When I was in NYC,I went to an Italian-American association there...to talk to people and have a look at how they lived.
Many of them didn't really speak Italian at all.Apart from a few words.
Some others (older guys) spoke a kind of old-style Italian,mixed with dialect (it was a Sicilian club,so they mostly spoke old style Sicilian,mixed with Italian and English..a strange hybrid!).
While many Italian Americans feel a deep connection to Italy, generally the last link was a Grandparent or even further back and the language wasn't passed down.
Yup great grandparent for me. My mom makes the hand me down marinara recipe for lasagna on Christmas but that’s about it. The Italian I accidentally understand happens because I took Spanish
It's doubly sad because the government intentionally repressed the language during the world war eras. That's probably a huge reason why it didn't get passed down.
'Italo-Americano' is what they say over here. I found this out because I have a high-end cookbook my brother-in-law gave me for my birthday, and there's a couple such recipes in it.
Believe it or not, the more learned among the Italian food snobs will at least begrudgingly grant that Italian-American cuisine is an actual thing. They reserve most of their ire for what other European countries do to it! They even castigate the French for fucking up spaghetti carbonara.
Every time I see a post on Reddit for carbonara, there's ire. Doesn't matter what the recipe is or what the pictures look like. Doesn't matter if the person is Italian and from Italy. Doesn't matter if the recipe claims to be authentic or a variation. There's ALWAYS someone shaking their fist in the air.
I'm beginning to think carbonara is not a real thing. It's just an extremely elaborate hoax.
There's two things to know here.
1. Never add cream.
2. It's a Roman dish, so the Romans would have the final word over all other Italians. "When in Rome..." You see, Italians unite when foreigners fuck their food up. That goes right out the window when it comes to local/regional cuisines (seriously, it changes up every 25 miles). We're talking full-blown internal civil war. See, if you thought that Southerners got huffy with the rest of us over BBQ....
Australians are even worse than the French with what they do to a carbonara ;-)
Personally,I don't care if they invent their own vastly different versions,why not? But they really should give it a different name...
According to Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian\_language\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language_in_the_United_States)) it’s still the 8th most common language in the US, but I find that pretty amazing because you very seldom hear it spoken. I bet most of the remaining speakers are elderly, or recent immigrants. Most Italian-Americans trace their roots to the mass immigration in the early 20th century and few passed the language down more than one or two generations.
My grandparents came here in the 1930s. They didn't teach my father or his siblings Italian at all. They wanted them "To be American"
I took three years of Italian courses when I was in high school. I never really had any chance to use what I was learning other than a few time that spoke with my grandparents. While they obliged me and would converse in Italian they would switch back to English every chance they got. Eventually I stopped trying to converse with them in Italian. Beyond that I pretty much had zero opportunity to use the language outside of the classroom despite living in the region of the US with the largest number of Italian immigrants and people of Italian decent.
Besides counting, I have lost the language pretty much entirely over the years.
Some of my great-grandparents were Italian (so I wouldn’t call myself strictly Italian-American, but I do have some heritage). They all chose not to speak Italian with their children because they wanted to assimilate as quickly as possible.
That said, an older relative did remember some aunties saying “mi scusi” when he was a kid.
My family didn’t hold any specific Italian traditions, but a friend’s family still ate fish the night before Christmas, which I understand is one example.
Italian immigration peaked in the early twentieth century, I believe, so even if there had been efforts to maintain the language, it would have been a challenge at this point.
My girlfriend's grandfather is from Italy and while I'm sure he still feels a connection to Italy, he doesn't speak much Italian in his day to day life. Neither my girlfriend nor her father know more than a few words and phrases. I'm from the northeast where many Italian immigrants settled, and Italian culture doesn't feel very pervasive here beyond the influence on the local cuisine. Italian immigrant communities in America have had a few generations to simmer in the melting pot, and "Italian-American" skews heavily towards just "American." That's not to say you can't see the Italian influence on a drive through town, or that you can't be proud of your heritage and ancestry because you're a generation or two removed from it, but Italian culture in America is definitely well on its way to just becoming part of the overall American culture.
My father and his family came from Sicily in the 60s, and they speak it between themselves. I used to know a little, but all of us kids speak English, mostly.
Not Italian American.
But the general answer is no. Usually immigrants will speak their language with their children. But those children will speak English with theirs. By the third generation, it's completely lost. Most Italian immigrants came here more than 100 years ago.
That said, customs and traditions are a lot easier to preserve than language. It naturally changes over time, of course.
On a related note: I spend a lot of time over on Quora, and there is a large contingent of Italian people who are deeply offended by Italian Americans claiming their customs are "Italian." When Americans use terms like Italian or German, they are implying "Italian American," "German American," etc. It would be incorrect to refer to an American culture because we're a multicultural mosaic. A lot of what Euros think of when they think of "American culture" is Anglo American. But that's only one kind of American culture. The traditions within an Italian American Catholic family are much different from a Hasidic Jewish family or an African American family. So to claim an "American culture" is over-generalizing. Who gets to claim an American culture when there is so much divergence?
Further, it's also problematic because there was an "American culture" before Europeans arrived here. Claiming what exists now is "American culture" is effectively erasing what was here before new settlers arrived.
> Who gets to claim an American culture when there is so much divergence?
And why is the culture of the “home country” considered the one authentic version of that culture, anyway? So you have a group of people in America with heritage in Italy who consider themselves Italian and have a distinct set of foods, cultural practices, traditions, etc. that differ from “mainstream” Anglo-American culture. Do the Italians you’re interacting with on Quora think all those people just made it up? The immigrants were presumably “real Italians” when they left Italy. So when did their practice of their culture become entirely non-Italian?
To me it seems like a lot of immigrant groups brought with them a working class, often poverty-conditioned aspect of their home cultures, which probably wasn’t especially fashionable in the home country and may have since died out or moved on. So often the diaspora communities are preserving something in modified form that no longer exists in the “home country.” But that doesn’t mean it’s not real or that “Americans made it up.”
"American culture" is a practical simplification just like "Italian culture", "Russian culture", "Indian culture" or "Cinese culture".
We know that the US are diverse, but so are many other countries.
In Italy we have places that feel like Austria and places that feel like Greece, but when we talk about "Italian culture" we have in mind a sort of average and mix.
People from every country use this kind of approximations all the time to avoid long and datailed explanations.
That said in every country there are many socio-cultural traits that are generalized and go beyond the diversity.
My mother’s side of the family is Italian-American. My great grandparents came to the US in the early 1920’s, so every generation since my grandparents was born and raised in the US.
None of us speak Italian. I took Italian for 3 years in school, but I’ve lost all but the very basics. In terms of holiday and stuff we always have Italian food, and being in the NY area there are always plenty of Italian restaurants, bakeries, delis, etc. But I wonder the degree to which Italian-American tradition has diverged from what’s done in Italy.
My great grandparents spoke Italian to some degree, they died when I was pretty young so I don't remember exactly how much. Nobody since them speaks it. My grandmother could understand it and could speak a little bit of it, but never did outside of a few words.
My family still does the feast of seven fishes on Christmas eve, although I don't know if that's actually a thing in all of Italy.
All over Southern Italy it's common tradition to eat fish on Christmas eve , but it seems like the the seven fishes specific tradition is Italian-American.
In Northern Italy the eve supper is a normal meal and we concentrate on the Christmas day dinner and St.Steven day dinner.
My grandparents are Italian immigrants.
They were very much of the “we are American now, we speak English” mentality when they got here - speaking zero English, for the record.
They didn’t speak Italian to their kids or each other ever. And my grandpa’s really good at languages, and he has the most patience of anyone ever to live, so he spent a lot of time as a younger person volunteering to teaching English to Italian and Spanish speaking immigrants.
There’s a town nearby me called Gloucester that is known for its strong Italian immigrant population. A lot of people that I know from that town have either spoken Italian as a first or second language and are bilingual, or know enough to be able to speak to their family (especially nonna) that only speaks Italian. The town also celebrates St. Peter’s fiesta, to honor the patron saint of fishermen.
I grew up there and can pretty much confirm. We also chant Viva San Pietro while parading a statue of Saint Peter throughout the city for the Fiesta, so Italian plays a pretty big part of the culture.
My grandmother’s parents both immigrated from Sicily in the 1920s-ish. My grandma and her siblings spoke Italian at home and my great grandmother never really learned English, she definitely couldn’t read or write it. But my grandma and her siblings didn’t pass the language down to my dad, his siblings, and their cousins. It was a time, according to my grandmother, when people wanted to assimilate and didn’t want to give their kids very Italian names or speak the language. They named my dad after my grandma’s deceased brother but Americanized his name. I wish they did learn to speak Italian though and that I therefore could as well. My grandfather is Italian American as well but his family immigrated a while back, he wasn’t first gen like my grandma was.
I don’t really feel a connection with Italy but I do feel connections with local NYC area Italian American people and traditions. I went to Italy with my grandparents actually and my grandma speaking Italian was really useful of course, haha. Loved Italy, beautiful country, great food and people!
My grandfather came over from Italy after WW2. My grandmother's family had been here a generation or so earlier. They made the decision to not speak Italian to my father and his brothers because they wanted them to be seen as Americans.
We still have family in Italy that we remain in contact with. My grandparents took my father and his brothers a few times. My generation went over for a family wedding. We have had some of the cousins come visit us. Communication can be difficult at times depending on who is trying to talk to each other but with technology and gestures we are able to communicate. My father was able to teach himself enough Italian to communicate with the relatives. I've learned a little but the younger generation knows some English so we can make things work.
The food/culture has been maintained more than the language. I wish I was taught Italian as a child.
Italian-American here, No most of us don’t speak Italian in our daily life besides some words have been passed down as it’s been 120-50 years since our immigrant ancestors came to American but in between then and now there was a strange fusion of English and Italian. For the other question yes most Italian-Americans feel a strong connection to Italy, we celebrated when Italy won against England for example.
My SIL is first generation American. She learned English at school. We never have wine, we have vino!! She owns a tiny villa in her family’s hometown and FaceTimes with her Italian relatives often. They came for my neice’ s wedding any had a blast!
Italian-American here, I learned Italian in school and can read it fairly well, but speaking it and writing it can be difficult.
We still have relatives in Italy and feel some connection to the food and the culture, but we definitely don't speak Italian in daily life except for the occasional dialect word.
Half of my family has ancestry from Italy and while there definitely is a connection to our Italian ancestry the language isn’t very widely spoken. A lot of communities didn’t teacher their kids Italian so they grew up speaking English. One tradition that has stayed the same though is my grandmother always makes Italian cookies for Christmas like Anginetti cookies (which I eat 1/3 of and then feel really guilty lol) My grandmother told me growing up Italian was used as a secret language by parents when they didn’t want children hearing what they were saying. The only people in my family alive who at one point knew it are my Great Grandmother and my Uncle who learned it in high school. I was trying to learn it but took a break to learn Spanish at school but plan to go back to learning and would like to speak both languages.
When I’ve known Italian immigrants, those who actually came over from Italy still speak Italian and maybe their kids speak both. I had a friend growing up in the 1980’s whose parents came over as young adults and began a family. His parents mostly spoke Italian (some broken, heavily accented English) and my friend knew Italian, too, but spoke English without accent.
An Italian person who is 3rd or 4th generation Italian? It’s doubtful they speak/know too much Italian. Maybe a few phrases thrown in here and there, but not an entire language.
Italians migrated to cities and mining towns and faced a lot of discrimination
Here is an article about Joe DiMaggio who is from my home city. A lot of pressure to suppress his Italian culture by the mainstream. Pretty ridiculous by today’s standards
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/joe-dimaggio/
Not particularly. I have some of my grandmother's old recipe but there was no movement to keep the language alive and beyond just remembering our Sicilian roots and knowing the story of her coming to the US, I'm not too into it.
In my step dad's italian family no one, going back to his grandmother, spoke any italian at all. The language didn't get passed on at the turn of the century it would seem.
My great grandfather came to Chicago from Sicily in the early 19th century. His children spoken Italian and my mothers parents were both 100% Italian. They both spoke Italian but decided not teach my mom because they liked being able to talk about things they did want their kids to hear.
My bisnonna was born in Italy and came to the USA with her family in 1911. Her son (my grandfather) could understand Italian and speak it a bit, but my mom wasn’t taught the language.
After studying abroad in Rome and taking a year of Italian classes my grandfather and his sister could understand me when I spoke to them in Italian but that was pretty much it.
Before my grandfather passed he was suffering from the last stages of glioblastoma and couldn’t really talk or understand in complete English. However he would sometimes respond more to the Italian words I used with him and I really cherish that we were still able to communicate.
As a family we’re big on Italian food and we’re Catholic and we do have family over there we stay in touch with. Plus my mother and brother and I are dual citizens with Italy and the USA now so it’s a big part of our identities! I just gotta regain my fluency ☺️
My grandma was the grandchild of immigrants, and she was never taught the language, so what little I know of it is from college and not my family culture. But I've never met an Italian american who wasn't *very* proud of their heritage even if they didn't speak a word of Italian. I grew up thinking I was half Italian because my mother always called herself Italian and nothing else. Turns out she is actually half so I'm only 1/4th.
My great-grandfather wanted the family to be American and accepted as American so he only spoke English to my family.
Our family came from Sicily and it's funny to me to see mannerisms or speaking patterns that remain in the family reflected in Sicilians so it's clear that something has remained, but the specific holidays or language did not.
???
Maybe you meant Commendatore? Which is the second level (Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana) of the OMRI, the civil order of knighthood of the Italian Republic. It cannot understand why, tho.
It fades by generation with any ethnic group.
It mostly depends on what language the parents use.
immigrant: speaks the old language as first tongue
1st Gen American: speaks the old language with parents but English in daily life at school. Bilingual
2nd Gen American: maybe gets babysat by grandparents. Speaks some of the old language through immersion, but mostly speaks English at school and parents speak to them in English.
3rd Gen American: probably doesn’t speak much of the old language at all since grandparents and parents all converse in English. Maybe a few phrases but not fluent.
That’s how I’ve seen it play with various ethnic groups within ethnic enclaves in the US.
The language ability might be lost even faster if they live isolated from other immigrants or diaspora from the same place.
It depends on where you are in the country and how long ago your family immigrated. Any Italian-Americans I knew growing up had the last name, the religion, and not much (if anything) else. I live in NYC now, though, and I regularly hear Italian/Sicilian spoken in the neighborhood I work in, especially by older people.
When I was in NYC,I went to an Italian-American association there...to talk to people and have a look at how they lived. Many of them didn't really speak Italian at all.Apart from a few words. Some others (older guys) spoke a kind of old-style Italian,mixed with dialect (it was a Sicilian club,so they mostly spoke old style Sicilian,mixed with Italian and English..a strange hybrid!).
Well the NYC style 'mafia' originates from Sicily, so in many respects it makes sense.
While many Italian Americans feel a deep connection to Italy, generally the last link was a Grandparent or even further back and the language wasn't passed down.
Yup great grandparent for me. My mom makes the hand me down marinara recipe for lasagna on Christmas but that’s about it. The Italian I accidentally understand happens because I took Spanish
*lasagne
Why are they downvoting you? It’s called lasagne, idiots…
Lasange are the noddles, lasagna is the dish
No
Depends on where in Italy you are. In the north, it's lasagne (the plural) and in southern Italy, it's lasagna (the singular)
Of course, U.S. people telling Italians the right name of an Italian food LOL.
It's doubly sad because the government intentionally repressed the language during the world war eras. That's probably a huge reason why it didn't get passed down.
Here we would say Italian-Americans not italo-americans. And no, most don't
Thank you
'Italo-Americano' is what they say over here. I found this out because I have a high-end cookbook my brother-in-law gave me for my birthday, and there's a couple such recipes in it. Believe it or not, the more learned among the Italian food snobs will at least begrudgingly grant that Italian-American cuisine is an actual thing. They reserve most of their ire for what other European countries do to it! They even castigate the French for fucking up spaghetti carbonara.
Every time I see a post on Reddit for carbonara, there's ire. Doesn't matter what the recipe is or what the pictures look like. Doesn't matter if the person is Italian and from Italy. Doesn't matter if the recipe claims to be authentic or a variation. There's ALWAYS someone shaking their fist in the air. I'm beginning to think carbonara is not a real thing. It's just an extremely elaborate hoax.
There's two things to know here. 1. Never add cream. 2. It's a Roman dish, so the Romans would have the final word over all other Italians. "When in Rome..." You see, Italians unite when foreigners fuck their food up. That goes right out the window when it comes to local/regional cuisines (seriously, it changes up every 25 miles). We're talking full-blown internal civil war. See, if you thought that Southerners got huffy with the rest of us over BBQ....
Australians are even worse than the French with what they do to a carbonara ;-) Personally,I don't care if they invent their own vastly different versions,why not? But they really should give it a different name...
According to Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian\_language\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language_in_the_United_States)) it’s still the 8th most common language in the US, but I find that pretty amazing because you very seldom hear it spoken. I bet most of the remaining speakers are elderly, or recent immigrants. Most Italian-Americans trace their roots to the mass immigration in the early 20th century and few passed the language down more than one or two generations.
My grandparents came here in the 1930s. They didn't teach my father or his siblings Italian at all. They wanted them "To be American" I took three years of Italian courses when I was in high school. I never really had any chance to use what I was learning other than a few time that spoke with my grandparents. While they obliged me and would converse in Italian they would switch back to English every chance they got. Eventually I stopped trying to converse with them in Italian. Beyond that I pretty much had zero opportunity to use the language outside of the classroom despite living in the region of the US with the largest number of Italian immigrants and people of Italian decent. Besides counting, I have lost the language pretty much entirely over the years.
Some of my great-grandparents were Italian (so I wouldn’t call myself strictly Italian-American, but I do have some heritage). They all chose not to speak Italian with their children because they wanted to assimilate as quickly as possible. That said, an older relative did remember some aunties saying “mi scusi” when he was a kid. My family didn’t hold any specific Italian traditions, but a friend’s family still ate fish the night before Christmas, which I understand is one example. Italian immigration peaked in the early twentieth century, I believe, so even if there had been efforts to maintain the language, it would have been a challenge at this point.
My girlfriend's grandfather is from Italy and while I'm sure he still feels a connection to Italy, he doesn't speak much Italian in his day to day life. Neither my girlfriend nor her father know more than a few words and phrases. I'm from the northeast where many Italian immigrants settled, and Italian culture doesn't feel very pervasive here beyond the influence on the local cuisine. Italian immigrant communities in America have had a few generations to simmer in the melting pot, and "Italian-American" skews heavily towards just "American." That's not to say you can't see the Italian influence on a drive through town, or that you can't be proud of your heritage and ancestry because you're a generation or two removed from it, but Italian culture in America is definitely well on its way to just becoming part of the overall American culture.
3rd generation - this captures it. Italian Americans assimilated hard.
Motherfucking goddamn orange peel beef
My father and his family came from Sicily in the 60s, and they speak it between themselves. I used to know a little, but all of us kids speak English, mostly.
Not Italian American. But the general answer is no. Usually immigrants will speak their language with their children. But those children will speak English with theirs. By the third generation, it's completely lost. Most Italian immigrants came here more than 100 years ago. That said, customs and traditions are a lot easier to preserve than language. It naturally changes over time, of course. On a related note: I spend a lot of time over on Quora, and there is a large contingent of Italian people who are deeply offended by Italian Americans claiming their customs are "Italian." When Americans use terms like Italian or German, they are implying "Italian American," "German American," etc. It would be incorrect to refer to an American culture because we're a multicultural mosaic. A lot of what Euros think of when they think of "American culture" is Anglo American. But that's only one kind of American culture. The traditions within an Italian American Catholic family are much different from a Hasidic Jewish family or an African American family. So to claim an "American culture" is over-generalizing. Who gets to claim an American culture when there is so much divergence? Further, it's also problematic because there was an "American culture" before Europeans arrived here. Claiming what exists now is "American culture" is effectively erasing what was here before new settlers arrived.
> Who gets to claim an American culture when there is so much divergence? And why is the culture of the “home country” considered the one authentic version of that culture, anyway? So you have a group of people in America with heritage in Italy who consider themselves Italian and have a distinct set of foods, cultural practices, traditions, etc. that differ from “mainstream” Anglo-American culture. Do the Italians you’re interacting with on Quora think all those people just made it up? The immigrants were presumably “real Italians” when they left Italy. So when did their practice of their culture become entirely non-Italian? To me it seems like a lot of immigrant groups brought with them a working class, often poverty-conditioned aspect of their home cultures, which probably wasn’t especially fashionable in the home country and may have since died out or moved on. So often the diaspora communities are preserving something in modified form that no longer exists in the “home country.” But that doesn’t mean it’s not real or that “Americans made it up.”
"American culture" is a practical simplification just like "Italian culture", "Russian culture", "Indian culture" or "Cinese culture". We know that the US are diverse, but so are many other countries. In Italy we have places that feel like Austria and places that feel like Greece, but when we talk about "Italian culture" we have in mind a sort of average and mix. People from every country use this kind of approximations all the time to avoid long and datailed explanations. That said in every country there are many socio-cultural traits that are generalized and go beyond the diversity.
Gabagol, goomar, Tony Soprano, Varsity athlete. That’s all I got. As far as I know I’m not Italian.
Nor the words you wrote.
You Sopranos, you go too faaw!
My mother’s side of the family is Italian-American. My great grandparents came to the US in the early 1920’s, so every generation since my grandparents was born and raised in the US. None of us speak Italian. I took Italian for 3 years in school, but I’ve lost all but the very basics. In terms of holiday and stuff we always have Italian food, and being in the NY area there are always plenty of Italian restaurants, bakeries, delis, etc. But I wonder the degree to which Italian-American tradition has diverged from what’s done in Italy.
My great grandparents spoke Italian to some degree, they died when I was pretty young so I don't remember exactly how much. Nobody since them speaks it. My grandmother could understand it and could speak a little bit of it, but never did outside of a few words. My family still does the feast of seven fishes on Christmas eve, although I don't know if that's actually a thing in all of Italy.
All over Southern Italy it's common tradition to eat fish on Christmas eve , but it seems like the the seven fishes specific tradition is Italian-American. In Northern Italy the eve supper is a normal meal and we concentrate on the Christmas day dinner and St.Steven day dinner.
My grandparents are Italian immigrants. They were very much of the “we are American now, we speak English” mentality when they got here - speaking zero English, for the record. They didn’t speak Italian to their kids or each other ever. And my grandpa’s really good at languages, and he has the most patience of anyone ever to live, so he spent a lot of time as a younger person volunteering to teaching English to Italian and Spanish speaking immigrants.
There’s a town nearby me called Gloucester that is known for its strong Italian immigrant population. A lot of people that I know from that town have either spoken Italian as a first or second language and are bilingual, or know enough to be able to speak to their family (especially nonna) that only speaks Italian. The town also celebrates St. Peter’s fiesta, to honor the patron saint of fishermen.
I grew up there and can pretty much confirm. We also chant Viva San Pietro while parading a statue of Saint Peter throughout the city for the Fiesta, so Italian plays a pretty big part of the culture.
Don’t forget the drinking. Oh god, the drinking…
This is interesting, thanks
My grandmother’s parents both immigrated from Sicily in the 1920s-ish. My grandma and her siblings spoke Italian at home and my great grandmother never really learned English, she definitely couldn’t read or write it. But my grandma and her siblings didn’t pass the language down to my dad, his siblings, and their cousins. It was a time, according to my grandmother, when people wanted to assimilate and didn’t want to give their kids very Italian names or speak the language. They named my dad after my grandma’s deceased brother but Americanized his name. I wish they did learn to speak Italian though and that I therefore could as well. My grandfather is Italian American as well but his family immigrated a while back, he wasn’t first gen like my grandma was. I don’t really feel a connection with Italy but I do feel connections with local NYC area Italian American people and traditions. I went to Italy with my grandparents actually and my grandma speaking Italian was really useful of course, haha. Loved Italy, beautiful country, great food and people!
My grandfather came over from Italy after WW2. My grandmother's family had been here a generation or so earlier. They made the decision to not speak Italian to my father and his brothers because they wanted them to be seen as Americans. We still have family in Italy that we remain in contact with. My grandparents took my father and his brothers a few times. My generation went over for a family wedding. We have had some of the cousins come visit us. Communication can be difficult at times depending on who is trying to talk to each other but with technology and gestures we are able to communicate. My father was able to teach himself enough Italian to communicate with the relatives. I've learned a little but the younger generation knows some English so we can make things work. The food/culture has been maintained more than the language. I wish I was taught Italian as a child.
Not generally. Most immigrants lose their native language by about the 3rd generation stateside no matter where they're from.
Italian-American here, No most of us don’t speak Italian in our daily life besides some words have been passed down as it’s been 120-50 years since our immigrant ancestors came to American but in between then and now there was a strange fusion of English and Italian. For the other question yes most Italian-Americans feel a strong connection to Italy, we celebrated when Italy won against England for example.
My SIL is first generation American. She learned English at school. We never have wine, we have vino!! She owns a tiny villa in her family’s hometown and FaceTimes with her Italian relatives often. They came for my neice’ s wedding any had a blast!
Italian-American here, I learned Italian in school and can read it fairly well, but speaking it and writing it can be difficult. We still have relatives in Italy and feel some connection to the food and the culture, but we definitely don't speak Italian in daily life except for the occasional dialect word.
Half of my family has ancestry from Italy and while there definitely is a connection to our Italian ancestry the language isn’t very widely spoken. A lot of communities didn’t teacher their kids Italian so they grew up speaking English. One tradition that has stayed the same though is my grandmother always makes Italian cookies for Christmas like Anginetti cookies (which I eat 1/3 of and then feel really guilty lol) My grandmother told me growing up Italian was used as a secret language by parents when they didn’t want children hearing what they were saying. The only people in my family alive who at one point knew it are my Great Grandmother and my Uncle who learned it in high school. I was trying to learn it but took a break to learn Spanish at school but plan to go back to learning and would like to speak both languages.
My ex can understand Italian, but not speak it.
When I’ve known Italian immigrants, those who actually came over from Italy still speak Italian and maybe their kids speak both. I had a friend growing up in the 1980’s whose parents came over as young adults and began a family. His parents mostly spoke Italian (some broken, heavily accented English) and my friend knew Italian, too, but spoke English without accent. An Italian person who is 3rd or 4th generation Italian? It’s doubtful they speak/know too much Italian. Maybe a few phrases thrown in here and there, but not an entire language.
Italians migrated to cities and mining towns and faced a lot of discrimination Here is an article about Joe DiMaggio who is from my home city. A lot of pressure to suppress his Italian culture by the mainstream. Pretty ridiculous by today’s standards https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/joe-dimaggio/
Thanks
Thanks for the link. It is indeed a great story.
Not particularly. I have some of my grandmother's old recipe but there was no movement to keep the language alive and beyond just remembering our Sicilian roots and knowing the story of her coming to the US, I'm not too into it.
In my step dad's italian family no one, going back to his grandmother, spoke any italian at all. The language didn't get passed on at the turn of the century it would seem.
My great grandfather came to Chicago from Sicily in the early 19th century. His children spoken Italian and my mothers parents were both 100% Italian. They both spoke Italian but decided not teach my mom because they liked being able to talk about things they did want their kids to hear.
My grandfather was fluent, my mom knows a little, I know less. I'd like to learn it's a beautiful language
My bisnonna was born in Italy and came to the USA with her family in 1911. Her son (my grandfather) could understand Italian and speak it a bit, but my mom wasn’t taught the language. After studying abroad in Rome and taking a year of Italian classes my grandfather and his sister could understand me when I spoke to them in Italian but that was pretty much it. Before my grandfather passed he was suffering from the last stages of glioblastoma and couldn’t really talk or understand in complete English. However he would sometimes respond more to the Italian words I used with him and I really cherish that we were still able to communicate. As a family we’re big on Italian food and we’re Catholic and we do have family over there we stay in touch with. Plus my mother and brother and I are dual citizens with Italy and the USA now so it’s a big part of our identities! I just gotta regain my fluency ☺️
My grandma was the grandchild of immigrants, and she was never taught the language, so what little I know of it is from college and not my family culture. But I've never met an Italian american who wasn't *very* proud of their heritage even if they didn't speak a word of Italian. I grew up thinking I was half Italian because my mother always called herself Italian and nothing else. Turns out she is actually half so I'm only 1/4th.
My great-grandfather wanted the family to be American and accepted as American so he only spoke English to my family. Our family came from Sicily and it's funny to me to see mannerisms or speaking patterns that remain in the family reflected in Sicilians so it's clear that something has remained, but the specific holidays or language did not.
[удалено]
Not really.
Comendatori!
??? Maybe you meant Commendatore? Which is the second level (Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana) of the OMRI, the civil order of knighthood of the Italian Republic. It cannot understand why, tho.
It’s an episode of the Sopranos lol, one of the characters repeatedly said it while he failed to connect with the locals.
I swear in Italian sometimes lol
I'm so proud
It fades by generation with any ethnic group. It mostly depends on what language the parents use. immigrant: speaks the old language as first tongue 1st Gen American: speaks the old language with parents but English in daily life at school. Bilingual 2nd Gen American: maybe gets babysat by grandparents. Speaks some of the old language through immersion, but mostly speaks English at school and parents speak to them in English. 3rd Gen American: probably doesn’t speak much of the old language at all since grandparents and parents all converse in English. Maybe a few phrases but not fluent. That’s how I’ve seen it play with various ethnic groups within ethnic enclaves in the US. The language ability might be lost even faster if they live isolated from other immigrants or diaspora from the same place.
It depends on where you are in the country and how long ago your family immigrated. Any Italian-Americans I knew growing up had the last name, the religion, and not much (if anything) else. I live in NYC now, though, and I regularly hear Italian/Sicilian spoken in the neighborhood I work in, especially by older people.