Why Are There So Many Italians in America?

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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Italian-American History
0:48 - Why Leave Italy in the First Place?
1:08 - Exiles, Adventurers & Pioneers
2:03 - The Peasant Masses
3:04 - The New Migrants
3:28 - Where Italian-Americans Settled
3:52 - The Italian Language in America
8:49 - About That Accent...

📜 ATTRIBUTIONS:

Absolutely Nuttin'- How to talk like a New York Italian....

“Americans with Italian Ancestry by state” by Abbasi786786 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Long Island location map” by Ergo Sum is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“New Jersey in United States (zoom)” by TUBS is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

"Map of the United States with Connecticut highlighted" by TUBS is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Italy_location_map” by NordNordWestderivative work: ויקיג'אנקי, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Sicily in Italy” by TUBS is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

WIKITONGUES: Steven speaking Sicilian

WIKITONGUES: Foffo speaking Neapolitan

WIKITONGUES: Pasquale speaking Materano

“ECU orthographic” by Addicted04 is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Castilla la Vieja” by Javitomad is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

"The Italian American Slang Word of the Day!" is SHIMUNEAD

Trump: We speak English here, not Spanish

SHUT UP YOUR FACE

Chicago Bobbys AccentTag

[gtPacheko]

My nonna came from Sicily during WWII to Southern Brazil. She mostly forgot Italian as she got older but it was still awesome to try and talk to her in Italian with a weird mix of Portuguese.
She passed away last month. Rest in Peace mi nonna.

[josephlavecchia]

I speak Italian and Neapolitan, so it was always beautiful hearing older family members use some of these Italianized versions of English words. I might have to put a whole list together!

[cutecupcakebunnies]

My mother's side of the family moved from Italy to the United States in the 60s. So I heard a bit of the language growing up but could never really carry on much of a conversation. It was what the grown ups would speak to one another if they didn't want us kids bothering them. Since I studied Spanish in school I can sort of kind of get what my relatives are talking about since there's some similarities between the two languages. Interestingly, my grandfather says that other people from Italy think the way he talks is very strange. He grew up in an area where the dialect borrowed a lot of words from Algerian. Another weird quirk is that some of my late grandmothers mispronunciations made it into family tradition. Every Christmas we bake her recipe for pecondola pie and leave out milk and biscotti for Sandy Claus.

[paholainen]

Australia shares a similar story the US. Many Italian immigrants from the south ( and some north- Veneto) also came to Australia . I’m Australian of Italian descent myself and I think Italian food and culture has influenced Australia a lot, particularly Melbourne

[anthonylenti]

Just watched this now. I consider myself Italian-American from New York City. I’m in my late 60’s. My grandparents came from southern Italy in 1900, 1904 and 1930. My father was 4 years old when they came over. My paternal grandparents lived upstairs ( typical). They were more comfortable speaking their Calabrian but could switch to more of the standard Italian if needed. Basically they spoke to us kids in either full on “ Italian” and we would mostly understand and respond in English or occasionally respond in “Italian”. Mostly they used a combination of their regional language, standard, and English.
An example: Grandma would say: O’ telephone sta’ ringann’ ( sta ringando/suonando). She never had a phone in Italy.
Each family is different of course but we had relatives who would visit from Italy and we figured it out. As one person commented, it was when I started learning Spanish that I decided to teach myself Italian with records, library books, radio programs, etc. My grandmother was so proud and she would then only speak in “ Italian”. I was able to read the letters she still received from Italy and when I visited in 1978 and met relatives in Rome I was able to do ok. I majored in Spanish and Portuguese and kept up with Italian. I do ok now and can have in-depth conversations. ( with mistakes).
Again, we used most of the words on the list you showed at the end.
The one thing I still do that drives people crazy is say “ open” and “close” the lights. Evidently, some Italian Americans and French Canadians heard it years ago and it has stuck! There is a reason for it, of course.
Great video, yes there are more “ Italians” elsewhere. I never pretend to be Italian but am proud of the heritage and have been there many times since the 70’s. When we were younger the standard question among friends was “ What are you? I was forced to say “ Italian” and they “ German, Hungarian, Irish, Polish, etc.)
I currently do language exchanges with natives in Italy. Wish we had the Internet in the 50’s and 60’s ( 70’s and 80’s)!!!

[paulbradford]

You know the Italian influence is strong when not long ago, the goalie for the Italian Olympic ice hockey team was from a suburb of Boston, Mass. You still hear Italian accents and Italian influences are an integral part of our culture everywhere you go. This is a natural and good thing in my book.

[diegoricardosegura]

Talk about Italians in Latin America👐🏽

[jsphat]

I’ve been watching The Sopranos and precisely today I’ve been googling the words they use on the show like “Gabagool” and “Goomah” and found out they are not standard Italian but come from dialects which further developed here in the Northeastern US, and exactly today you put out a video describing in detail this language phenomenon. It’s like you are reading my mind! Lol. Amazing content as usual!

[genebigs]

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this video! It brought back so many memories of speaking to my grandparents who were immigrants from Calabria. I visited Italy many years ago when I was around 30, and people would smile at me when I spoke to them in Calabrese. They said I was so young but I spoke like an 80 year-old man. Some words they couldn't understand at all because of course they were English words turned into "Italian" words. By the way, I grew up in Brucculinu. I understood every one of those words! Thanks, and keep up the good work!

[SilvanaDil]

Most people aren't saying that immigrant parents shouldn't pass on their mother tongue in the U.S. But, it should be those American-born kids' *second* language. A nation without a first language in common isn't a nation.

[FlexibleFlyer]

My father was born in Sicily and came here when he was a year old. His father came first and got a job doing heavy manual labor---he stoked furnaces in a powerhouse. My father was the oldest son, and at 7 he already was delivering the 6 a.m. paper and the 5 p.m. paper six days a week. He also ran errands for the small local market by his family's cold water flat. The family increased to 15 children, and 9 survived to adulthood. My grandmother was illiterate, and she never wanted to learn English----her goal was to return to Sicily and die there. She never got her wish. All the immigrants had large families----birth control was unheard of. Also, having a big family was a sign of a man's masculinity. Ditto for the female---her fertility was never questioned with a boatload of children. The children could be sent out toe work, and the money they earned was used to support the family. The second and third generations of Italians in the US got smart quickly----smaller families meant better success in many cases. My grandfather always told the grandchildren that there was nothing in Sicily for him. He worked as a goat herder and sheep herder. He learned English by taking my father's schoolbooks with him at night to study in the powerhouse. Why my grandmother wanted to go back defies reason. Her father sent her to work in the salt mines when she was 6 yrs old----and she married at 16. There was no future for so many of the poor, uneducated Sicilians. While my grandmother never fit into American life because she was so unhappy here, five of her sons served in the US military during WW2 and the Korean War. They "earned" their family's way here many times over.
The family never got any handouts of any kind. Whatever they had in that coldwater flat they worked for----from using empty wooden crates as chairs and end tables to growing their own vegetables in small plots of earth between the sidewalk and the steps. Failure was never an option for the immigrants in town----and they endured shame, humiliation, ridicule, and contempt for being "different." Perhaps the greatest indignity they had to deal with involved the school system counting the Sicilians, Italians, Greeks, French Canadians,
Lebanese, and many other immigrants as "Negroes" because some of these groups had darker skin tones. And lest we forget, it was these "dark skinned" immigrants that did the jobs no Americans wanted. The Italians and Sicilians definitely paid their dues in this country, and they worked hard so that their children could experience the American dream.

[marchauchler]

Wow Donald Trump demanding people to speak English (8:56) clearly forgot that he is the descendant of non-native English speakers who got married twice to women from former Soviet States (who had no English language traing) who had to study English from scratch. Fun Fact: His mother Mary Anne MacLeod (Scottish) only knew how to speak Gallic and some broken English prior to her arrival in the US. His paternal grandfather Friedrich Trump (German) spoke broken English and his paternal grandmother Friedrich Trump (German) had a REAL hard time mastering the English language....but don't speak Spanish in the US!!! Maybe Trump should study the Navajo, Iroquois or Apache language in...

Thanks for making this video Olly! You did a very good job at explaining what is a very layered topic. I'm planning on talking about Italian American things more soon on my channel. I'll be spreading the word about your video here to give my audience a sneak peak of what's to come!

[Chestermcfly]

The reason it really started was after slavery, and they needed people in the field, and they allowed Italians to come to America to work the fields and that’s the truth and after Italy unified it was really bad over there so they came over here for work

[MsAnts]

It is similar here in Australia, although post WWII migration was the main wave. My nonni came from Southern Italy in the 1950s and 60s, so I grew up hearing their dialects but not fully understanding them (I studied standard Italian at school)
A lot of people from my generation can speak a few words or phrases of dialect, but in another generation's time we might lose that.
My grandparents also incorporated a few English words (with an accent) into their vocabulary. "Garaggiu" (garage), "friggia" (fridge) etc. My 93 year old nonna often calls me "dalinella" which I think is her way of saying "darling" 😂

[skyborgsin]

My family has, like so many other Italian families from the south, an "overseas branch" of relatives who moved to NY shortly before WWII and who managed to stay in contact.
A long time ago, i've seen some old school letters at my late grandmother house, and pieced together a fascinating story noticing how the first letters were NOT written by family, but by professional letter writers(my great great great granparents being completely illiterate) and how in the following years the relatives melded Irpinian dialect(coming from Avellino) and english in ways incomprehensible to us modern italian and how in the later generations the grandchildren switched to english for communication due to both losing fluency in any form of Italian and having new generations who could understand English here.
When I was around 20 years old, they came over to visit to help a "cousin"(i have no idea how that family tree branch is distorted and what is the relation actually, everybody just knew the family dad as "uncle Frank from Texas") settle in his new home when he found a new job here in Italy.
Dear gods, that first week trying to understand their accent was atrocious, it was way easier to just answer them in standard English.

[jonatasfernandes]

There’s A LOT of italians here in Brazil too, manly in the state of São Paulo.

[YanickFM]

I'm one of those Italians in America. Unfortunately I don't know any Italian language because my family stopped speaking it before I was born. I hope I can learn it though.

[robbar]

that's why the USA should be called "United states of Vespuccia" sounds fine to me.

[jimfesta]

Often Italian immigrants to America moved back to Italy. My grandparents moved back to Reggio, Calabria and lived there for a number of years before finally coming back to America for good.