Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

writing is studded with French expressions.

Here is the description of the princess of

Ganci, who came to visit the writer’s

grandmother, called Granmamà, her

mother-in-law:

She was a delicate figure who called to

mind the statuettes in blanc de Chine. She

spoke, or rather stuttered, a strange mixture

of Sicilian and French pronouncing the “R”s

as if they were “S”s: “carissima” became

“casissima” and “il parco della Favorita” “Il

pascu d’a Favosita.”^2

The situation appears radically different

after W.W. II; the impoverishment of the

linguistic patrimony of dialect affects the

whole peninsula and corrodes the solidity of

the Sicilian dialect. The rapid erosion of

dialects surprises P. P. Pasolini; regarding

Buttitta’s heartfelt lamentation in the poem

“Lingua e dialettu” [Language and Dialect],