What?
In Sicilian, ursu (m) and ursa (f)
In Italian, orso (m) and orsa (f)
I am not sure the Sicilian language has a use for that word, tho. Bears sound unusual on the island.
That’s a fair correction. Not to be assumed for most italic languages as some of them (the ones in the Neapolitan family I know of) do have neuter gender.
And it does vary from the “Italian neuter” achieved with the schwa in that in post cases it uses -o for singular and -e for plural.
This plus some other grammatical features
Let me guess... is your Sicilian friend actually an American with almost no connection to Italy except maybe a distant relative from Sicily?
"Ursu" is Sicilian. The Italian word for bear is indeed "orso", with feminine "orsa". If your friend corrected you in the context of the *Italian* language, then I'm sorry to say that your friend doesn't speak Italian.
>Let me guess... is your Sicilian friend actually an American with almost no connection to Italy except maybe a distant relative from Sicily?
Counterfeitalians
Può anche darsi che venga da una familia siciliana che pensa di saper parlare italiano… se mi ricordo bene, c’era una storia proprio su questo subreddit di un americano che non ha saputo di parlare una lingua regionale in realtà finché non ha viaggiato in Italia
Il problema è che gli statunitensi hanno una concezione di "italiano" (e nazionalità in generale) molto diversa dalla nostra (nostra = italiani/europei). Basta vedere tutti i commenti in cui qualcuno si definisce 23,2% irlandese (qualunque cosa voglia dire).
Parecchie persone si definiscono italiane e si comportano come se fossero parte della nostra cultura, ma non si rendono conto che ormai di italiano non hanno quasi niente. Anche per quanto riguarda la lingua, molti "italiani" americani parlano solo qualche parola di una versione storpiata da generazioni di una dialetto regionale di 100 anni fa.
Ovviamente questo non è vero per tutti, ma ho avuto parecchi momenti di cringe nel vedere certi americani dire delle scemenze pazzesche sull'Italia dicendo "trust me, I'm Italian" o cose del genere.
Sono sicuro che ci siano persone negli USA che parlano perfetto Siciliano, ma in generale sono più propenso a credere che dopo la seconda o terza generazione rimanga davvero ben poco, di italiano o di siciliano.
I miei genitori sono senegalesi (vedasi lo username🤣) ed io sono cresciuto parlando la lingua male e con un pesante accento italiano. Sono al punto che ogni volta che vado in vacanza le persone mi chiedono "ma sei (inserire gruppo etnico di cui non ho idea o nazione di confine in cui non sono mai stato)?". Tanti altri ragazzi cresciuti in Italia invece nemmeno parlano la lingua dei genitori. A meno che io non vada a sposarmi una ragazza senegalese che parla la mia stessa lingua meglio di come faccio io, dubito che riuscirò a trasmettere la lingua ai miei ipotetici figli in nessuna forma decente. E siamo a solo due generazioni di distacco. Non riesco ad immaginarmi che quattro generazioni di Italiani all'estero riescano a mantenere intatta la lingua in alcuna maniera.
P.S. Prima che qualcuno me lo faccia notare, lo so che ci sono le eccezioni, ma solitamente sono comunità abbastanza grosse da essere auto sufficienti (in parte) e leggermente isolate.
There are definitely people like that in the US, but there are also plenty of us who say, “I’m Italian” or “I’m Irish” as a shorthand for “My ancestors came from Italy,” or “Most of my ancestors were Irish” without harboring the delusion that we know anything substantial about the country our ancestors came from.
Personally, my ancestors came from so many different places, I could never say anything but “I’m American.” But obviously people who are born into an ethnic enclave in which pretty much every family came from the same country (or even the same region or town!) are going to identify, on some level, with the identity all their ancestors shared 100-200 years ago.
It’s just that the ones who are sort of aggressively idiotic about it attract more attention than the people who are more reasonable.
Yes, I hear that a lot and I believe it. The problem is that the standard response to any of us complaining about this topic is "heh, stupid Europeans, they don't even understand that when someone says 'Italian' they actually mean 'Italian-American', you are jumping to conclusions because you don't understand the context" when we literally have examples of people roleplaying as a different culture simply because some DNA test told them that they are (3π+0.4)% Swedish or whatever.
And I want to make it clear that I am 100% in favour of people experiencing other cultures, be it because they have distant relatives there or because they are simply interested, motivations don't matter. The whole reason I'm on this sub is because I want people to be able to interact with Italian culture. What I don't condone is this pseudoscientific approach to culture and nationality as if they were genetics. It's spitting in the face of actual Italians who face discrimination precisely because recist scums think nationality is determined by your DNA.
That being said: do not worry, I know that people use shorhands so I always give them the benefit of the doubt when they say "I'm Italian" (although I also think they should realise that when speaking to an international audience using such shorthands is not the best idea). Not only that: as I always say, I'm also more than happy to recognise actual foreigners as Italians as long as they *feel* Italian to me (which includes them speaking the language well and being in touch with our culture and current events). Even if they don't have a drop of Italian blood in their veins. But when someone comes to me and says "hey, I'm Italian. Actually, ursu is the Italian word for bear, not orso" my blood boils a bit.
Understandably so! It’s definitely tone-deaf at best to say “I’m Italian” rather than “On, wow, a bunch of my ancestors came from Italy” to someone who actually grew up in Italy.
Correcting an Italian person’s Italian when you don’t actually speak Italian is just outright idiocy.
I actually have a moderate knowledge of Italian (due to study and travel, not family or ancestry), and if an Italian person says something that sounds odd to me I assume that’s due to my own limited knowledge of the language.
My Sicilian nonno who came to Australia in 1960 as a kid like 25 or something, and somehow couldn't speak Italian or English after 40 years, insisting that the Italian word for fence was La Fensa and shed was oshedu lol...screaming at me I'm an idiot and can't understand Italian 😂
If you don't know the gender, you use the generic word for the animal, which for a bear is the masculine *orso*.
For some animals, the generic word is in the feminine, for example a fox of unspecified gender is *una volpe*.
*Ursu* is not an Italian word.
Edit: typo
allora caro , pultroppo l'Italia è piena di dialetti, questa è una cosa dialettale quindi tranquillo/a si dice orso orsa se è femmina il neutrale è il maschile
This is a thing with any language. Italy is a country with many regional dialects, and so often the Italian spoken in one region differs slightly than another. So your friend is likely correct about what people in Sicily say, but that doesn’t mean that the word is the most standard or used everywhere.
Oh god.
So, what happened is that you stumbled into the neutral gender controversy.
Italian, as you probably know, doesn't have the neutral gender like German or Russian. People of the transgender community who sit outside of the gender binary and feminists have sparked a debate about the need of coming up with a neutral form for adjectives and names- various solutions have been proposed, among which the use of schwa (eg. Tuttə instead of tutti/ tutte), the use of asterisks (tutt*) or, in this case U (orsu instead of orso/ orsa).
There isn't a general consensus, and purists of the language have a conniption every time someone thinks that we actually have the power to change the language intentionally.
I wouldn't try to navigate that particular linguistic mess right now. Since there's no general consensus, there's no grammatical rule for it yet, so don't bother with it until you have a better grasp of the language. Stick to regular masculine/ feminine, and of you happen to talk with an Enby person who asks you to refer to them with a -ə or -u ending, ask them for some examples. Since you are a foreigner, they'll be very lenient with language confusion.
Just for the record: although the German language does have a grammatical neuter gender, promoters of gender-neutral language developed other systems for this purpose.
"Ursu" is sicilian not italian
What? In Sicilian, ursu (m) and ursa (f) In Italian, orso (m) and orsa (f) I am not sure the Sicilian language has a use for that word, tho. Bears sound unusual on the island.
Alle donne va meglio stare in Sicilia con un ursu oppure un uomo?
Lol
Don't you know of the famous invasion of the bears in Sicily?
French here, it could be a case of "masculine neutral"? Plus a sicilian mistaking a sicilian word for a regular italian word ?
More likely it's a previously unused suffix used to convey neutral. Current Italian use is to use schwa (orsə) for that, not u.
That’s a fair correction. Not to be assumed for most italic languages as some of them (the ones in the Neapolitan family I know of) do have neuter gender. And it does vary from the “Italian neuter” achieved with the schwa in that in post cases it uses -o for singular and -e for plural. This plus some other grammatical features
Let me guess... is your Sicilian friend actually an American with almost no connection to Italy except maybe a distant relative from Sicily? "Ursu" is Sicilian. The Italian word for bear is indeed "orso", with feminine "orsa". If your friend corrected you in the context of the *Italian* language, then I'm sorry to say that your friend doesn't speak Italian.
>Let me guess... is your Sicilian friend actually an American with almost no connection to Italy except maybe a distant relative from Sicily? Counterfeitalians
Impastas
Sepparoni
Può anche darsi che venga da una familia siciliana che pensa di saper parlare italiano… se mi ricordo bene, c’era una storia proprio su questo subreddit di un americano che non ha saputo di parlare una lingua regionale in realtà finché non ha viaggiato in Italia
Il problema è che gli statunitensi hanno una concezione di "italiano" (e nazionalità in generale) molto diversa dalla nostra (nostra = italiani/europei). Basta vedere tutti i commenti in cui qualcuno si definisce 23,2% irlandese (qualunque cosa voglia dire). Parecchie persone si definiscono italiane e si comportano come se fossero parte della nostra cultura, ma non si rendono conto che ormai di italiano non hanno quasi niente. Anche per quanto riguarda la lingua, molti "italiani" americani parlano solo qualche parola di una versione storpiata da generazioni di una dialetto regionale di 100 anni fa. Ovviamente questo non è vero per tutti, ma ho avuto parecchi momenti di cringe nel vedere certi americani dire delle scemenze pazzesche sull'Italia dicendo "trust me, I'm Italian" o cose del genere. Sono sicuro che ci siano persone negli USA che parlano perfetto Siciliano, ma in generale sono più propenso a credere che dopo la seconda o terza generazione rimanga davvero ben poco, di italiano o di siciliano.
I miei genitori sono senegalesi (vedasi lo username🤣) ed io sono cresciuto parlando la lingua male e con un pesante accento italiano. Sono al punto che ogni volta che vado in vacanza le persone mi chiedono "ma sei (inserire gruppo etnico di cui non ho idea o nazione di confine in cui non sono mai stato)?". Tanti altri ragazzi cresciuti in Italia invece nemmeno parlano la lingua dei genitori. A meno che io non vada a sposarmi una ragazza senegalese che parla la mia stessa lingua meglio di come faccio io, dubito che riuscirò a trasmettere la lingua ai miei ipotetici figli in nessuna forma decente. E siamo a solo due generazioni di distacco. Non riesco ad immaginarmi che quattro generazioni di Italiani all'estero riescano a mantenere intatta la lingua in alcuna maniera. P.S. Prima che qualcuno me lo faccia notare, lo so che ci sono le eccezioni, ma solitamente sono comunità abbastanza grosse da essere auto sufficienti (in parte) e leggermente isolate.
There are definitely people like that in the US, but there are also plenty of us who say, “I’m Italian” or “I’m Irish” as a shorthand for “My ancestors came from Italy,” or “Most of my ancestors were Irish” without harboring the delusion that we know anything substantial about the country our ancestors came from. Personally, my ancestors came from so many different places, I could never say anything but “I’m American.” But obviously people who are born into an ethnic enclave in which pretty much every family came from the same country (or even the same region or town!) are going to identify, on some level, with the identity all their ancestors shared 100-200 years ago. It’s just that the ones who are sort of aggressively idiotic about it attract more attention than the people who are more reasonable.
Yes, I hear that a lot and I believe it. The problem is that the standard response to any of us complaining about this topic is "heh, stupid Europeans, they don't even understand that when someone says 'Italian' they actually mean 'Italian-American', you are jumping to conclusions because you don't understand the context" when we literally have examples of people roleplaying as a different culture simply because some DNA test told them that they are (3π+0.4)% Swedish or whatever. And I want to make it clear that I am 100% in favour of people experiencing other cultures, be it because they have distant relatives there or because they are simply interested, motivations don't matter. The whole reason I'm on this sub is because I want people to be able to interact with Italian culture. What I don't condone is this pseudoscientific approach to culture and nationality as if they were genetics. It's spitting in the face of actual Italians who face discrimination precisely because recist scums think nationality is determined by your DNA. That being said: do not worry, I know that people use shorhands so I always give them the benefit of the doubt when they say "I'm Italian" (although I also think they should realise that when speaking to an international audience using such shorthands is not the best idea). Not only that: as I always say, I'm also more than happy to recognise actual foreigners as Italians as long as they *feel* Italian to me (which includes them speaking the language well and being in touch with our culture and current events). Even if they don't have a drop of Italian blood in their veins. But when someone comes to me and says "hey, I'm Italian. Actually, ursu is the Italian word for bear, not orso" my blood boils a bit.
Understandably so! It’s definitely tone-deaf at best to say “I’m Italian” rather than “On, wow, a bunch of my ancestors came from Italy” to someone who actually grew up in Italy. Correcting an Italian person’s Italian when you don’t actually speak Italian is just outright idiocy. I actually have a moderate knowledge of Italian (due to study and travel, not family or ancestry), and if an Italian person says something that sounds odd to me I assume that’s due to my own limited knowledge of the language.
My Sicilian nonno who came to Australia in 1960 as a kid like 25 or something, and somehow couldn't speak Italian or English after 40 years, insisting that the Italian word for fence was La Fensa and shed was oshedu lol...screaming at me I'm an idiot and can't understand Italian 😂
Oshedu? Sicilian or Sardinian?🤣🤣
Ur-su-spicions are correct: your friend is full of shit.
Your friend doesn't speak Italian or he is trolling you cause "ursu" is not an Italian word
É siciliano
Vero, ma il subreddit non è r/sicilianlearnign e mi sembrava inutile specificarlo di nuovo dato che lo hanno fatto altri utenti
E non hai tutti i torti
If you don't know the gender, you use the generic word for the animal, which for a bear is the masculine *orso*. For some animals, the generic word is in the feminine, for example a fox of unspecified gender is *una volpe*. *Ursu* is not an Italian word. Edit: typo
i mean, it's not like the word volpe has a masculine form... even if you did know the gender, and it was a male fox, it would still be "una volpe"
Anche tu non hai torto :-)
Its also romanian according to google translate.
No. That is not Italian. Orso/orsa is Italian and the only acceptable way to say it in Italian
No, not in standard Italian. You were right. Orso
Ursu is very close to the Latin word for bear 🙂
>a family friend from Sicily… said the correct word is ursu That’s cause they’re speaking Sicilian not Italian
allora caro , pultroppo l'Italia è piena di dialetti, questa è una cosa dialettale quindi tranquillo/a si dice orso orsa se è femmina il neutrale è il maschile
This is a thing with any language. Italy is a country with many regional dialects, and so often the Italian spoken in one region differs slightly than another. So your friend is likely correct about what people in Sicily say, but that doesn’t mean that the word is the most standard or used everywhere.
I'm married to a heritage Sciallian. Not so good with Italian, but they are convinced they speak a language.
Franco ma che cazzo dici?
I mean, it would be weird if they didn’t.
Oh god. So, what happened is that you stumbled into the neutral gender controversy. Italian, as you probably know, doesn't have the neutral gender like German or Russian. People of the transgender community who sit outside of the gender binary and feminists have sparked a debate about the need of coming up with a neutral form for adjectives and names- various solutions have been proposed, among which the use of schwa (eg. Tuttə instead of tutti/ tutte), the use of asterisks (tutt*) or, in this case U (orsu instead of orso/ orsa). There isn't a general consensus, and purists of the language have a conniption every time someone thinks that we actually have the power to change the language intentionally. I wouldn't try to navigate that particular linguistic mess right now. Since there's no general consensus, there's no grammatical rule for it yet, so don't bother with it until you have a better grasp of the language. Stick to regular masculine/ feminine, and of you happen to talk with an Enby person who asks you to refer to them with a -ə or -u ending, ask them for some examples. Since you are a foreigner, they'll be very lenient with language confusion.
[удалено]
>and said the correct word is ursu unless you know the gender of the bear.
Just for the record: although the German language does have a grammatical neuter gender, promoters of gender-neutral language developed other systems for this purpose.