Re: [Leica] To all the Ameritalian LUGgers

["Dan Post" <dwpost@email.msn.com>]

 This thread is somewhat amusing, and a bit sad. It seems that even the
Americans of Italian descent are prone to stereotypical concepts. Not that
they are prejudiced, but that their perceptions are colored by the social
interactions with their families, and reflect the perceptions of where their
families left.
At one of my favorite pizzarias, run by a group of Neopolitans, I practice a
new word every week, sometime trying a new verb once in a while. I picked up
some phrases, usually from listening and reading the sleeves of my opera
records. I was somewhat surprised to find that the dialect of Bella Firenze,
used in a lot of operas, is different that the way it is spoken in everyday
Naples! A buddy in the Navy, Merluzzi, introduced me to Sicilians, his
ancestry, while we were in Boston, and whose dialect I found at time almost
remeniscent of Latin. Italy has not been a unified country for more than
about a century and a half, and still the customs, dialects and even food
differ widely through out. You go to Pisa, the Po valley, and in Northern
Italy, there are some villages where they speak German on one side of the
street, and blonds speak Italian on the other. In Calabia, where the Greeks
once colonized, at the heel of the boot, you can be hard pressed to find
pasta at times, but the pastry wrapped fish and meat dishes there are
wonderful, and not what you'd think as Italian food! Tuscany, and there wine
and food, while geographically not that far from even Naples, is a whole
other world- the food and wine is different, and even the history is
different. The Etruscan flavor is much more pronounced. Egad! I feel a road
trip coming on!
The Hills of the Piedmonte are as different from the shore of the Bay of
Naples as night and day, and I find an infinite wonder in the cultural
diversity of what is loosely called Italian Culture.... Not to mention the
varied cultures with in the other members of the EU!
Dan
- -Europe, anyone?