Italian-Americanisms? or regionalisms?

[Alice Faber]

Laurence Horn said:
>At 10:44 AM -0400 7/8/02, Joanne M. Despres wrote:
>>
>>Last weekend, I ordered a pizza in a southern CT restaurant and
>>heard the waitress pronounce the cheese on top "mootzarella."
>>That pronunciation strikes me as New Jerseyish, though I'm not
>>sure whether it's Italian-American (the mother of a friend of mine, a
>>non-Italian who grew up in Jersey City and now lives in the "Pasta
>>Triangle" region of Essex County, where I believe the Sopranos
>>episodes are set, pronounces it that way).  My own mother's family
>>definitely doesn't use that "oo" pronunciation, though.  In any case,
>>the point is, I think there have to be a couple of different regional
>>variations of Italian-American pronunciation.
>>
>I've heard that [u] vowel a lot in south-central Connecticut, but
>it's usually mootsaRELL, without the final vowel.  Somehow
>"mootzarella" sounds like code-mixing.  And it's not infrequently
>truncated to just plain "moots".  I'm sure Alice will concur.
>

Not sure there...the folks at Scarpellino's all have /o/ not /u/,
though they do truncate /motsarel/ to /mots/. I will say, though,
that the /o/ isn't fronted as much as it would be in a native English
lexical item.

Alice