Beginner's Sicilian (Beginner's (Foreign Language))

I really enjoy reading and learning Sicilian. It’s been many years since I heard my grandmother speaking it. There really aren’t a lot of books or resources to learn Sicilian. Even Google translate has no Sicilian.

Excellent introduction to the language. A rare and well-needed primer. I would only fault the Table Of Contents, which does not include where types of words (nouns, pronouns, etc) are to be found. I added those items and their page numbers myself.

While the criticisms of the other reviewers concerning the editing of this book are valid, it is still a fabulous book. If you can get around the typos, some of the confusing shorthand used and other formatting problems, like with the font, this is really a great book for learning the Sicilian language. While the book by Cipolla is the standard reference it would seem, it is a hard book, heavy to lift, with dense pages and this book is a nice introduction to the language without having to tackle Cipolla.After reading this book cover to cover, I feel better prepared to take on the Cipolla book. This book is nicely put together in the sense that it is lightweight and easy to read, yet full of valuable information. It would be easy to get to 5-stars for this book with some basic editing and especially checking for real errors which will be hard to find for the beginner.

I am in the process of working through Dr. Privitera's language book, Beginner's Sicilian. I'm finding it extremely good and useable. Sicilian is not an easy language, especially if you know some Italian and try not to get confused between the two. I will be travelling to Sicilia next month if all goes well, and hope to learn enough to get by. I strongly recommend Dr. Privitera's book, and just wish it came with a CD to hear the pronunciations (there is a lot on the Internet). It is kicking the dust off old memories of my grandparents' and parents' dialogues years ago, so that I get a real thrill working with this book. Piaciri di conuscirivi!

There is basically nothing else in the market so we're stuck with this book.The good thing is that it provides a basic introduction to the language (not a "dialect" please!!!) with Sicilian dialogues, basic grammar explanations, vocabulary, and some practice. It also comes with a complex pronunciation guide, which is pedagogically very weak.The frustrating things about the book are: too many typos and inconsistencies if you read it carefully and potentially confusing to students; very old-fashioned pedagogy of the 1960s--we've come a long way since then in how to teach languages; the grammar is introduced with no understanding of how students actually learn it in a scaffolded way; practice activities are just silly; the pronunciation part should use the international phonetic alphabet and not some made-up version that mixes sound-spelling correspondences. And yes, there's more, but I'll stop here.Should we buy it? Of course. It's the only thing out there besides Cipolla's book, which has its own set of issues (many similar to these), but the author should be concerned about these comments and should consider a co-authored revision.

This book is an excellent overview of the Sicilian language/dialect, but it is NOT designed as a "traveler's guide" to the language. The lessons are set up in an "immersion approach", providing the Sicilian dialog and THEN following with an English translation; so, it is a little hard to get started. But, once begun, the progress flows quickly and an elemental grasp of the language soon follows. It is not full of "traveler phrases", but the understanding the reader gains from study of the book should provide ample capability regardless of their original intent.

I bought this book before a trip to Sicily. I had a working knowledge of dialect before and thought this would strengthen my skills. Unfortunately, very few in Sicily speak the dialect anymore so it wasn’t very helpful.

I found an app that helped with my Italian and worked well. Every Sicilian person in the service industry understood Italian. I will learn Sicilian, but this is not the book for me

There are only a handful of books written on how to learn Sicilian and this one is an excellent beginning. The book is sturdy and the printing perfect. Besides learning the language, it also gives us some history. I'm very happy with this purchase.

My daughter wants to learn the language as her father came from Sicily.

Great book!

Loving reading it - very interesting to learn about different languages in Italy. Delivered as arranged - many thanks.