goopaline or ? =hat

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>"I'm pretty sure that meowpossum has it right and that it's a New York / New
>Jersey (think Tony Soprano!) pronunciation of cappellino.
>
>Italian-Americans in the Northeast USA arrived predominantly from Southern
>Italy (Naples, Calabria, Sicily), where there is a tendency to drop the
>final vowel (or make it a schwa at most) rather than pronounce it fully as
>in Northern Italy. Other differences between what is considered "Standard"
>Italian (i.e. Northern) and the NY-NJ pronunciation are the pronunciation
>shifts "o->oo", "k->g", and "zz (ts)-> soft z".
>
>Manicotti -> Manigott'
>Mozzarella -> Moozarell' (or even Moozadell')
>Cannoli -> Ganool' (cf meowpossum's friend's guh-NOL)
>Calamari -> Galamad',
>
>hence Cappellino -> Goopalin' is not too much of a stretch. Google doesn't
>show it because it's not a proper spelling, thus presumably rarely written,
>although one can find a few entries for "Manigott" and "Moozadell" (the
>latter mainly because one of the episodes of The Sopranos is called The
>Telltale Moozadell).
>
>In Italy itself, "Cappellino" can be used to refer to a baseball-style cap.
>Since New York Italians already have a term for "baseball cap", it's
>possible that the reference shifted to a wool cap with pom-pom as in the
>OP."

This may well be correct. However I don't see it as entirely natural or
self-evident phonetically. In particular, the first vowel doesn't have any
reason to mutate from /a/ to something else, AFAIK. You hear "manigott" but
you don't hear "moonigott"/"munigott", right? The more natural Italian
equivalent phonetically might be "coppellina" (maybe used occasionally like
"little cup", I think). [Note however my gross ignorance of Romance languages.]

-- Doug Wilson