Nobody in Sicily drops the vowels at the end of words, and I'm there all the time, around them all the time. Dropping vowels at the end of words is the way Italian-Americans speak when they think they're speaking Sicilian, but actually have no idea what they're saying.
And today, all the new generations are brought up speaking Italian proper.
Actually they're imitating, or sometimes speaking the Neapolitan dialect.
Even 100 years ago people learned to speak/read/write actual Italian in southern Italy if they were educated, or had intelligence.
