See me rate the Italian of 8 famous celebs 👉🏼 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d8iibNGnrtO1hoU.html

My nonna came from Sicily during WWII to Southern Brazil. She mostly forgot Italian as she got older but it was still awesome to try and talk to her in Italian with a weird mix of Portuguese. She passed away last month. Rest in Peace mi nonna.

I speak Italian and Neapolitan, so it was always beautiful hearing older family members use some of these Italianized versions of English words. I might have to put a whole list together!

My mother's side of the family moved from Italy to the United States in the 60s. So I heard a bit of the language growing up but could never really carry on much of a conversation. It was what the grown ups would speak to one another if they didn't want us kids bothering them. Since I studied Spanish in school I can sort of kind of get what my relatives are talking about since there's some similarities between the two languages. Interestingly, my grandfather says that other people from Italy think the way he talks is very strange. He grew up in an area where the dialect borrowed a lot of words from Algerian. Another weird quirk is that some of my late grandmothers mispronunciations made it into family tradition. Every Christmas we bake her recipe for pecondola pie and leave out milk and biscotti for Sandy Claus.

Australia shares a similar story the US. Many Italian immigrants from the south ( and some north- Veneto) also came to Australia . I’m Australian of Italian descent myself and I think Italian food and culture has influenced Australia a lot, particularly Melbourne

Just watched this now. I consider myself Italian-American from New York City. I’m in my late 60’s. My grandparents came from southern Italy in 1900, 1904 and 1930. My father was 4 years old when they came over. My paternal grandparents lived upstairs ( typical). They were more comfortable speaking their Calabrian but could switch to more of the standard Italian if needed. Basically they spoke to us kids in either full on “ Italian” and we would mostly understand and respond in English or occasionally respond in “Italian”. Mostly they used a combination of their regional language, standard, and English. An example: Grandma would say: O’ telephone sta’ ringann’ ( sta ringando/suonando). She never had a phone in Italy. Each family is different of course but we had relatives who would visit from Italy and we figured it out. As one person commented, it was when I started learning Spanish that I decided to teach myself Italian with records, library books, radio programs, etc. My grandmother was so proud and she would then only speak in “ Italian”. I was able to read the letters she still received from Italy and when I visited in 1978 and met relatives in Rome I was able to do ok. I majored in Spanish and Portuguese and kept up with Italian. I do ok now and can have in-depth conversations. ( with mistakes). Again, we used most of the words on the list you showed at the end. The one thing I still do that drives people crazy is say “ open” and “close” the lights. Evidently, some Italian Americans and French Canadians heard it years ago and it has stuck! There is a reason for it, of course. Great video, yes there are more “ Italians” elsewhere. I never pretend to be Italian but am proud of the heritage and have been there many times since the 70’s. When we were younger the standard question among friends was “ What are you? I was forced to say “ Italian” and they “ German, Hungarian, Irish, Polish,etc.) I currently do language exchanges with natives in Italy. Wish we had the Internet in the 50’s and 60’s ( 70’s and 80’s)!!!

You know the Italian influence is strong when not long ago, the goalie for the Italian Olympic ice hockey team was from a suburb of Boston, Mass. You still hear Italian accents and Italian influences are an integral part of our culture everywhere you go. This is a natural and good thing in my book.

Talk about Italians in Latin America👐🏽

I’ve been watching The Sopranos and precisely today I’ve been googling the words they use on the show like “Gabagool” and “Goomah” and found out they are not standard Italian but come from dialects which further developed here in the Northeastern US, and exactly today you put out a video describing in detail this language phenomenon. It’s like you are reading my mind! Lol. Amazing content as usual!

Most people aren't saying that immigrant parents shouldn't pass on their mother tongue in the U.S. But, it should be those American-born kids' *second* language. A nation without a first language in common isn't a nation.

Wow Donald Trump demanding people to speak English (8:56) clearly forgot that he is the descendant of non-native English speakers who got married twice to women from former Soviet States (who had no English language traing) who had to study English from scratch. Fun Fact: His mother Mary Anne MacLeod (Scottish) only knew how to speak Gallic and some broken English prior to her arrival in the US. His paternal grandfather Friedrich Trump (German) spoke broken English and his paternal grandmother Friedrich Trump (German) had a REAL hard time mastering the English language....but don't speak Spanish in the US!!! Maybe Trump should study the Navajo, Iroquois or Apache language in...

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this video! It brought back so many memories of speaking to my grandparents who were immigrants from Calabria. I visited Italy many years ago when I was around 30, and people would smile at me when I spoke to them in Calabrese. They said I was so young but I spoke like an 80 year-old man. Some words they couldn't understand at all because of course they were English words turned into "Italian" words. By the way, I grew up in Brucculinu. I understood every one of those words! Thanks, and keep up the good work!

My father was born in Sicily and came here when he was a year old. His father came first and got a job doing heavy manual labor---he stoked furnaces in a powerhouse. My father was the oldest son, and at 7 he already was delivering the 6 a.m. paper and the 5 p.m. paper six days a week. He also ran errands for the small local market by his family's cold water flat. The family increased to 15 children, and 9 survived to adulthood. My grandmother was illiterate, and she never wanted to learn English----her goal was to return to Sicily and die there. She never got her wish. All the immigrants had large families----birth control was unheard of. Also, having a big family was a sign of a man's masculinity. Ditto for the female---her fertility was never questioned with a boatload of children. The children could be sent out toe work, and the money they earned was used to support the family. The second and third generations of Italians in the US got smart quickly----smaller families meant better success in many cases. My grandfather always told the grandchildren that there was nothing in Sicily for him. He worked as a goat herder and sheep herder. He learned English by taking my father's schoolbooks with him at night to study in the powerhouse. Why my grandmother wanted to go back defies reason. Her father sent her to work in the salt mines when she was 6 yrs old----and she married at 16. There was no future for so many of the poor, uneducated Sicilians. While my grandmother never fit into American life because she was so unhappy here, five of her sons served in the US military during WW2 and the Korean War. They "earned" their family's way here many times over. The family never got any handouts of any kind. Whatever they had in that coldwater flat they worked for----from using empty wooden crates as chairs and end tables to growing their own vegetables in small plots of earth between the sidewalk and the steps. Failure was never an option for the immigrants in town----and they endured shame, humiliation, ridicule, and contempt for being "different." Perhaps the greatest indignity they had to deal with involved the school system counting the Sicilians, Italians, Greeks, French Canadians, Lebanese, and many other immigrants as "Negroes" because some of these groups had darker skin tones. And lest we forget, it was these "dark skinned" immigrants that did the jobs no Americans wanted. The Italians and Sicilians definitely paid their dues in this country, and they worked hard so that their children could experience the American dream.

There’s A LOT of italians here in Brazil too, manly in the state of São Paulo.

The reason it really started was after slavery, and they needed people in the field, and they allowed Italians to come to America to work the fields and that’s the truth and after Italy unified it was really bad over there so they came over here for work

It is similar here in Australia, although post WWII migration was the main wave. My nonni came from Southern Italy in the 1950s and 60s, so I grew up hearing their dialects but not fully understanding them (I studied standard Italian at school) A lot of people from my generation can speak a few words or phrases of dialect, but in another generation's time we might lose that. My grandparents also incorporated a few English words (with an accent) into their vocabulary. "Garaggiu" (garage), "friggia" (fridge) etc. My 93 year old nonna often calls me "dalinella" which I think is her way of saying "darling" 😂

that's why the USA should be called "United states of Vespuccia" sounds fine to me.

My family has, like so many other Italian families from the south, an "overseas branch" of relatives who moved to NY shortly before WWII and who managed to stay in contact. A long time ago, i've seen some old school letters at my late grandmother house, and pieced together a fascinating story noticing how the first letters were NOT written by family, but by professional letter writers(my great great great granparents being completely illiterate) and how in the following years the relatives melded Irpinian dialect(coming from Avellino) and english in ways incomprehensible to us modern italian and how in the later generations the grandchildren switched to english for communication due to both losing fluency in any form of Italian and having new generations who could understand English here. When I was around 20 years old, they came over to visit to help a "cousin"(i have no idea how that family tree branch is distorted and what is the relation actually, everybody just knew the family dad as "uncle Frank from Texas") settle in his new home when he found a new job here in Italy. Dear gods, that first week trying to understand their accent was atrocious, it was way easier to just answer them in standard English.

Thanks for making this video Olly! You did a very good job at explaining what is a very layered topic. I'm planning on talking about Italian American things more soon on my channel. I'll be spreading the word about your video here to give my audience a sneak peak of what's to come!

I'm one of those Italians in America. Unfortunately I don't know any Italian language because my family stopped speaking it before I was born. I hope I can learn it though.

I would like to mention another reason that the Italian language or other dialects fell into disuse by Italian immigrants and their descendants has a lot to do with technology and time zone differences. When my grandparents, dad and uncles immigrated to Chicago in 1972, it was very expensive to call my other aunts and uncles in Italy. To send a package or a letter was a nightmare because it cost an arm and a leg and was always at the risk of being lost by the awful Italian post office. For us in Chicago, it is a 7 hour difference from Italy, so when you do call, you have to make sure your schedules line up. And to fly to Italy, it is 9 to 11 hour flight that costs at least $800. In comparison to Mexican immigrants in the US, they do not face many of the same problems. Cell services between the US and Mexico are very well developed with no International fees. They are either on the same time zone, or a hour or two off. And you can drive or fly into Mexico at a cheap price. This is one of the reason they have been able to keep their language while Italian immigrants have not. My favorite Italglese word that I’d like to think my nonna coined is basciamento (basement). The concept of a basement is strongly tied to the way American homes are built, and cantina or seminterrato don’t really call to mind the right imagines.

Some Italian-Americans made some changes to Italian words such as "Germanese" for "Tedesco"; Others only speak a few words of their heritage language or none at all which is why there is an Italian-American newspaper in English.

Often Italian immigrants to America moved back to Italy. My grandparents moved back to Reggio, Calabria and lived there for a number of years before finally coming back to America for good.

There's a great Sopranos episode where they travel to Italy and are made aware of the differences between their idea of Italian and Italian-in-Italy.

Can't wait for the "why so many Russians on Brighton Beach" video 😉

I also think it’s notable that lots of American English words come from Italian, such as “zucchini” and “arugula” which are “courgette” and “rocket” in the UK respectively.

you should look into Italians in australia. almost 5% of Australia's total population claims Italian ancestry...

Well, Italians discovered the continent..

Im Italian American from Staten Island.. never been to Italy. Growing up the Island was probably around 75% Italian. Very few of us spoke Italian, only the more recent immigrants did. But we used alot of bastardized Sicilian & Napulitan slang words when we speak. The best example of the way we speak would be from the show "The Soprano's"

Would you consider doing a video on how you stay on top of so many languages? I tend to forget a lot of what i learned when I'm not consistenly exposing myself to the language and I can't imagine how you do it with as many languages as you speak? Do you have any special tips?

*Let's not forget that ITALY is the mother of Europe.* Besides the Latin root of so many Western European languages, there's also things like LAW, ROADS, CITIES, that actually come from the ROMAN EMPIRE. Imagine orderly & efficient Germany without Laws & roads (you couldn't even have the famous Autoban in Germany!!).

I'm an Italian American. My paternal grandfather Luca left Messina, Italy on the ferry on Dec. 27th, 1908. On the 28th there was a 7.1 earthquake there which destroyed the city and killed 75-82 thousand people. He was very lucky and always kept those shoes he wore on that day as lucky charms. My grandmother joined him later.

Outstanding content! More videos about linguistic history!

My family came from Piedmont in the north of Italy and settled in northern Michigan to mine copper. We were basically the only Italian community up there surrounded by Finns so my great grandfather sent letters to family in Italy to find him a Piedmontese wife.

I'm from Matera - Basilicata. I didn't expect to read about MATERANO in this video. Such a complete explanation. I've learned a lot. Really a great job!! Thank you!

My Italian ancestry came to the U.S. in the 2nd wave. So the peasants. Yeah originally from Rhode Island. The place my ancestor came from was a town called Fondi. It's between Rome and Naples.

Just about all that came to the USA were southern Italians. My maternal grandfather was one of six brothers and there were no jobs for the youngest 3 in their town of Matera. He and his two brothers came here to NYC with their wives in 1920, after having fought for Italy in the 1st World War.

Spesso gli americani confondo la lingua parlata dagli immigrati italiani che nelle prime ondate manco parlavano italiano, ma dialetti meridionali con l'italiano standard, che in Italia si è diffuso soprattutto dopo il boom economico degli anni 60! A volte fa ridere vedere le considerazioni e certezze che hanno gli americani sulla lingua italiana pur non avendo probabilmente mai sentito parlare la vera lingua italiana!

Many European countries after the war were impoverished and poverty stricken. That’s part of the reason my Italian grandpa and my Eastern European grandpa ended up in Canada. I think it wasn’t until the 1970’s counties started to rebuild there infrastructures.

This was a really interesting video! Thanks!

I have never had any contact with American relatives (although I have some), but I remember my grandmother telling me in the 1960s that a descendant of cousins who had emigrated to Newark in the late 19th century had come to visit her village in Puglia a decade earlier. This lady was a doctor, but she did not speak standard Italian, more like she used a kind of 19th century regional dialect. When she would walk into shops and start talking, my grandmother's sisters would shush her, because the shop assistants would laugh. I think it happened to everyone like that. It seems normal to me.

Just wanted to say I very much enjoyed the Audible version of both your Spanish and Russian short story courses - very well-produced and at a nice speed! (And I consider myself a connoisseur of foreign language courses 😊) AND I also very much enjoyed your video on the Monterrey DLI! (I also make language videos on my channel, though not as successfully) Anyway, hats off to you for the outstanding content, both on and off KZfaq!

This man called Mussolini a nice guy? He must be nuts.

Your research is exemplary as usual. Very educational and interesting

In Sicily, Sicilian is spoken at home. When I visit my relatives, they tell me that the Sicilian I know is 100 years old and I know words they don't. My grandparents came to America in 1921.

I was surprised to find out that MySwedish LTR from.Sweden could understand some of my Italian words for instance. He understood me perfectly when I set a pan of cinnamon rolls out to cool, but one fell to the ground, out the window. Well,he understood the words perfectly well

New Jersey is probably the most Italian part of the US

I really enjoyed this video, I love learning the history of languages. I'm currently learning Portuguese, do you have any short stories in Portuguese?

It’s pretty sad how in the us the government forced people to Speak English, it would be so cool if there were a bunch of German norwigen Italian and polish speakers that of course also knew English and maybe Spanish.

Most of these words come from Sicily. As Italian I can barely understand them. As you said at that time there was nothing in this country. 12mln of Italians landed just in Argentina. Then Usa, Brasil, Uruguay, Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Egypt, Libia, Eritrea and Somalia.

My family is from Napoli and we speak Neapolitan. The first time I went to tour Italia my Dad said don't speak you'll be laughed at in many cities...well I did and I got lots of smiles and people saying oh you're from Napoli.

There are lots of Italian descendants in Latin America. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, and São Paulo, Brazil, for instance, locals speak with some Italian accent due to the Italian influence (besides lots of people with Italian looks and surnames).

Joe Dolce, the creator of Shaddupa Ya Face, is an American-Australian - of Italian descent. He wrote the song about Italian Australians. :)

You hit the nail on the head. My mother spoke one of the regional dialects. It was worthless in Rome but helped when we get to the area her parents were from.

Greeks of the diaspora also tend to use more idiomatic phrases and often times a more "Demotic" language. Modern Standard Greek has actually been influenced by Katharevousa, the "correct" ancient-like language that was official until the 80s. But because Greek immigrants retained the spoken and not official language, there are some differences in vocabulary

When's the video on Italian language coming out?

I grew up in So Philly. My father and mother spoke Italian at home, English outside when they were kids.

Those people speak English do not speak Italian they were born and raised in the USA therefore they are not Italians , actually there are very few Italians in America !

Would love for you to do a video about the unique linguistic landscapes of Canada! There are many indigenous languages, various French dialects and English accents (especially in the Atlantic provinces), Gaelic was spoken for a while, and in addition it is the most multi-cultural country in the world with many non-official languages such as Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog, and Italian to name but a few with many hundreds of thousands of speakers …

I'm working on obtaining Italian citizenship based on descent through my grandmother, I'm not entirely certain I'd live there but it is something I am entitled to and something I'm going to get. As for communication, I studied Italian in school and am working on it now. I registered for an adult Italian class at the local Italian cultural center.

I went back to my grandparents village back in 2002, when I was a freshman in college. I went to Arellino and I was able to get by between the dialect my grandparents taught me breaking out the standard Italian (Florentine) as needed.

America, the continent, was named after an Italian, sure. And there are more Italians per capita in the southernmost part of America: in Argentina (50ish%) and Uruguay (40ish%) versus 6% in the USA.

Hello, polyglot here. I have watched a lot of videos by well-known polyglots, but your videos are very practical. I have known about you for a while, but never really got into the content of your videos. All I have to say is keep it up. We all need information that actually helps us in a very real way, not just talk or theories about language learning. Your exposé on the military language institute in Monterrey, California is just one example.

You will probably never read this but you missed a whole wave of Italian immigrants in the 1800's that made it to California, millions in fact. But unlike their east coast brothers, they integrated into white American culture very fast so the language is mostly lost. But they left their mark. For example, they started the wine industry because the land was similar to Italy and they started the first chain of banks called Bank of Italy which later became Bank of America.

From what I understand my maternal great grandparents came for two reasons. One was an engineer in Italy, so the Delaware and Hudson RR needed someone who could help design and build rail in the North East. They set him up nicely in Pennsylvania with a house and a the authority to hire and fire employees. The other great grandfather went to Argentina and was working there for a period of time. He was going to move to either Argentina or Brazil, but there were wars going on and it didn't seem safe so reluctantly, he came to the US. He spoke only Italian, but the kids and his wife who was American could speak English. They only used Italian in the home influenced by the English, Irish, and Welsh who lived near them. My grandmother had almost a brogue when she pronounced words like "bottle". She sounded almost Northern English and had no Italian accent only the local accent from the NE Midlands.

I find it very interesting how the descendants of immigrants end up preserving the old dialect of their countries more than the local inhabitants who stayed in the country.

There are many, many Italians in Canada, Australia, Germany, the BENELUX countries, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay….

The brothers of my paternal grandmother (Giuseppina Cattani) was settled in Chicago area, they was from northern italian region Emilia-Romagna (province of Bologna), i met in Italy her nephew Luigi in 1982, in my house in province of Florence (i was 18 and he was about 70)

Besides from the fire cracking it is a funny and interesting video, accuracy in citing the sources and a perfect, I would say delightful, pronunciation. I'll use your video for my lessons, well done!!! Big Thank you

This video's going to be 🤌🤌

The real question is why are there so many Americans who think they are Italian because they have an Italian great grandfather 😂

You should check out the Italian community in Montreal, they’ve had a huge impact on the anglophone community here and their distinct way of talking has even spread to other communities and created a sort of accent very particular to Montreal english-speakers.

Nice video! I wish my grandfather’s parents (from the hills near Matera) had kept the language alive in our family. I’m not even sure if the dialect is still common or if it has been overtaken by standard Italian in Basilicata. Common words in our family: scungil (squid/octopus), brazhol (braciole), mozzadell’ (mozzarella), pasta fazul (pasta e fagiole), and a local pastry called laganedd’ (lagane).

My maternal grandmother could read, write, and speak, Italian, my mother spoke it, and I know no Italian. so sad.

The Portuguese spoken in Brazil is more similar to what was spoken in Portugal in the 16th century than the accent that the Portuguese speak today, because in the 19th century with the Napoleonic invasion a large part of the population of Portugal was forced to immigrate to Brazil and france exerted a great influence on portugal, similarly the history of spanish spoken on the equator today is more similar to that spoken in spain in its 16th century.

Brazil is the country with more Italians outside of Italy itself. Our president Jair Bolsonaro is of Italian descent himself

The real answer is: USA people are just europeans, italians are europeans, so italians are USA people as well... you are talking to youself man

All settled in little Italy on carmine st in little Italy

I recognized the first word in the list. It the bathroom, the "house in the back" the out house. We used that when I was a boy. I worked in the Bronx for a couple of years. It was an Italian section but I couldn't pick up what they were saying. I asked my grandfather who spoke Calabrese. I imitated the sound and he said it was people from the northernmost part of Italy near Germany. We had a lot of Yugoslavians living there who spoke Italian from working as migrants in Italy. The New York Subway System was built by Italians working as laborers. Most were unskilled labor was all they could do. The union contract between New York Telephone years ago and the Communications Workers Of America had a section for the Empire City Subway Company. This company owned all of the duct ways under the streets of New York and every employee was Italian.

7:12 Regardless of what one thinks of Trump there’s nothing racist or evil in wanting immigrants to learn English. It helps them & their children get ahead faster, & it protects them from being taken advantage of. However, we want to do things differently than we did in the past & encourage immigrants to teach their children, grandchildren, friends, & neighbors their native language & enrich their communities.

Most Americans don’t know that Jews ever lived in America and they don’t know that Italian Jews immigrated to America.

Well done Olly! You told the story well!

Also another reason why Italians don’t speak the same Italian anymore is because America stuck Italians in detainment camps as foreign enimies. They didn’t want us here. We were not allowed to keep the language going.

In Brazil we learn that there is only one continent of America. North, South and Central are just geographical regions, like for example Eastern Europe is still Europe. And also I researched this the other day and found out there are many countries that consider it like this too. Not just Brazil.

Bravissimo Olly. Hai propio fatto un bel video. Sono prima generazione nato in Italia. Emigrato nel 1981 all’età di 13 anni a East Boston!

Here in Canada the cummunity next to the one I grew up in, there is a smelter that recruited workers from Italy before ww2. They built homes in the mountainsides with cheap loans the company offered. Their descendants are still there and many still have an accent.

It would appear the Italian spoken in America has a lot of parallels with AAVE. The immigrants speaking different dialects and languages from Italy blending with each other, then being almost forced to speak English to be able to make a living is not unlike enslaved peoples speaking different West African languages being made to speak English. Elements from both people’s languages blend through into the English dialects both cultures speak today.

I live in a city(Columbus) named after an Italian but not many Italians or descendants living here! Many people have German or Irish last names.

Great video and great channel

Loving that enso wave shirt. Excellent! 🤙

Italian culture basically created half the world 🌎 love my culture

In America? Well Brazil was our first choice in matter of emigration. That's explain why our biggest community outside Italy is Brazil. Americas was a real paradise at the time. 😍👍

When you say “America” I really don’t picture it as only one country, but as an entire continent. Tbh, I thought you would talk about the Italians who immigrated to Brazil.

I have cousins who live in Torino with whom we are very close. When I ask them about dialect words from my Nona from the same family, they don’t know the words. They no longer speak or know the old family dialect.

Hi Olly, I’m Italian-American. Born in New Jersey to Italian-born parents. Father is Sicilian and mother is from Abruzzo. I actually refrained from using the indigenous Italian-American expressions that were common in my neighborhood, Bloomfield, NJ. Although my parents were very much a part of the community, the use of Italian-American phrases were seen as uncouth, because it did not accurately express thought or language. However, my mother would use Abruzzi slang, Che cosa stai fa? Instead of Che cosa stai facendo? What are you doing? They also intermixed Italian and English frequently, Vieni here! Rather than Vieni qui! My father’s mother spoke a Sicilian dialect but my father spoke proper Italian, more so than my mother. They both, however, did not use Italian frequently outside of the home. Based on what my aunts tell me, there was significant discrimination of Italians and the use of Italian in the 50s-60s and I feel they did not use Italian as much. When I lived in Italy in the 90s, I realized my Italian (I was born in 71), was quite antiquated. I struggle with modern Italian sometimes and long to speak it more with current native speakers to keep my language skills! Thank you for the video! I am interested in more about Italian immigrants!

Lunfardo and the Italian immigration wave to Argentina would be a great follow-up video.

I remember hearing many years ago that the Southern Dialect and the Northern Dialect are barely comprehensible to each other. In this day and age of Television News Coverage, where presumably a standard dialect would be achieved (or at least attempted), I wonder if that is still true. In England, the Scots dialect is very difficult to understand, though it is mostly the vocalized brogue rather than dialectical differences. Sort of like American Northern "accent" and American Southern "accent."

they’re honestly rare compared to others

My grandfather came from Nicosia in Sicily where they speak a distinct gallo-italic dialect that derives from where the Normans settled. Someone at work told me it's called Nicoshutta (?).

Orrioppo? Questa non l'avevo mai sentita, nella vita! Gran video, as always, Olly! ;)