Sicilian (; ; also known as
Siculu or
Calabro-Sicilian) is a
Romance language, spoken on the island of
Sicily and its satellite islands. It is also spoken in southern and central
Calabria (where it is called
Southern Calabro), in the southern parts of
Apulia, the
Salento (where it is known as
Salentino), and
Campania, on the Italian peninsula, where it is called
Cilentano (Gordon, 2005).
Ethnologue (see below for more detail) describes Sicilian as being "distinct enough from
Standard Italian to be considered a separate language" (Gordon) and is in fact recognized as a "minority language" by
UNESCO and the European Union. Some assert that Sicilian represents the oldest Romance language derived from
Vulgar Latin (Privitera, 2004), but this is not a widely held view amongst linguists, and is sometimes strongly criticized (2004, p. 151).