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Dec.26/04 - Jan.2, 2005 |
12 - New Italiese for new generation
The former language of immigrants transformed expressively and correctly
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2003-03-09
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Gianrenzo Clivio and Pierluigi Roi
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In the beginning there was Italiese, the speech of early Italian immigrants, who dialectalized, or Italianized, English terms and expressions. Silingo, for instance, for ceiling (Italian: soffitto); basamento for basement (seminterrato); trocco for truck (camion), modified in trocchetto when it was a small one (camioncino), rummo for room (camera), modified in rummino for cameretta.
Professor Gianrenzo Clivio called it a "language of survival", turned it into a subject of study at the University of Toronto and has been working for a while to an Italiese-Italian vocabulary.
Now there is an Italiese for second- and third-generation Italian-Canadians. They use it when having a difficult time in getting an idea across in Italian, so they borrow terms and idioms from English. However, they do not Italianize them like their parents or grandparents did: those terms and figures of speech are used correctly. For instance, one might say "Arrivederci e take care"; or "Ho portato la macchina dal car wash"; "Non mi funziona il remote del televisore".
Some of them even insert whole sentences in English within their Italian conversation. This can be due to affectation or to a real need for better expression, and in this case generates a strange language, simultaneously Italian and English, with each expression showing syntax and grammar appropriate to the corresponding origin. In summary, the two tongues proceed side-by-side and support each other. The best aspect of this strange language, which we could call new Italiese, lies in its immediate comprehensibility.
"Here, like in every country with a strong Italian immigrant community, happened what happens in Italy when a dialect intermixes with Italian," says Gianrenzo Clivio, who's teaching Italian Linguistics and Philology at the University of Toronto and is the author of numerous publications on the history and morphology of dialects. "Technically this is called code-switching, which means passing easily from one language tops the other and back. This happens with second- and third-generation people, and is a step ahead from Italiese, so we can rightly talk of new Italiese. We should also add, though, that this phenomenon mainly concerns Italian communities abroad."
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