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Had a first generation Italian client who used to say “Sangwich.” Used to drive me nuts.
It’s a @#$%^&* SANDWICH. WITH A D.
The C-to-G shift (or more generally, changing unvoiced to voiced consonants) isn’t that uncommon. Spanish has done the same thing, starting (mostly) from the same Latin roots. E.g. ‘bodega’ comes from Latin ‘apotheca’, with the unvoiced consonants changed to voiced ones.
Not Americanized exactly but it is a unique dialect. My grandmother came over from Italy as a baby in 1906. She grew up speaking Italian. But it was Staten Island Italian. Take the current Italian dialect of 1900. Mix in regional dialects of the mostly uneducated from Naples and Sicily. Shake and bake for decades. Then you get a unique dialect that had my grandmother complaining that the Italians in Italy didn’t speak Italian right. She was in her 70s when she visited.
My grandmother"s family was from Foggia. She married a man from Naples. A lot of their pronunciation came from Sicilian influences in NY. I have never seen the spelling different than the standard. It’s just the pronunciation.
There are notable regional variations though, just as there are in American English–though of course there was further drift in the Americanized dialects.
For example, my cousin from Trieste says “va beng,” with a sort of swallowed g at the end, instead of the standard va bene, or va ben’. And I have cousins in Florence who went the opposite way from Southerners with some of their c’s–“haccia” and “harne” instead of caccia and carne. The words are still as far as I know spelled in the standard way. Never heard any of them say “happicola”…but they might.
There’s also a Roman accent too but an example isn’t coming to me now.
My sources (i.e. Italian-American family with more imagination than history) say that gabagoul (pronounced and spelled that way) may have originated from capicola, but that it now means “something good to eat” which is essentially the way the speaker on NPR was using the term (as the OP reports it). Thus, a vegan could ask for gabagoul and not be breaking any of their own rules. I’m pretty sure the Sopranos did the same thing
If my family specifically wanted a cured ham product, they would have called it coppa or capicola (perhaps depending on what they thought the listener was expecting to hear).
That’s how it works when you have regional dialects that differ a lot from the “norm”, but a single written standard. Because, well, what else are you going to do? I’m used to that from Norwegian. Depending on how far out in the boonies you’re from, the way you write and the way you speak can be two completely different things. I’ve had some situations where I have, say, communicated by e-mail with someone, and the writing is perfectly standard. Then I speak to the same individual in person, and I can barely understand what they’re saying. I bet that’s how it works for a lot of languages.
Actually, it was KEXP; a station associated with WSU that plays a lot of local music. 
My ancient MIL is similar. She was born here but her parents were immigrants to the Buffalo NY Italian colony at the beginning of the 20th century. She’s convinced she speaks Italian correctly. Those silly folks in Italy have since ruined the language.
I’m sure they didn’t, having watched the series through a couple of times. Anytime Tony or anyone else was talking about gabbagoul there was always cured ham in the picture.
I THINK he sang that in “Mambo Italiano”.
ETA: Yep! The line is “Hey! Mambo! No more-a mootzarella!”
Also, my mother’s Italian family were Calabrese/Campani and constantly pronounced things like this. Gabbagol, manigot, rigot, motsarel.
The Sopranos people talked just like my Italian relatives who were from NJ. That was one reason I liked the show right away.
My Irish father also talks like that too since he grew up around so many Italians.
You are correct. Thank you!
Likewise my Irish-German family speaks Neapolitan dialect when talking about Italian food.
I’m certainly no linguist, but from both first- and second-hand experience, that seems to actually be the most common case. When you have something like dialects with different grammar, the different grammar is reflected in writing (not so much if it’s a government document, but even then, some differences will be reflected); reflecting different pronunciations is a lot rarer.
When I started to read this thread, the “C-to-G” thing sounded weird to me — until I realized that I myself say things like “tayguh hike” or “taygun aspirin” all day long. I have a lot of trouble saying “cookie” distinctly. And I noticed a few years ago that my “OK” often comes out as “ogay.”
Ha ha, I’m of Neapolitan extraction too.
Can anyone explain the pronunciation of mostaccioli in St. Louis? (Something like MUSK-a-cho-lie.)
Does that ST -> SK switch happen in other Italian-American areas?
And you can even see it with US English- depending on the area, “Mary” , “merry” and “marry” might all be pronounced the same or each may have a separate pronunciation. But they are always spelled differently, even by those who pronounce them the same.
Now back to the C-G and P-B, thing. My Sicilian family says gabbgol, manigott, rigot and bizza- but to my ear, the sound in manigott etc, is really not the same as an American English G. It’s sort of between a C and a G.
Yeah, it’s further back on the palate than “g”. It’s almost a half-g, with the first half almost being a glottal stop, like ri’got.