American Language (126 page)

“Two varieties of French, different yet closely related,” says Dr. William A. Read of Louisiana State University, “are spoken in Louisiana. The first variety is represented by a dialect which is not far removed from Standard French in syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation. This is the speech of most Creoles and of many cultivated Acadians. Naturally, some new words are used and various old words have acquired senses unknown in Standard French.”
⁶⁰
The Acadians (Cajuns), who are descendants of the French colonists expelled from Nova Scotia by the English in 1755, speak a dialect brought from their former home and showing kinship with
the dialects of the North, West and Center of France. There is yet a third variety of Louisiana-French. It is the Négre spoken by the Negroes, or, as they often call it, Congo or Gumbo — a vulgate based on the speech of the white Creoles, but much debased.
⁶¹
It is, says Dr. George S. Lane of the Catholic University, “the usual speech not only between Negroes, but also between white and Negro. In fact, few Negroes understand Standard French, hardly any speak it. Negro-French … is often the only type of French known to the children, especially to those under fifteen years of age.”
⁶²
It is composed, says Dr. Read, “of a highly corrupt French vocabulary, some native African words, and a syntax for the most part essentially African.” He gives the following specimen of it:

There is a large literature of this Gumbo-French, chiefly in the form of songs, and readers of Lafcadio Hearn, George W. Cable, Kate Chopin and Grace Elizabeth King will recall it. The written literature of the educated Creoles, now fading out in the face of the advance of English, was wholly in Standard French. Rather curiously, most of it was produced, not during the days of French rule, but after the American occupation in 1803. “It was not until after the War of 1812,” says a recent historian,
⁶³
“that letters really flourished in French Louisiana. The contentment and prosperity that filled the forty years between 1820 and 1860 encouraged the growth of a vigorous and in some respects a native literature, comprising plays, novels, and poems.” The chief dramatists of the period were Placide Canonge, A. Lussan, Oscar Dugué, Le Blanc de Filleneufve, P. Pérennes and Charles Testut; today all their works are dead, and they themselves are but names. Testut was also a poet and novelist; other novelists were Canonge, Alfred Mercier, Alexandre Barde, Adrien Rouquette, Jacques de Roquigny and Charles Lemaître. The principal poets were Dominique Rouquette, Tullius Saint-Céran, Constant Lepouzé, Felix de Courmont, Alexandre Latil, A. Lussan
and Armand Lanusse. But the most competent of all the Creole authors was Charles E. A. Gayerré (1805–95), who was at once historian, dramatist and novelist. Today the Creole literature is only a memory. “The time will inevitably come,” says Dr. Read, “when French will no longer be spoken in Louisiana; for Creoles and Aca-dians alike are prone to discard their mother-tongue, largely because they are compelled in their youth to acquire English in the public-schools of the State.” Even in St. Martinville,
le petit Paris
, says Dr. Lane, “most native residents between twenty-five and forty, while able to speak French, use it only among close associates or in addressing older people. Few under twenty-five make use of it at all, though they understand it readily and are able to speak it. Today, one hears ordinarily on the street either bad English or the Negro-French dialect spoken by white and black alike.”
⁶⁴

Rémy de Gourmont, the French critic, was the first to call attention to the picturesque qualities of the Americanized Italian spoken by Italian immigrants to the United States. This was in 1899.
⁶⁵
Nineteen years later Dr. Arthur Livingston, of the Italian department of Columbia University, published an instructive and amusing study of it, under the title of “La Merica Sanemagogna” (The American Son-of-a-Gun), in the
Romanic Review
(New York).
⁶⁶
Since then it has attracted other scholars in the United States, and a growing literature deals with it;
⁶⁷
in addition, it is not infrequently discussed in the books which Italian visitors write about their adventures and observations in this country.
⁶⁸
Finally, it has produced some interesting
writing of its own, ranging from such eloquent pieces as Giovanni Pascoli’s “Italy”
⁶⁹
to the Rabelaisian buffooneries of Carlo Ferrazzano. Ferrazzano, who died in 1926, wrote many
macchiette coloniali
for the cheap Italian theaters of New York. The
macchietta coloniale
was an Americanized variety of the Neapolitan
macchietta
, which Dr. Livingston describes as “a character-sketch — etymologically, a character-‘daub’ — most often constructed on rigorous canons of ‘ingenuity’: there must be a literal meaning, accompanied by a double sense, which, in the nature of the tradition, inclines to be pornographic.” The
macchietta
was brought to New York by Edoardo Migliaacio (Farfariello),
⁷⁰
purged of its purely Neapolitan materials, and so adapted to the comprehension of Italians from other parts of Italy. For nearly a generation it was the delight of the Italians of New York, but in late years it has gradually succumbed to the decline in Italian immigration and the competition of the movies and talkies. Farfariello wrote fully five hundred
macchiette
and Ferrazzano probably as many more; some of the latter were printed. They were commonly in verse, with now and then a descent to prose. I take from Dr. Livingston’s study a specimen of the latter:

The Americanisms here are obvious enough:
barra
for
bar, visco
for
whiskey, blacco enze
for
black-hand, laico
for
like, chistu
for
this, contri
for
country, fait
for
fight
(it is also used for
punch
, as in
chiaver nu fait
, give a punch, and
nato fait
, another punch),
loffari
for
loafers, ghiroppe
for
get up, bomma
for
bum, pulizio
for
police, nun gudde
for
no good, orré
for
hurray, giorge
for
judge, wazzo maro
for
what’s the matter, laste
for
last, naite
for
night, toccho
for
talk, tenne
for
ten, dollari
for
dollars
. All of the surviving
macchiette coloniali
are heavy with such loan-words; one of them, Farfariello’s “A lingua ’nglese,” is devoted almost wholly to humorous attempts to represent English words and phrases as the more ignorant Italians of New York hear and employ them. There has also been some attempt to make use of American-Italian on higher literary levels. Pascoli’s “Italy” I have mentioned. A satirical poem by Vincenzo Campora, entitled “Spaghetti House” and well known to most literate Italians in the United States, embodies
tomato sauce, luncheonette, drug-store
and other characteristic Americanisms.
⁷¹
Others appear in the following
sonetto
by Rosina Vieni:

Relatively few of the Italians who came to the United States during the great migration before the World War brought any genuine
command of Standard Italian with them. Those who had been to school at home had more or less acquaintance with it, but in the family circle and among their neighbors they spoke their local dialects, some of which were mutually unintelligible. In the main, the immigrants from a given section of Italy flocked together — New York, for example, got mostly Neapolitans and Sicilians, and the Pacific Coast a preponderance of Piedmontese and Genoese — but there was still a sufficient mixture to make intercommunication difficult. If all of the newcomers had been fluent in Standard Italian it would have served them, but not many had an adequate vocabulary of it, so resort was had to an amalgam of Standard Italian, the various Italian dialects, and the common English of the country, with the latter gradually prevailing. The result, says Mr. Anthony M. Turano, was “a jargon which may be called American-Italian, a dialect no less distinct from both English and Italian than any provincial dialect is distinct from the Italian language.”
⁷³
Mr. Turano believes that American loan-words now comprise “as much as one-fourth of the spoken language of Little Italy.” He divides them into three categories, as follows:

Mr. Turano continues:

Sometimes Italian and English words are combined in a grotesque manner. Thus, Dr. Livingston reports hearing
canabuldogga
in New
York, from the Italian
cane
, meaning a dog, and the English
bulldog
. A half-time barber, working only on Saturdays, is a
mezzo-barbiere
, a half-time bartender is a
mezzo-barritenne
, and presser’s helpers are
sotto-pressatori, sotto
being the common Italian designation for inferiority. The Italians in New York use
andara a flabussce
as a verb meaning to die: it depends for its significance on the fact that the chief Italian cemetery is in Flatbush. Similarly, they have made a word,
temneniollo
, meaning a large glass of beer, out of
Tammany Hall
. Not infrequently a loan-word collides with a standard Italian word of quite different meaning. Thus,
cecca
(check) means magpie in Italian,
intrepido
(interpreter) means fearless,
beccharia
(bakery) means butcher-shop,
rendita
(rent) means income,
libreria
(library) means bookstore,
tronco
(trunk) means cut off, and
sciabola
(shovel) means saber.
⁷⁴
“I was both puzzled and amused during my first week in America,” says Mr. Turano, “when I heard a laborer say quite casually that his daily work involved the use of a
pico
and a
sciabola
— that is to say, a pick and a saber!” Among the Sicilians,
gaddina
, meaning a chicken, is a common euphemism for the borrowed
goddam
.
⁷⁵
There are, of course, some differences in the loanwords in use in different parts of the United States. The Italians of the West are all familiar with
ranchio
(ranch) but it is seldom heard in the East; similarly,
livetta
(elevated) is hardly known in the West. Among the Neapolitans
d
and
t
in loan-words sometimes change to
r
, so that
city
becomes
siri, suri
or
zuri
, and
city hall
becomes
siriollo
. But the following forms, like most of the terms quoted above, are in general use:
⁷⁶