Italians vs Italian-Americans: The Family Italy Just Disowned
With a simple decree, Italy cut most of its diaspora out of citizenship. But the cultural dismissal of our cousins across the ocean was already there.
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Two truths and a lie about Italian-American speech:
Gabagool comes from capocollo.
Mutzadell comes from mozzarella.
They are both gibberish.
Number three is the lie. They are both Italian-American.
Italians will tell you that those words and their pronunciations are incorrect. Stupid even. (And so does Grammarly, which is screaming at me with red underlines.)
Language is a living body, constantly evolving beyond the textbook shackles of how it should be.
Those words are the linguistic evolutions of the southern dialects spoken by immigrants in the early 1900s. (This evolution is actually slower than the one in Italy, as we’ll discuss in a moment.)
Start with the Neapolitan “muzzarell”, add over a century of a community developing their own customs and linguistic choices independently from the motherland, and you’ll easily end up with “mutzadell.”
It’s not Italian, mind you. But neither was the original. Very few immigrants in 1905 knew standard Italian. They knew Neapolitan, Calabrian, Sicilian, and Apulian dialects. Languages, in their own right, that were close enough to enable understanding among the southern immigrants.
Italians are quick to dismiss the culture of Italian-Americans. At times, en passant, I have regrettably done so myself. But it’s a case of ignorance more than malice. Upon reflection, I think we Italians born and raised are wrong on this one.
The dismissal is reflexive, not researched
Aside from distaste for words that have evolved enough to sound distorted to native Italian ears, Italians take issue with those who identify as Italians.
In forums, you’ll often see threads from Italian-Americans asking how Italians see them. The universal answer is “Americans.” It’s not that they dislike you for being Italian-American. It’s that to them you’re simply American and no different than Irish-American or Polish-American.
On the podcast Cresciuto Italiano, authored by a few stereotypical Italian-Americans from Brooklyn, “Zero Italian in the whole room” is a common comment from native Italians.
The basic Italian reaction to “I’m Italian” is “Ah, sono italiano anch’io, di dove sei?” And the second the Italian-American has no idea how to respond, the native Italian will feel proud of having proven their lack of “italianità.”
Our North American cousins will either speak very little Italian or will typically do so with an American accent. Understandably so. To Italians, that’s proof you’re American, not Italian.
The truth is that Italians are generally not very knowledgeable about the culture Italian-Americans built in North America.
Because it is a culture. Different from the Italian one but born from a related ancestor.
So the dismissal is almost a knee-jerk reaction, not a researched assessment and consequent rejection of their culture.
Had they spent time studying the culture, they could have found genuine vehicles of attack. The cosplaying of mobsters by some is a fair target for criticism. So is the guy who calls himself Italian because his great-grandaunt once removed was from Sicily, and that’s the extent of it. Sorry, one distant relative and nothing else doesn’t count. This isn’t 23andMe.
But none of this is the part Italians actually mean when they perform the dismissal. They mean the food, the language, the accent, and the gestures. The entire inheritance which has genuine cultural value.
Part of the rejection of Americans who identify as Italian has its roots in dynamics that have nothing to do with them.
Italy is still a country where many northerners dislike southerners. Neapolitans are still characterized as barbarians by many in the north. Terrone, the slur word for a person from the south, is still commonly heard.
The same people calling anything south of Tuscany “Africa” are not going to classify as Italians the remote descendants of southerners who, to boot, don’t speak the language and don’t live in Italy.
This is relevant because Italian immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s were overwhelmingly from the Mezzogiorno (Italy’s south). Sicily, Campania, Calabria, and Apulia sent most of the Italians who emigrated to the US.
In Italy, we have a word to describe the distrust and prejudice against people from other regions and cities: campanilismo. The word comes from campana (bell), the attachment to one’s own bell tower. It runs deep.
So the dismissal of Italian-Americans is a form of campanilismo extended across the ocean. With the added benefit that the people on the other side are too far away to fight back. Plus, they might not even know the word polentone (a milder derogatory term for people in the north).
The cousins are not a metaphor
I referred to Italian-Americans as cousins. This might seem out of politeness, since many of my readers will indeed be Italian-Americans. It is actually a factual claim. The 17 million Americans of Italian descent are very much related by blood to the Italians who stayed behind.
A surprising number of those who emigrated are from a small number of southern villages. It was a chain migration process. A couple of sons from a family would go abroad, then get the rest of the family to come along too. Then, inspired, the neighbors would eventually send their own kids to the States or Canada.
So, entire neighborhoods of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Montreal came from small towns in Campania, Sicily, Calabria, and Puglia.
The “cousins” label is often literal.
Gabagool is Naples 1905, preserved
Many young Italians do not speak dialects today. They have a regional accent, they know some words, but long gone are the days when they spoke dialect as a first language.
This is a relatively recent development, however. Until the 1950s, most Italians did not speak standard Italian. They spoke dialects that are really regional languages related to Italian. And Italian was, at best, their second language.
That matters because terms like gabagool are not a random corruption of standard Italian. They are evolutions of southern dialect words.
Capocollo becomes gabagool. The same process gives you mutzadell from mozzarella, rigot from ricotta, and manigot from manicotti.
Italian-American speech has essentially become its own ethnolect. Not an invented language, like Esperanto. Rather, it’s partially a time capsule. A preserved version of southern Italian pronunciation from 1905, plus some natural evolution over time.
The irony is that the Italian-Americans preserved the same dialects that the Italian government marginalized in favor of standard Italian for a good part of the 20th century, through schooling and television programs.
So Italians now mock a “language” that is derived from the dialects Italy tried to bully out of the kids from the south.
Beyond the language, Italy evolved quickly after World War II, especially with the economic boom in the late 50s and early 60s. Traditions were lost. The hyper-local focus was dismantled by a public TV (RAI) that united and standardized Italy across the regions.
In North America, many traditions froze in place instead. Think saint feasts, Sunday meals, village loyalties, etiquette, etc.
The diaspora certainly drifted away from Italy, but Italy too drifted away from the version of itself it exported.
Chicken Parmesan is evolution, not an invention
Take chicken parmigiana. It is not fake Italian food. It is an Italian-American adaptation.
Parmigiana di melanzane already existed in southern Italy. My mom made a legendary one, in fact. So likely did her great-great-grandmother.
Italian-Americans simply made their own version, substituting eggplant with chicken when meat became affordable in America.
You’ll see this pattern constantly, and it explains why Italian-American food is richer and more caloric than that from the motherland.
Southern Italian cucina povera met the American abundance, and produced decadent versions Italians no longer recognize.
Much like the language, the recipes have evolved. They were not invented from nothing.
The slap of March 2025
Italians dismissed Italian-Americans from a social standpoint. They always questioned their italianità. However, in March 2025, Italy made this formal with a legal rejection.
The Italian government passed a decree, the so-called “Tajani decree”, that became Law 74/2025 in May 2025, limiting who can receive Italian citizenship.
In March 2026, the Constitutional Court rejected the first major challenges to the law, making it clear the reform is not going away anytime soon.
Before this law, most people with a distant Italian ancestor (like a great-great-grandma) could often receive Italian citizenship. Under the Tajani decree, eligibility is mostly limited to the descendants of Italian parents or grandparents.
Millions of Italian-Americans became ineligible overnight. The opposition deputy Nicola Carè called it “a deep, painful, and unjust wound.”
The message was clear: the cultural distance is now formalized into legal distance, too.
My personal theory, knowing how Italian ethno-nationalism works, is that Italian-Americans were essentially a casualty of Italy keeping out South American cousins.
The backlog of applications for juris sanguinis (citizenship by blood) was overwhelmingly from South American applications. Politicians have mentioned in multiple instances how Brazilians and Argentinians were using Italy as a way to obtain an EU passport to then go look for better opportunities elsewhere in Europe.
As much as they don’t see Italian-Americans as actually Italian, most Italians genuinely don’t take issue with an American 28-year-old girl dreaming of the Amalfi Coast. Neither do they have a problem with the Canadian, Australian, or British retiree deciding to spend the last two decades of their lives in the hills of Tuscany.
Some do take issue with people getting their EU passport through Italy and then heading straight for Germany.
So, on the surface, the law looks neutral. Everyone without an Italian parent or grandparent is cut off. In practice, the spirit of the law has uglier roots.
What we owe the diaspora
And here is the thing: Italy often acts as if Italian-Americans owe everything to Italy. Especially, cultural legitimacy.
In reality, Italy owes the diaspora a great deal, too.
Before the economic boom, emigrants sending money back to the south of Italy for decades genuinely helped the weak Mezzogiorno economy.
Italian-American restaurants helped globalize Italian cuisine long before Italy made food a key tenet of its tourism strategy.
Hollywood’s image of italianità, for better or for worse, was largely built by Italian-Americans.
The global brand of Italy abroad was not created by Italy alone. The diaspora did some heavy lifting, too.
How to actually find the cousin
You can hide your Italian roots and simply say “I’m American” or “I’m Canadian,” and Italians will embrace you with no suspicion. Or you can run with it. Because the divide is fixable.
Find the town where your ancestors are from. Do some research and go there. In many cases, you’ll be able to trace living relatives after looking at a few records and having local conversations.
The Italian government, new decree notwithstanding, still runs a turismo delle radici (roots tourism) initiative, and towns like Sambuca di Sicilia, Mussomeli, and Pacentro run programs specifically aimed at descendants.
For fellow Italians from Italy, here is my advice: replace the dismissal with questions. Ask which village. Ask for the surname. Ask who left and when. Be curious, not judgmental, as Ted Lasso put it.
Because often, the connection is still there.
Italian-American culture is not fake Italian culture. It is one branch of Italian culture that evolved separately after migration.
The cousins did not invent their identity out of thin air. They preserved parts of Italy that the country itself abandoned.
Italy, minus the filters.
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I am 100% Italian American. Italian ancestry on both sides. My family comes from Campania, Calabria and Sicily. All the places you talk about in this article. We use the words that you speak about and I had no idea where they came from except I assumed they were a Mish mash of something that was not really Italian. I don’t see myself as Italian. I see myself as American. Italian American, but I’m American first. I don’t speak Italian and when I’m in Italy, I don’t feel that it is my country. Italy has evolved since my family immigrated to the United States.
This was such a wonderful read for me, given my background
I got citizenship right before the decree. However, I grew up in a California suburb. Italian-American culture is almost as foreign to me as Italy itself. No gabagool in my house. I did study abroad and learned the language (sort of). I went to my great grandparents town. It's a process.
I never say "I'm Italian" anymore. That only makes sense within the US when speaking to other Americans. It's a misunderstanding. We never literally mean that. It's just a shorthand to talk about our ancestry.