I read about that online about the Normans invading most of southern Italy. But like I said, personally I haven't seen that much of a difference at all when comparing most southern italian regions. There aren't many regional dialects anymore because everyone is speaking proper italian now like Carm said.
There's not such huge differences in the south. From the north to the south, you had big differences in education, where the northerners were better educated and willing to move with the times, and sicilians were/are old souls refusing to change for as long as they can. With sicilians, if it's black and they think it's white, it's white. Save your breath.
The dialects... if you speak sicilian dialect, you'll never understand neapolitan dialect. They're not even close. But calabrian is pretty close to sicilian. The food...south is by the ports so you'll have a lot more fish as a food staple obviously, not so in the north. They cook very differently, a lot of cream based sauces and such in the north; usually you can tell what region one is from just by what they like as far as food goes.
As far as the language, when we're there, it's not like we're touring around, so it's just us and family and more family and more family, so it's pretty much: the beach, conversation, and food. So there's nothing else to do but converse, and listen to how people talk. Don't get me wrong, they are still speaking dialect. Us and all the cousins in the 20's, 30's and 40's, still speak dialect with the older generations and between one another. But all the kids being born now, the parents are sure to speak proper to them, so they hear Italian growing up in the house just as much as sicilian. It also makes a big difference that kids in Sicily are staying in school, where they do learn proper Italian, and carrying on schooling, up into college. When years ago, girls dropped out in 5th grade to stay home and help the mothers, and boys dropped out to help work...nobody was learning much of anything, except what was taught to them by their parents in the home.
I can't speak proper, only dialect, but when I go there now, they tell me I should learn and get away from the dialect. Yeah. That's gonna happen. When we visit there, they say, "you speaky EEEtaly." When they come to the US to visit, they say, "you speaky EEEtaly." Either way, they never have to "speaky american". Hard headed stubborn sicilians...lose/lose. lol
