Advantages And Disadvantages Of Being An Italian Immigrant
Mini project a)
All my great-grandparents were Italian immigrants who stablished themselves in Colombo, South of Brazil, around the end of the 1800s. They were speakers of Veneto, a variety of Italian spoken in the North of Italy until nowadays, and so was the second generation. The third generation, my parents, are capable of understanding it, but not always of speaking it. My father would communicate with his parents exclusively in Veneto, but in Portuguese in any other social context. My mother can also understand it quite well, but will have difficulties building up sentences that are not commonly used.
The fourth generation, which includes my siblings and me, usually neither understands nor speaks it. My younger brother and I can understand some words or short sentences that are often used by our parents, but we have not been exposed to the language enough to be able to communicate.
Even though my generation cannot not be considered as Veneto speakers, we had a strong sense of being part of a group. In the school where I studied throughout my childhood, we had a clear separation between groups: the Italian descendants and the ‘others’, often students with darker skin and from lower social classes. Within the Italian descendants group, however, there were those who had specific marks in their speech which would give away their rural – and …show more content…
The ability to pass for a Curitiba speaker granted me not only the social belonging to my immediate community in the classroom and school, but also the ability to hide my true origin when it was convenient. I was, however, accused by my Colombo friends of speaking like a snob. This shows clearly what was the hierarchy relation between the two varieties: by having influences from the Curitiba variety in my speech in a context where my background was known, attempting to pass as a person from the big city was seen as
All my great-grandparents were Italian immigrants who stablished themselves in Colombo, South of Brazil, around the end of the 1800s. They were speakers of Veneto, a variety of Italian spoken in the North of Italy until nowadays, and so was the second generation. The third generation, my parents, are capable of understanding it, but not always of speaking it. My father would communicate with his parents exclusively in Veneto, but in Portuguese in any other social context. My mother can also understand it quite well, but will have difficulties building up sentences that are not commonly used.
The fourth generation, which includes my siblings and me, usually neither understands nor speaks it. My younger brother and I can understand some words or short sentences that are often used by our parents, but we have not been exposed to the language enough to be able to communicate.
Even though my generation cannot not be considered as Veneto speakers, we had a strong sense of being part of a group. In the school where I studied throughout my childhood, we had a clear separation between groups: the Italian descendants and the ‘others’, often students with darker skin and from lower social classes. Within the Italian descendants group, however, there were those who had specific marks in their speech which would give away their rural – and …show more content…
The ability to pass for a Curitiba speaker granted me not only the social belonging to my immediate community in the classroom and school, but also the ability to hide my true origin when it was convenient. I was, however, accused by my Colombo friends of speaking like a snob. This shows clearly what was the hierarchy relation between the two varieties: by having influences from the Curitiba variety in my speech in a context where my background was known, attempting to pass as a person from the big city was seen as