A lot of the people who immigrated to Italy came here before efforts to standardize Italian back home — from an era of (like Spain) multiple strong dialects that were difficult to understand one from another.
Those linguistic roots still survive in the areas of the US where those immigrants came long after they've largely faded out in Italy.
This is of some personal interest for me because it make me wonder about the Italian that was spoken around me when I was growing up. My mom's family came over in the 1900s-1910s, from the Venice area. Makes me wonder how "standard" their dialect was, and what sort of chat I heard that would sound antiquated in the ears of the people back in the homeland.
How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained
“Don’t eat gabagool, Grandma,” says Meadow Soprano on an early episode of The Sopranos, perhaps the most famous depiction of Jersey Italian culture in the…
My favorite quote
"If you can’t eat them or yell them, foreign words don’t often stick around."
My wife's family is half–Sicilian and very much have their own interesting pronunciations. In my family tree, I remember hearing my grandmother count in her Mother's "Alsatian," which was weird mix of German and French words, seemingly mixed together at random.
As a New Jersey native of Italian descent, I approve of this message. "There’s something both a little silly and a little wonderful about someone who doesn’t even speak the language putting on an antiquated accent for a dead sub-language to order some cheese."
English in other accents does sound better, but other languages with an American accent sounds miserable.I would know, I am studying a foreign language when I get the opportunity.
You grew up listening to the northern Italian Venetian dialect. I remember being in Italy and at dinner with some people from the Toscano region. I asked them why I could understand them so well and they said they were speaking in “my” dialect.