final "oo" in Sicilian dialect

[Peter Farruggio]

Two comments:

I think this vowel substitution may not be limited to the Sicilian
dialect(s), but may be common to several Southern Italian regions.  I have
found it among Neopolitan-derived folks in the US (T Soprano's roots, by
the way).

Second, the substitution seems to occur frequently in other syllables, not
just the last syllable of a word.
  "Moozzarell__" for mozzarella is the biggest example that comes to mind
(this also captures the tendency to silence the final vowel in words where
the penultimate syllable is stressed)

Pete Farruggio


At 01:38 PM 2/5/03, you wrote:

>Thanks for your response, Frank, and for your confirmation of my
>suspicion, Steve.  I'd  actually begun to look up the Latin sources
>for the Sicilian words in -u that I remember, and, so far, they all do
>seem to go back to Latin u -- not only in the case of nouns (like
>"culu" [standard It. culo, < L. culus], meaning "rear end," and also
>used by my grandmother to name the end piece cut from a stick of
>Italian bread), but also for verbs (like "mangiamu" [standard It.
>"mangiamo," < L. mandimus], meaning "let's eat" (in Latin,
>actually, "let's chew").
>
>Does this mean that Tony Soprano speaks the wrong dialect of
>Italian-American?
>
>Joanne
>
>On 5 Feb 2003, at 16:32, Frank Abate wrote:
>
> > I don't specifically recall anything like this, but it has been many
>years,
> > more than 30, since my Sicilian grandparents were alive.  And I
>never lived
> > with them, only visited on holidays and such.
> >
> > So I can't speak to the final sound in the words noted, sorry.
> >
> >
> > Frank
> >
> > Frank Abate
> > Dictionaries International
> > Consulting & Editorial Services for Reference Publications
> > 860-349-5400  [USA access code: 1]
> > abatefr at earthlink.net
>
>
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