Are my Italian-American coworkers' pronunciations authentic, or bastardized?

[Acsenray]

@alfajor

Do you really want to know how these food items are pronounced in Italy today?

There are at least four pronunciations found of Italian:

1. standard Italian
2. non-standard Italian (i.e. regional variations and dialects)
3. Italian-American
4. North American (those not of Italian origin)

This one hits it on the nose. The pronunciations in the OP are No. 3, possibly originally influenced by southern Italian dialectical pronunciations. But they are essentially Italian-American pronunciations today, not actual Italian.

[PookahMacPhellimey]

@picker

I spent several years in northern Italy, and became fairly proficient in Vicentino, which is the dialect of the region around Padova towards Venezia.

In that region the dialect is much much closer to ‘standard’ Italian.

:eek:

Zio can!

I’ve been living in Padova for a good while and I still can’t understand people when they speak dialect. Good for you, but I think it only sounds closer to “standard” Italian because you got used to it.

[cwthree]

@Rigamarole

While we’re on the topic of Italian food pronunciations, I have a question I’d like to ask without starting a new thread.

I’m half Italian and like the guys in the OP my family has been here several generations (even my grandparents don’t speak but a few phrases of Italian). When we were young my grandmother would always make a dish that they pronounced, roughly “fratooda dosha”. I’ve never seen this anywhere except when my grandmother made it and haven’t found out what it’s supposed to be called - it’s some kind of creamy/doughy stuff that’s covered in breadcrumbs.

Anyway I’ve tried to research it to find out what it is but the pronunciation seems so corrupted (possibly influenced by dialects, and possibly by the fact that my family has lived in America for so long) it’s hard to search for. It’s pretty reasonable to guess that the second word is a variation of “dolce”, since it is a sweet dessert-like dish, but I still can’t find it.

Frittata dolce, perhaps? There seem to be several variations, including fruit in the frittata, fruit on the frittata, and no fruit at all.

[bordelond]

@Freudian_Slit

Am I the only one who doesn’t hear the z sound? I hear it as par-me-jhaan, not zhaan. Or pro-jhood, not pro-zhood.

Depends. What American English sound does your spelling “jh” refer to?

The “zh” you’re seeing is not meant to represent “z” as in “zoo” … but the “s” in “pleasure” or the “g” in “camouflage”.

[Freudian_Slit]

@bordelond

Depends. What American English sound does your spelling “jh” refer to?

The “zh” you’re seeing is not meant to represent “z” as in “zoo” … but the “s” in “pleasure” or the “g” in “camouflage”.

Yes, that’s what I meant.

I guess I think of it as a “j” sound because in French, “je” sounds like what I think “zh” denotes. Whenever I hear the sound, in my head I see a j because of that, even though now that I think about it, we don’t really use the j" sound for that in English.