I am fortunate to have spent the past week or so on holiday near Syracuse, on the eastern coast of Sicily. The weather has been very changeable, but far from chilly. What is staggering is that along with the sun, sea, sand and tourists, you are surrounded, everywhere you turn, by ancient history. The evidence of past civilizations is ubiquitous. Crossing the bridge into Ortygia, the original Greek island settlement of Syracuse, you virtually fall straight into the Temple of Apollo. Well, what’s left of it. Turn around and cast your eyes upwards and you see the Greek Theatre, the foundations of the huge, sacrificial altar of Hieron II (241BC onwards) and, finally, the impressive Roman Amphitheatre.

Language is everywhere

Language is everywhere you look: dedications and graffiti in ancient Greek and Latin, religious Latin, modern Italian and Sicilian too. I finally had to admit that those five years of Latin at school weren’t a waste of time after all.
Yes, they do speak Italian here in Sicily. I know that sounds like stating the obvious but they also speak Sicilian or various dialects thereof. However, when it comes to ranking one of the most rich and historically diverse languages, modern Sicilian has to be way up there near the top of anyone’s list. Exploring Sicilian is a bit like entering a linguistic crime scene with clues, debris and contamination from more cultures than you can shake a stick at. This paragraph from Wikipedia nicely sums up why this is so:
“Because Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and virtually all Mediterranean peoples have passed through it (Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, French, Aragonese, Spanish, Italians), Sicilian displays the rich and varied influence of several languages on its lexical stock and grammar. Such languages include Greek, Latin, Arabic, Norman, Lombard, Provençal, German, Catalan, French, Spanish and of course Italian, to say nothing of prehistoric influence from the island’s pre-Indo-European inhabitants. The very earliest influences, visible in Sicilian to this day, exhibit both prehistoric Mediterranean elements and prehistoric Indo-European elements, and occasionally a blending of both (Giarizzo 1989 and Ruffino 2001).”

Speak Sicilian

The following few examples of Sicilian, with their Italian and English equivalents, will give you a flavour of the Sicilian language:

fà[ci]ri na bedda fiùra = fare una bella figura (to make a good impression)
vinu = vino (wine)
òmu = uomo (man)
fìmmina = donna (woman)
dabbanna = l’altra parte (the other side)
docu = lì (there)
vussìa = Lei (you – polite form)
Accura! = Stai attento! (Be careful!)
iddu = lui (him/he)
idda = lei (her/she)
Cu paja prima, pistìa li pisci fitùsi = Chi paga prima, mangia il pesce puzzolente (He who pays before seeing the goods gets cheated – or literally: Who pays before eats smelly fish)

The Sicilian market or locale

Sicily is an excellent holiday island, with the contrast of craggy coasts, sun-drenched beaches and wooded mountains. Not to mention the portentous, vineyard-ringed and ski slope-adorned mass of Etna. But on your way to that excellent fish restaurant by the harbour, take time to notice the classically steepled catholic church that was once a mosque, added to an old Christian church built on a Greek temple. Not far below the surface you will find a rich and intriguing mélange of cultures.

In terms of marketing and transcreation, Sicily is very definitely a separate locale with its own identity, language and culture but the vast majority of conventional marketing communications I came across was in Italian, which is what you would expect from major, mass-appeal brands.

Sicilian Cassata Cake

There is, however, an opportunity for a company wishing specifically to target the Sicilian consumer market to use the local idiom in both messaging and search marketing. Conversely, as various Sicilian words have been adopted into the Italian language, any brand wishing to convey a ‘Sicilian’ image or heritage could readily do so by using the Sicilian idiom and imagery. An example of this would be marketing a Sicilian pasta sauce or the particularly Sicilian desert of Cassata, which bears no resemblance to the ice cream confection labelled as Cassata and offered in Italian restauarants outside of Italy.

Cassata is a Sicilian word as is caruso, which means ‘boy’ and has been adopted into Italian.

These are simple examples and the underlying message is simple, too: know your market and talk to your target audience in their own language or as close as you can afford. Even better, take a trip to Catania and see for yourself.