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There are a couple of things that are not very precise in the article. First of all the history of modern Italian is not quite right: standard Italian actually

by carlob 11y ago

There are a couple of things that are not very precise in the article. First of all the history of modern Italian is not quite right: standard Italian actually comes more from the dialects of the center, especially Tuscan and there is literature in standard Italian that far predates the unification of Italy (for example the 14th century Petrarca is still perfectly intelligible by contemporary high school students. The other thing that is overly simplified is that taxes from the wealthier north are really not the cause (or at least not the single cause) of the emigration from the south. Many regions were really poor and not yet industrialized at the turn of the century and not only in the south (Friuli in the northeast was also very poor). I think the main cause of emigration is really lack of employment opportunities and the destinations of these emigrants have been many: there are huge Italian communities in Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Belgium for example.

gnoway 11y ago
"During unification, the northern Italian powers decided that having a country that speaks about a dozen different languages would pose a bit of a challenge to their efforts, so they picked one and called it “Standard Italian” and made everyone learn it. The one that they picked was Tuscan, and they probably picked it because it was the language of Dante, the most famous Italian writer." The article was specifically about how the New Jersey Italian American accent came to be, so including details about Southern Italian emigration to South America and the rest of Europe probably wasn't necessary.
- carlob 11y ago
  But also: "But this gets weird, because most Italian-Americans can trace their immigrant ancestors back to that time between 1861 and World War I, when the vast majority of “Italians,” such as Italy even existed at the time, wouldn’t have spoken the same language at all, and hardly any of them would be speaking the northern Italian dialect that would eventually become Standard Italian."

by carlob 11y ago

gnoway 11y ago

"During unification, the northern Italian powers decided that having a country that speaks about a dozen different languages would pose a bit of a challenge to their efforts, so they picked one and called it “Standard Italian” and made everyone learn it. The one that they picked was Tuscan, and they probably picked it because it was the language of Dante, the most famous Italian writer." The article was specifically about how the New Jersey Italian American accent came to be, so including details about Southern Italian emigration to South America and the rest of Europe probably wasn't necessary.

carlob 11y ago
But also: "But this gets weird, because most Italian-Americans can trace their immigrant ancestors back to that time between 1861 and World War I, when the vast majority of “Italians,” such as Italy even existed at the time, wouldn’t have spoken the same language at all, and hardly any of them would be speaking the northern Italian dialect that would eventually become Standard Italian."