own residue. Then the
Goths came, and Frederick Barbarossa and a host of others between
and after. The Arabs ruled Sicily for about 200 years and left
substantial minority populations in many of the towns which were
still separate communities at the time of the Vespers. Then you had
the hated Angevin French, who stubbornly refused to conduct
administration in any of the native languages (thus giving cause for
the formation of secret resistance societies that later became La
Cosa Nostra). They must have left a peppering French officialese
(what's the name for its modern bureacratic equivalent?) phrases
that survive in the higher registers of Sicilian. So it's not all
the work of the Germans, although they did play a part.
-- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "aquila_grande" <aquila_grande@...>
wrote:
> The variuos Italian dialectal areas(north, middle, south, sicilian)
> are actually so different that they constitute different languages
> rather than dialects of the same language - at least this seems to
> me, that have learned standard Italian as a foreigner
>
> Actually, what have caused those differences in a land that is of
the
> size of sweden, when the scandinavian area that is greater have
> managed to keep one language (even though the different standards
> here are called languages rather than dialects)
>
> There must have been a great degree of isolation at on time for
each
> area. Perhaps the germanic invation split the latin area in Italy
up
> for a long time?