I’m admittedly a word derivation geek so this article about Italian linguistics caught my eye.
Besides talking about Italian dialects, it touches on the history of the Sicilian/Southern Italian diaspora and the history of Italy as a nation. Hopefully you find it interesting and it adds color to your upcoming Italy trip.
That was very interesting...for this Sicilian-American word derivation geek!
I chuckled at “ree-goat" (for ricotta) - that's pretty close to how I say it, and even closer to how my Sicilian born Italian-American grandmother said it.
On similar linguistic lines, my Sicilian cousin gave me a small book a few years ago that was written by an Italian immigrant to the US. My cousin said I might have a hard time reading it because although it was written largely in Italian (which i can read) she said it was interspersed with words in a variation of a dialect that even she couldn't understand.
Turns out, it wasn't hard at all for me to read. That "variation" that she referred to was the Italian-American pronunciation of English words, spelled phonetically. So whereas she couldn't make out what "karra" meant - having no connection to the Italian "macchina" - I could hear my grandmother's Italian pronunciation of car, complete with rolled R's and the vowel sound added at the end.
LOL that's a great story. Awesome, I'm glad you appreciated it.
For me, I smiled at how I often use “pruh-zhoot", although I shorten "Mutzadell" to just "Mwootz" and I grew up in the upper midwest. I had a (thankfully) former business partner from Bari by way of NYC who said it that way so I guess it stuck.
Living in California, I realize that saying ree-coat-uh isn't the norm. It's fun when I'm in Sicily to hear it pronounced the way I'm used to!
