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That's not specifically a Brooklyn thing, it supposedly has more to do with the fact that most Italian families in the tri-state area came to the U.S. before It
by Alex3917 8y ago
That's not specifically a Brooklyn thing, it supposedly has more to do with the fact that most Italian families in the tri-state area came to the U.S. before Italy was a country with a standardized language. That's why e.g. in Connecticut they pronounce pizza as abeetz. For whatever reason knowing how to pronounce and spell Italian words "incorrectly" has become a point of local pride, even for people who aren't at all ethnically Italian.
- mhermher 8y agoIs this related to the characters in the Sopranos dropping the final vowels in a bunch of Italian words? Madonn, gabagool, prozhut, etc.
- andrewla 8y agoFor sure the pronunciation thing is real, either due to regional accents or linguistic divergence; I've heard it firsthand used unironically by Brooklyn and Philly Italian-Americans, as well as ample examples from television and movies. But writing it that way I haven't seen outside of Taleb (and Google seems to bear me out to some extent), and using it that way isn't wrong, per se, it's just an eye-rolling moment; someone trying too hard to show that it isn't book-learning, it's "street-learning".
- Alex3917 8y agoYes. My favorite example of that is risott, since that's something that people actually commonly order in restaurants. Then there's also things like tirami-sue vs tirami-zoo, which don't even make sense since the dessert wasn't invented until recently.