Pantesco is the
Sicilian dialect of the island of
Pantelleria
Pantelleria (; Sicilian: ''Pantiddirìa'', Maltese: ''Pantellerija'' or ''Qawsra''), the ancient Cossyra or Cossura, is an Italian island and comune in the Strait of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, southwest of Sicily and east of the Tunis ...
between
Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
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, demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
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, demographi ...
and
Tunisia
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, map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa
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, capital = Tunis
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, ...
. It is notable among Romance varieties for an unusually high degree of influence from
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, reflecting a variety close to
Maltese. Arabic loanwords, mainly nouns, include words such as ''hurrìhi'' "nettle" < ''ħurrayq'' (Maltese ''ħurrieq''), ''vartàsa'' "hornless (goat)" < ''farṭās'', ''hèddi'' "calm wind" < ''hādiʔ'', as well as many place names around the island, including the name Pantelleria itself.
[
] In such loans, the glottal fricative ''h'' (unusual for a Romance dialect) is preserved as a reflex of Arabic laryngeals ''h/x/ħ'' and sometimes even ''q''.
Pantesco uses unstressed subject pronoun clitics to form durative aspect.
A dialectal dictionary has been published (Tropea 1988).
References
{{Romance languages
Sicilian language
Italo-Dalmatian languages