Canadian Italian: a Case in Point of How Language Adapts to
Environment
Canadian Italian: a Case in Point of How Language Adapts to Environment
By: Marcel Danesi
From: Polyphony Vol.7, 1984 ,
pp. 110-113 in Italians in Ontario
© 1985 Multicultural History Society of Ontario
By: Marcel Danesi
From: Polyphony Vol.7, 1984 ,
pp. 110-113 in Italians in Ontario
© 1985 Multicultural History Society of Ontario
The documentation of language contact phenomena has always been
of special significance for linguistics. Above all else, it has
contributed to our understanding if how a language that is used
outside its natural psycho-communicative setting is able to
respond adaptively to a new environment. A prototypical case in
point for the study of how a language can become an adaptive
instrument for its speakers is provided by the Italian spoken in
Canada, especially in the southern Ontario region where there
exists, to this day, a very large Italian-speaking community. (1)
It is the language of this particular community that has come,
predictably, often under the linguist's microscope, providing
valuable insights into the general nature of linguistic adaptation
mechanisms. (2)
The use of Italian in the ethnic community -- especially within
family structures -- reveals an interesting case of how a
"transplanted" language can come to fulfil a basic practical need
to express a new psycholinguistic experience. The Canadian version
of Italian (and its dialects) constitutes a case of what linguists
commonly refer to as an "ethnic dialect" or ethnolect, of
the mother tongue. This can be defined generally to be a version
of the language of origin which, primarily as a consequence of the
frequent borrowing and adoption of words from the culturally
dominant language, has come to characterize the speech habits of
the immigrant community. (3)
Wherever there exists prolonged contact between a culturally and
communicatively dominant language and an ethnolect, there is bound
to be an extensive borrowing of words from the dominant language
(the source language) by the ethnolect (the receiving language).
Thus it is that the ethnolect develops a distinctive linguistic
identity as a result of its use in an environment where another
language constitutes the normal vehicle for social interaction.
The borrowed words, known commonly by the metaphor loanwords,
reflect the adaptive process in a visible way.The speakers of the
receiving language -- first generation immigrants attempting to
cope with and to make use of the words which refer to the everyday
objects, concepts and ways of behaving which characterize the new
environment. In fact, it can be claimed, from a psycho-linguistic
standpoint, that it is through these newly acquired words that the
immigrant comes to understand the new reality.
As the loanwords pass into general currency among the members of
the immigrant community, they are adjusted unconsciously and
systematically to the pronunciation and grammatical patterns of
the receiving language. This process is referred to generally
asnativization. (4) Simply put,the foreign words are not
accepted in their original shape, but rather restructured to
conform to the articulatory and grammatical features of the
receiving language whence they become indistinguishable from
native words, often displacing native items with the same
referents. It is the conspicuous presence of many nativized
loanwords that has brought Canadian Italian repeatedly to the
attention of linguists, allowing them to document and analyze
etiologically the nativization process in action. Known
vicariously as italiese (a blend of italiano and
inglese "English") or Italo-Canadian this ethnolect
can be characterized as follows. From all structural points of
view it is essentially Peninsular Italian, i.e., in its phonology
(sound system), morphology (system of word inflections, word
formation, etc.) and Syntax (word and phrase construction), it is
identical to Peninsular Italian, or to any of its regional and
dialectal variants. In its lexical repertoire, however, it
contains many new words which have entered the language through
the nativization route. (5)
The Italo-Canadian ethnolect is used, to this day, primarily in
homes which still have first-generation members and in the ethnic
community at large, albeit increasingly sporadically. (6) As the
historian Robert F. Harney has pointed out, the Italian language
used in the many Little Italies, which characterize large urban
centres, constitutes a marker of ethnicity and thus of group
identification. (7) Having come primarily from small rural
villages during the last forty years, it should be no surprise to
find many first-generation immigrants who continue to cling to the
language or dialect of their region of origin. This allegiance to
the mother tongue is, paradoxically, an adaptive mechanism which
allows for the attenuation of the initial feeling of unease
vis-à-vis the new psychological and social reality.
As the immigrant gradually settles into the new society and begins
to understand the new language, the mother tongue starts to take
on a new meaning: it becomes a verbal link, so to speak, to one's
ethnic roots. At the same time, in its ethnolectal form, it allows
the immigrants to verbalize their new experiences and perceptions.
(8) It is, therefore, a marker of what may be called a "hybrid
ethnicity": the mother tongue allows the immigrants to maintain a
link to their heritage, while the newly acquired lexicon allows
them to relate to their new environment in a direct, verbal
way.
Predictably, the Italo-Canadian ethnolect does not have a
monolithic form, paralleling in its diverse manifestations the
heterogeneous linguistic situation that characterizes Peninsular
Italian. Thus, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of a Calabrian
ethnolect, a Sicilian ethnolect, a Friulian ethnolect, and so on.
Nevertheless, there does exist a "generalized" ethnolect that has
arisen in the course of the communicative interaction among
speakers of different dialectal backgrounds. This koiné
is heard commonly in Italian-speaking stores, restaurants,
places of work and the like. It constitutes a language continuum,
ranging from pure dialect on one end to Standard Italian on the
other. The speaker's position on this continuum is determined
primarily by educational background (i.e., by how much schooling
the speaker had previously acquired in Italy). In addition to
interactions of this type, one can mention the following factors
as contributing to an ethnolectal levelling effect: the local
Italian-language media in cities like Toronto, which promulgate
and rein force more general forms of Italian; increasing contacts
with Italy; and the popularity of Italian language courses at all
school levels. These factors have also helped to foster in the
community an ever-increasing awareness of the formal differences
between Peninsular and ethnolectal Italian.
To get an idea of the adaptation mechanisms involved in loanword
nativization, consider the common Italo Canadian words
carro "car" (Standard Italian automobile or
macchina) and squisare "to squeeze" (Standard
Italian premere). In the case of carro the following
processes have occurred: the English vowel represented by a
is replaced by the Italian vowel closest to it in articulation; a
final vowel is added to the word which gives it a grammatical
gender (in this case masculine); and ther between vowels is
doubled in conformity with a predictable phonological feature of
Italian. In the case of squisare, the -are ending
assigns the verb to the first conjugation, the most regular of all
Italian verbal paradigms, and the remaining sounds are
restructured according to native pronunciation patterns.
Obviously, these processes will vary in accordance to the actual
dialect or variant spoken; but they do characterize "canonical"
processes in the generalized ethnolect. The following chart
illustrates a few common English words that have been nativized
into the most general Italo Canadian form:
Standard Borrowed Word; Nativized Form; Italian Equivalent
store; storo; negozio
sink; sinco; avandino/acquaio
cake; checca; torta
mortgage; morgheggio; ipoteca/mutuo
fence; fenza; recinto
ticket; ticchetta; biglietto
to push; pusciare; spingere
to paint; pintare; verniciare
to freeze; frisare; congelare
smart; smarto; intelligente
cheap; cippe; economico
Once a word has been nativized, it is then treated grammatically
as any native item. Nouns, for instance, are pluralized in the
normal fashion: carro "car"- carri "cars,"
ticchetta " ticket"-ticchette "tickets," etc. Verbs,
all assigned to the first conjugation, are inflected and used in
the normal way: e.g., puscio "I push"; ho pusciato
"I have pushed"; puscerò "I will push"; etc. A
statistical analysis of the loanword data collected over the last
decade. (9) shows quite clearly that the majority of the borrowed
words (over 80 per cent) are nouns. These are assigned to both the
masculine and feminine genders. The factors which determine gender
assignment are too complex to mention here. Suffice it to say that
the shape of the word itself, its referent, its similarity to a
native item, and the like, all influence its gender.
Occasionally, the borrowed item is reshaped by the addition of
suffixes: e.g., "German" is rendered as germanese (Standard
Italian tedesco), "grocer" as grossiere (Standard
Italian alimentarista), "rent" as rendita (Standard
Italian affitto), and so on. It is also interesting to note
that some nativized loanwords coincide homophonically with native
lexical items which they have no semantic connection:
Standard Borrowed Word; Nativized Form; Italian Homophone
factory; fattoria; fattoria "farm"
brick; bricco; bricco "pot"
steam; stima; stima "esteem"
shovel; sciabola; sciabola "dagger"
The question of why an ethnolect will borrow many words has a
deceptively simple answer. Borrowing constitutes a
psycholinguistic response to new environmental conditions. An
examination of the loanwords shows quite clearly that they refer
to common objects or ideas which makes up the immigrant's new
world: they refer to the house and its contents, to automobiles,
to places of work, to clothing etc. Rarely do the loanwords refer
to abstract notions. In other words, they describe the immigrant's
new environment in ways that would not be possible, or
appropriate, by the lexical resources of the native language. Only
those words that express a shared experience will gain general
currency: a Canadian storo is something quite different
than an Italian negozio: a checca is certainly not
an Italian torta; and so on.
The ethnolect spoken in Canada elicits different reactions from
the Italian community. Among first-generation immigrants, the
degree of penetration of the loanwords is so high that they are
generally no longer of their foreign origin. Italians of
subsequent generations, recently arrived immigrants, teachers of
Italian, and others, consciously recognize most of the features
which distinguish Italo-Canadian form of Peninsular Italian. Many
simply accept it as an ethnic community language. Others,
however,view it negatively, considering it to be a deviant form of
the standard language. But whatever reaction it might elicit,
there is no doubt that the lexical peculiarities of the
Italo-Canadian ethnolect give testimony to how language and
environment interact. As the process of acculturation into the
dominant culture gains momentum in subsequent generations, it
comes as no surprise to find the ethnolect is being used less and
less. As Iannucci has previously pointed out, these generations
will not need the language to fulfil any communicative need.:
"Some, a few, will speak Italian, thanks to a strong intellectual
curiosity about their cultural heritage among third- and
fourth-generation immigrants. What their investigation into the
family's past leads them to is not the recovery of their ancestral
language but the standard Italian taught in summer school in
Perugia, Florence and Siena." (10)
