duke and dook

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:20 AM -0400 9/23/04, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>He (Dick Vitale) is most definitely not a Detroiter (not on
>linguistic evidence at any rate). His open oh raising (so that
>'caught' sounds like 'coat' or even 'coot') is much more typical of
>NYC-area speech.

"Caught" like "coat" or "coot"?  I'm not sure I follow this.  My
"caught" is very different from my "cot", but it doesn't approach my
"coat" or "coot".  I suppose it might approach others' "coat" or
"coot", but I still don't quite get the phonetics here.  Maybe it's a
diphthong that begins in the same place "coot" does and then breaks
to a schwa, or something like that?

>PS: He is probably also of souther Italian origins since he has lost
>the last vowel of his name.

Well, certainly of Italian origins.  I would guess that the final -e
in Italian names often ends up dropped through anglicization even if
the family in question was not from the regions in Italy that don't
pronounce that vowel.  In that respect, a name like "Vitale" or a
word like "provolone" differs from e.g. "prosciutto", "(a)pizza" or
"mozzarella", where the final vowel drop *is* attributable to
dialectal factors in Italian.  Speaking of which, here's a
dialectologically relevant but not particularly well-informed piece
from last Sunday's Times on the dropping of those vowels (and related
matters):

larry
===========

The New York Times
  September 20, 2004 Monday

  SECTION: Section B; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk; You Say Prosciutto,
I Say Pro-SHOOT, And Purists Cringe; Pg. 1

  HEADLINE: Italian-Americans Vary Widely In the Twists Given to the Tongue

  BYLINE: By STACY ALBIN

  Ann Gustafson can discuss food -- especially Italian food. She spent
many days in the Bronx with her Sicilian grandmother, Sebastiana
Ceraolo, learning how to cook with
  mozzarella. Only Mrs. Gustafson did not call it ''mozzarella.'' She
said ''mozzarell.''

  Wrong?

  Not to many New Yorkers or New Jerseyans. (Doesn't Tony Soprano drop
his final vowels?) Not to some vendors at the annual Feast of San
Gennaro in Little Italy this week. But
  it makes Italian teachers, the purists who love the language just as
Dante wrote it, wince.

  They suffer prosciutto (pro-SHOOT-toe) becoming pro-SHOOT, calzone
(cal-TSO-nay) becoming cal-ZONE and pasta e fagioli (PAH-stah eh
faj-YOH-lee) becoming pasta
  fasul (fa-ZOOL).

  Outside a butcher shop in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, recently, Mrs.
Gustafson said that her language lessons were conducted at the
kitchen table. ''Everything I know about Italian
  is food-centric,'' she said, adding that her grandmother was not
educated and could not spell the words as she wrote down her recipes,
which ended up half in Italian, half in
  English.

  Neither grandma nor anyone in her neighborhood, the Morris Park
section of the Bronx, which had a large enclave of Italian
immigrants, ever challenged Mrs. Gustafson's
  pronunciation. And neither did the Italian butcher who pronounced
his final vowels.

  ''The Italians -- they don't correct,'' Mrs. Gustafson, 34, said.
''They're not like the French, who will correct you.''

  Stefano Albertini, who is the director of New York University's
Italian cultural center, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo, agreed.
''Generally speaking, Italians are rather grateful to
  anyone who speaks in Italian,'' he said. ''They think Italian comes
in so many varieties and accents.''

  In fact, in some parts of Italy, the dropping of final vowels is
common. Restaurantgoers and food shoppers in the United States ended
up imitating southern and northern dialects,
  where speakers often do not speak their endings, Professor Albertini said.

  Liliana Dussi, a retired New York district director for the Berlitz
language schools, said many first- and second-generation Italians
whose ancestors immigrated to the United
  States before World War I were informally taught Italian expressions
and the names of food, some of which has ended up part of everyday
language in New York, New Jersey and
  Connecticut.

  And Gregory Pell, an assistant professor at Hofstra University who
teaches Italian, said that because of the way double consonants were
spoken, such as the double ''t'' in
  manicotti, Americans might not clearly hear the last ''ee'' sound.
When New Yorkers drop their endings, he said, ''it's become a new
word and its own version.''

  Professor Albertini, speaking from an educated, native Italian's
perspective, said ''it makes us cringe sometimes at the beginning,
but we get used to it.''

  Ms. Dussi said that she did hear some lovely Italian spoken in New
York, which she attributed to widespread use of computerized language
lessons and an emphasis on
  education. American universities teach the standardized version,
which is based on 13th-century Florentine vernacular and
pronunciations.

  And only once in her 20 years in working for Berlitz did a student
specifically ask to learn a dialect, Ms. Dussi said. That student
worked as an agent for the F.B.I. and wanted to
  speak like a Sicilian.

  The rest of us can improve by following some simple rules. ''In
proper Italian, you always pronounce every letter and the double
consonants,'' Ms. Dussi said. ''The only letter
  you don't pronounce is the silent h.''

  That is, pronounce all final vowels, including the final sound in
manicotti. For the word bella, which means beautiful and contains a
double consonant, the correct pronunciation is
  ''bel-la'' not ''bel-a,'' she said.

  Within the 20 regions in Italy, 10 to 18 main dialects are currently
spoken, Professor Pell said, and if they are broken down by their
nuances, the count could go into the
  hundreds. Historically, each dialect is virtually a different language.

  Joseph Trovato, who owns an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, said
that he understood dialects from Bari, Sicilian and Naples but that
when his son, Lenny, studied Italian in
  college, he could not help him: ''I didn't understand what he was saying.''

  Among the class conscious, anything less than standardized Italian
is sneered at, Professor Albertini said. But many say it is more of a
personal choice when to speak in dialect.
  In Ms. Dussi's native region of Istria, now a part of Croatia, the
teacher who taught standard Italian in school would speak in the
local tongue once the final school bell rang.

  Some find it easier to start with the standard. ''If I speak with an
Italian guy who is a stranger, it's not in a dialect,'' said Sal
Chimienti, a member of a Brooklyn Italian social
  club, Mola Club. ''It's in perfect Italian.'' Although Mr. Chimienti
said he understood almost all Italian dialects, when his wife, Mary,
a native of Naples, was alive, they spoke to
  each other in English.

  Tony Affronti, who owns Los Paisanos Meat Market in Brooklyn, said
he made no attempt to teach his English-speaking customers the proper
Italian pronunciations. Likewise,
  some of them do not even attempt to pronounce the names of the
Italian meats lining the showcase.

  ''They look and say, 'What's this over here?''' he said, imitating
the flick of their head.

  As for the linguistically challenged, who mangle ''prosciutto,'' he
said, ''as soon as they open their mouths, we know exactly what they
want.''