Dropping Italian vowels

Factual Questions
1

I don’t know if this is a regional phenomenon, but I’m curious about the way many Italian-Americans drop the terminal vowels on some Italian words. Now, in fairness, the most obvious instances I’ve seen of this are in The Sopranos, and I know the people and characters aren’t representative of all Italian-Americans. I have noticed it in a few people I’ve spoken to from the New York-New Jersey area as well.

Three words I’ve noticed this with are mozzarella, cappicola and prosciutto. (They talk about food a lot on that show.) When spoken, they come out as “mozzarell”, “cappicol” and “prosciute”. And it only seems to be with Italian words that this happens.

Anyone got any ideas?

2

Actually, they come out like “moodzarel,” “gabagool,” and “prozhoot.” Also, “managod” for manicotti and “Maron” for “Madonna.”

I asked this question in another forum once and was told that these pronunciations did not originate in any actual Italian dialect, but seemed to have developed in the Italian-American population of the New York area.

3

Some friends of mine who are from the area near Naples do this when they speak Italian in their native dialect…

I believe the Sicilian dialect (which is even harder to understand if you are used to “Roman” Italian) also involves some final-vowel-dropping.