Aspetta

[bbivona]

I wasn't speaking Sicilian, I was just asking a question in English and pronouncing the town's name in dialect.

When you said you were pronouncing the name "in dialect," I assumed that you were using the Sicilian name. I don't really ever hear the names of the towns in the dialect unless the conversation is otherwise in dialect. Whether speaking English or Italian, it would be odd. Back to my original premise, speaking Sicilian to a stranger at an airport would be unusual.

[darkerhorse]

I used the local dialect name for the town. I'm not sure it's pronounced that way in other areas of Sicily. I was in Catania.

I agree that speaking in dialect at an airport (or in any business setting) would be uncommon. I was trying to fit in (or show off), and it backfired. Again, once I arrived in my ancestral town the locals were very friendly and gracious to me. They even gently corrected my pronunciation of my own surname.

As a side note, I've seen the dialect version of a Sicilian town used as a surname in the U.S.

[darkerhorse]

The native woman who corrected me in the airport did seem a bit pretentious to me but I understood her point.