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"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
by 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 agoBut 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."