{"id":22199,"date":"2015-11-11T10:26:52","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T15:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=22199"},"modified":"2015-11-11T13:24:26","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T18:24:26","slug":"gabagool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=22199","title":{"rendered":"Gabagool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Nosowitz &#8212; \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.atlasobscura.com\/articles\/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained\" target=\"_blank\">How capicola became gabagool: The Italian New Jersey accent, explained<\/a>\", <em>Atlas Obscura<\/em> 11\/5\/2015 &#8212; explains the backstory of this video clip:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4EHFRYVxhd8?rel=0\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Of course, as Nosowitz explains, it's not specifically \"New Jersey\" &#8212; you can hear the same thing in New York City or in South Philly, where <em>pizza<\/em> might sometimes be [\u0251'bits].<\/p>\n<p>A bit more detail about the geographic origins of the various sound changes involved can be found in\u00a0Martin Maiden, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=J3jJAwAAQBAJ\" target=\"_blank\">A Linguistic History of Italian<\/a><\/em>, 2014. Maiden says this about final vowel lenition\/deletion:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/MaidenVowels.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/MaidenVowels.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>and this about consonant voicing:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/MaidenConsonantVoicing.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/MaidenConsonantVoicing.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And to put this in a broader context, see e.g. Andr\u00e9 Martinet, \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/410513\" target=\"_blank\">Celtic Lenition and Western Romance Consonants<\/a>\", <em>Language<\/em> 1952.<\/p>\n<p>I haven't been able to find the specific geographical distribution (beyond Naples) of the o-to-u raising in the last syllable of \"gabagool\" &#8212; or (for another example) in turning <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pasta_e_fagioli#In_popular_culture\" target=\"_blank\">pasta e fagioli<\/a><\/em> into \"past(a)e fazool\" = ['p\u0251.ste.f\u0251'zul]:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/69O4PXzAQ5Y?start=61\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In \"pasta e fagioli\" the o-raising looks like <em><a href=\"http:\/\/homepages.uconn.edu\/~anc02008\/Papers\/METAPHONY.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">metaphony<\/a><\/em> (\"a process in which a high vowel has a raising influence on a preceding stressed mid or low vowel\". But that won't work in \"capicola\" (which is apparently <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wordreference.com\/definizione\/capocollo\" target=\"_blank\">capocollo<\/a><\/em> in standard Italian, though that doesn't help&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p>Italian unstressed o is generally u in Sicilian (e.g. \"Sicilianu\" rather than \"Siciliano\"), but that doesn't help either for the stressed penultimate vowel in \"capocollo\" &#8212; and Sicilian doesn't generally delete final vowels either, as I understand it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Nosowitz &#8212; \"How capicola became gabagool: The Italian New Jersey accent, explained\", Atlas Obscura 11\/5\/2015 &#8212; explains the backstory of this video clip:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-variation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22199"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22213,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22199\/revisions\/22213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}