L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 4 T h e r e a r e m o r e than 16 million Americans who d e s c r i b e t h e m - selves as having Italian ancestry, according to the US Census Bureau, yet only about half a million peo- p l e i n t h e c o u n t r y r e p o r t speaking Italian at home. The figures measure different things, of course: one records family origins, the other the language people use in their households, and neither tells us how many Italian Ameri- cans understand Italian or have studied it. Still, the dif- ference is striking, especially in October, when the United S t a t e s c e l e b r a t e s I t a l i a n A m e r i c a n H e r i t a g e Month and, from October 19 to 25, the Italian language takes center stage during the Week of the Italian Lan- guage in the World. For a community whose history in America stretches back sever- al generations, these numbers raise an interesting question: what happens to an inherited cultural identity when the language once associated with it is no longer part of everyday life? The answer begins with something at times forgotten when talking about Italian immigration: many of the people who arrived in the U n i t e d S t a t e s d u r i n g t h e great migration of the late nineteenth and early twenti- eth centuries did not speak Italian as we understand it today. They came from Sicily, Campania, Calabria, Abruz- zo, Veneto, Piedmont, and other parts of a country that had only been politically uni- fied in 1861, and their every- day languages were often regional varieties that dif- fered considerably from the Italian taught in schools. Some spoke Italian alongside their local language, while o t h e r s k n e w l i t t l e o f t h e national standard, which was associated with education, administration, and a rela- tively small proportion of the population. Italy had been developing a common literary language for centuries, thanks largely to the influence of Tuscan w r i t e r s s u c h a s D a n t e , Petrarch, or Boccaccio, but having a literary standard was quite different from hav- i n g a n e n t i r e p o p u l a t i o n speak it; nevertheless, mass education, military service, internal migration, radio, and eventually television would help make Italian the common spoken language of t h e p e n i n s u l a d u r i n g t h e twentieth century. By then, however, millions of Italians had already settled in Ameri- c a , t a k i n g w i t h t h e m t h e speech of their towns and vil- lages instead of the standard- ized national language their d e s c e n d a n t s m i g h t n o w encounter in a textbook. Once in the United States, immigrants from different p a r t s o f I t a l y s o m e t i m e s found that they could under- stand one another only with d i f f i c u l t y , w h i l e E n g l i s h quickly became essential for work, school, and dealings w i t h t h e w i d e r A m e r i c a n society. Their children fre- quently grew up understand- ing the language spoken by their parents but answering in English, and the next gen- eration often inherited little more than particular expres- sions, family nicknames, and words associated with famil- iar activities. There were exceptions, naturally, espe- cially in households where Italian remained important or where immigration con- tinued to renew contact with the language. But the general direction was toward Eng- lish. However, describing this simply as a failure to pre- serve Italian would be mis- leading; for immigrant par- e n t s , e n s u r i n g t h a t t h e i r children spoke English flu- ently was often a practical necessity, particularly at a time when speaking another language could mark a family as foreign and expose chil- dren to prejudice. Language transmission was also affect- ed by circumstances that had l i t t l e t o d o w i t h c u l t u r a l pride: families moved away from immigrant neighbor- hoods, marriages crossed lin- guistic backgrounds, and the opportunities to use Italian o r a r e g i o n a l l a n g u a g e became fewer. What survived depended on what people continued to need, and Eng- lish increasingly provided the means to participate fully in American life. Italian-American iden- t i t y , meanwhile, demon- s t r a t e d t o b e r e m a r k a b l y adaptable, with families who continued to identify with the places their ancestors c a m e f r o m , a n d c u l t u r a l associations, religious insti- tutions, community newspa- pers, and local celebrations helping maintain connec- tions that no longer depend- ed entirely on language. In some families, knowledge of Italian survived alongside those traditions; in others, it did not. A person could grow The language we speak, the heritage we carry: what connects us to Italy today FRANCESCA BEZZONE NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS CONTINUED TO PAGE 6 Dante Alighieri, whose works helped establish the foundations of literary Italian, alongside a group of contemporary speakers, an image reflecting the evolution of a language that continues to connect Italy's literary heritage with the present (Original image created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI)

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