What are 10 things people always talk about?

Who is right about how people in Italy pronounce these 10 words: Me or my grandmother?

• I had a friendly discussion/debate with my grandmother about how people in Italy pronounce of a lot of Italian words in comparison to their descendants in the US. She told me these words listed below are pronounced the same or similarly by people in Bari as they are by their descendants in Italy. I told her that doesn't make sense for 3 reasons though. One, although most Italian-Americans are of southern Italian/Sicilian roots, most didn't come from Bari. Two, this is something that some Italian-Americans do, regardless of where their origins come from in Italy. Three, most importantly, Italian is a language known for being fluid and romantic. There is a vowel sound at the end of almost all words. It keeps the sentences flowing. I told her that is why when someone from Italy doesn't speak much English says ''I talk like this'' it comes out as ''I talk-a-like-a-this-a.'' I said how could it come out fluidly if someone were chopping off the end of a word like ''ahspett'' instead of ashpetta? It'd create a pause Italians wouldn't naturally know. I also explained that if she said many of the words mentioned below, she'd realize people in Italy wouldn't know what she's saying. My grandma's dad moved from a town near Bari to Brooklyn, NY, at 17 years old, in 1921. Her mother was born in Brooklyn, NY, but moved to a town where her parents were from in the Bari province as a child and lived there for 7-8 years before returning to Brooklyn, NY. Although I'm not sure which or if both English and Italian were her mother's native tongue, both spoke fluent Italian. On the other hand, my grandmother and her 2 older sisters don't. They still know some sayings and scattered vocabulary though. pronounce the words I've mentioned. Most notably Roma, Napoli, Bari and Sicilia. She said though this is how she learned how to say it growing it. I don't dispute that. But she is saying her parents taught her like that. I said though that her mother was American-born and that her father had to have changed his original pronunciation of what he was saying due to hearing what others were saying. I said all of these people are Anglicized Americanized versions. She is not saying I am right or wrong. She said she doesn't know. Perhaps there are things I'm wrong or misinformed about too. I put each native pronunciation in the parentheses/brackets below. Unfortunately though, it doesn't specify each region of Italy they are from. Some say these pronunciations come from Sicily. I very much doubt anyone in Sicily says any of this though. So I'd like to have clarification of these 2 things. I would haved on Italia Yahoo! but I can't speak Italian and they won't allow questions in other languages on there. I'm asking in the UK though because more of you travel to Italy due to geography then us Americans: A) How do people in various regions of Italy pronounce the words below? B) What is the origin for how the end vowel of these many words have been chopped off and what the letter c is being replaced with a ''g'' sound. 1) Manicotti - Moni-gawt / madi-gawt (http://www.forvo.com/word/manicotti#it) 2) Mozzarella - Moots-a-thell (http://www.forvo.com/search/mozzarella/i%E2%80%A6 3) Cavatelli - Cav-a-deal / Gav-a-deal (http://www.forvo.com/word/cavatelli#it) 4) Capicola - Gaba-gool/Gabo-goal (http://www.forvo.com/word/capicola#it) 5) Focaccia - Fugotz/Fucotz (http://www.forvo.com/word/focaccia#it) 6) Pasta e fagioli - pasta fazool 7) Ah-shpett (Aspette) (http://www.forvo.com/word/aspetta#it) We agreed that these next ones below (commonly heard on the Sorpanos) were Anglicized and not said the same way. But I'm curious how that evolved. 8) Comare - Goo-mahd (http://www.forvo.com/word/comare#it) 9) Capisce - Capeesh (http://www.forvo.com/word/capisci#it) 10) Paesano - Paesan (http://www.forvo.com/word/paesano#it)

• Answer:

  Well the answer will depend on where you stand, really. I don't think your grandmother is wrong, but neither are you. You're right if you're referring to the standard Italian pronunciation, but she's probably right if you look at it from a dialectal perspective. Southern Italian dialects (but others from Central and Nothern Italy as well) tend to chop off the ending of a word. Some dialects/regional variants will make them sound harsher, others softer. Sometimes you wouldn't even think it's Italian. Italian dialects have various origins and influences (Germanic, French, Arabic, Spanish) which pull them away from the much Italianate Tuscan base. Keep in mind that the vast majority of Italians who came to North America (or went to Australia) during the immigration waves did *not* speak Standard Italian at all, but rather their own dialect or regional language (which are all, for the most part, separate languages). Most Italians (unless particularly well-educated) didn't speak Italian either until the late 1940's, early 1950's. So it is very lilkely her parents never actually spoke Standard Italian (heavily based on the Tuscan variant) and taught her the dialectal pronunciation - because that's all they knew! To this day, you'll rarely hear Standard Italian being spoken on the streets of NYC, Montreal or Toronto. It will mostly be dialects or different regional variants passed on from one generation to the next, which are nowadays also very anglicized. And to describe the current situation in Italy today you need to think of a linguistic continuum: one end being Standard Italian and the other end being full dialect usage. Most Italians will find themselves somewhere on the continuum, depending on their age, level of education, social standing, job, or simply the context (university, work, family gathering, etc.). Full dialect usage is mostly found in Italians that are 70 and older...though still very much alive in rural areas. Edit: Well it is very much possible that your grandmother pronounces it wrong with an American accent. I'd have to hear her. But what I was trying to say is that some Italian dialects change the form and sound of a word at times almost completely....but any rate unless you record your grandmother, we'll never know! But chances are you're more right than she is... Even post-WWII Italian immigrants were not likely to speak much Standard Italian...at least older ones who came right after the war. But yeah...with the advent of public television and naiton-wide education, Standard Italian became pretty widespread after the war. I would only trust an Italian's judgement on a particular dialect if he/she speaks it or lives in the region where it is spoken...otherwise they might just make (often erroneous) assumptions based on what they *think* the dialect sounds like. Italian dialects are a fascinating topic to study in any case. "n all honesty, being a native of Staten Island, NY, a place that is supposed to be 34-38% Italian-American, the most for any county in the US, I haven't known more then about 5 people who spoke fluent Italian in my life." Oh, I believe you. Italian Canadians managed to keep their language (or rather languages) alive for a bit longer here, given Canada's more lax approach to integration (the American melting pot greatly contributing to the linguistic assimilation of their immigrants)...but it's getting lost now with the younger generations who will only know fragments of the dialect or Italian. A lot of them take Italian 101 in college though but end up getting discouraged pretty quickly seeing it's not the same "Italian" that's spoken at home. Greeks usually fare better here too. Edit #2: You write quite a lot hahah "By 1950, more Italians probably knew how to speak standard Italian even if they weren't using it." Indeed. "Honestly though, I often get the vibe Spanish is even equal or higher esteem then French is in most of western Canada. At least in business." Well somewhat true. Western Canadians tend to underestimate the importance of the French Language both in Canada and abroad, that's true. They might value Spanish more but Chinese is definitely up there too. Arguably, Western Canadians almost have no contact to French in their everyday life, while their Asian communities are exploding. "much of the reason other languages died out was due to phobia toward prejudice (not being accepted) and phobia." Also true. "But I'm not sure if that practice were done in Canada too." I'm sure it was done but not to a great extent. To my knowledge most surnames remained intact unless they were impossible to write efficiently. "My grandmother said her parents rarely ever spoke Italian to each other in their house. Her grandmother who was also from Italy lived there on and off and chose to speak English even though it was broken." It was the trend then and still is to this day in some households. Parents mistakenly thought and think they would hinder their children's integration into *their* (and not their children's) *new* society by speaking to them in their first language, thus depriving their kids of an invaluable part of their heritage...language.