Editing Italian Americans (section)

===Language===
{{Main|Italian language in the United States}}

{| class="wikitable floatright"
|+Italian speakers in the U.S.
|-
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Speakers
|-
| 1910{{ref|foreignborn|a}} || style="text-align:center" |1,365,110
|-
| 1920{{ref|foreignborn|a}} || style="text-align:center" |1,624,998
|-
| 1930{{ref|foreignborn|a}} || style="text-align:center" |1,808,289
|-
| 1940{{ref|foreignborn|a}} || style="text-align:center" |1,561,100
|-
| 1960{{ref|foreignborn|a}} || style="text-align:center" |1,277,585
|-
| 1970{{ref|foreignborn|a}} || style="text-align:center" |1,025,994
|-
| 1980<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/acs/Table2.xls |title=Appendix Table 2. Languages Spoken at Home: 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2007. |publisher=[[United States Census Bureau]] |access-date=August 6, 2012}}</ref> || style="text-align:center" | 1,618,344
|-
| 1990<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/census/table5.txt |title=Detailed Language Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for Persons 5 Years and Over--50 Languages with Greatest Number of Speakers: United States 1990 |year=1990 |publisher=[[United States Census Bureau]] |access-date=July 22, 2012}}</ref> || style="text-align:center" |1,308,648
|-
| 2000<ref>{{cite web |url=http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_00_SF3_QTP16&prodType=table |archive-url=https://archive.today/20200212212514/http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_00_SF3_QTP16&prodType=table |archive-date=February 12, 2020 |title=Language Spoken at Home: 2000 |publisher=[[United States Bureau of the Census]] |access-date=August 8, 2012}}</ref> || style="text-align:center" |1,008,370
|-
| 2011<ref>{{cite web |title=Detailed Languages Spoken at Home by English-Speaking Ability for the Population 5 Years and Over: 2011 |url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2013/acs/acs-22/acs-22.pdf |website=census.gov |publisher=[[US Census Bureau]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190908175914/https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2013/acs/acs-22/acs-22.pdf |archive-date=September 8, 2019 |page=3}}</ref> || style="text-align:center" |723,632
|-
| colspan="2" |{{note|foreignborn|a|Foreign-born population only<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab06.html |title=Mother Tongue of the Foreign-Born Population: 1910 to 1940, 1960, and 1970 |date=March 9, 1999 |publisher=[[United States Census Bureau]] |access-date=August 6, 2012}}</ref>}}
|}
According to the Sons of Italy News Bureau, from 1998 to 2002 the enrollment in college [[Italian language]] courses grew by 30%, faster than the enrollment rates for [[French language|French]] and [[German language|German]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.osia.org/public/pdf/Italian_Lang_Study_2003.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091222003039/http://www.osia.org/public/pdf/Italian_Lang_Study_2003.pdf|url-status=dead|title=Sons of Italy News Bureau|archive-date=December 22, 2009}}</ref> Italian is the fourth most commonly taught foreign language in U.S. colleges and universities behind Spanish, French, and German. According to the U.S. 2000 Census, Italian is the sixth most spoken language in the United States after English, with over 1 million speakers.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-29.pdf |title=Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000|year=2003 |access-date=September 3, 2010}}</ref>

As a result of the large wave of Italian immigration to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Italian and Sicilian were once widely spoken in much of the U.S., especially in northeastern and [[Great Lakes]] area cities like [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], [[Rochester, New York|Rochester]], [[Detroit]], [[Chicago]], [[Cleveland]] and [[Milwaukee]], as well as [[San Francisco]], [[St. Louis]] and [[New Orleans]]. Italian-language newspapers exist in many American cities, especially New York City, and Italian-language movie theatres existed in the U.S. as late as the 1950s. ''[[L'Idea]]'' is a bilingual quarterly published in Brooklyn since 1974. ''[[Arba Sicula]]'' (Sicilian Dawn) is a semiannual publication of the society of the same name, dedicated to preserving the [[Sicilian language]]. The magazine and a periodic newsletter offer prose, poetry and comment in Sicilian, with adjacent English translations.

Today, prizes like the Bordighera Annual Poetry Prize,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.italianamericanwriters.com/Prize.html |title=The Bordighera Poetry Prize |publisher=Italianamericanwriters.com |access-date=January 16, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130115135454/http://www.italianamericanwriters.com/prize.html |archive-date=January 15, 2013 }}</ref> founded by Daniela Gioseffi, Pietro Mastrandrea and Alfredo di Palchi, with support from the Sonia Rraiziss-Giop Foundation and Bordighera Press, which publishes the winners in bilingual editions have encouraged authors to write in Italian. Chelsea Books in New York City and Gradiva Press on [[Long Island]] have published many bilingual books due to the efforts of bilingual writers of the diaspora like Paolo Valesio,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/italian/fac-bios/valesio/faculty.html |title=Faculty |publisher=Columbia.edu |date=February 22, 1999 |access-date=September 3, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100624030615/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/italian/fac-bios/valesio/faculty.html |archive-date=June 24, 2010 }}</ref> Alfredo de Palchi,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.italianamericanwriters.com/dePalchi.html |title=Contemporary Italian American Writing&nbsp;— Alfredo de Palchi |publisher=ItalianAmericanWriters.com |access-date=September 3, 2010 }}</ref> and Luigi Fontanella. Dr. Luigi Bonaffini<ref>{{cite web|url=http://userhome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bonaffini/DP/index.html |title=Italian Dialect Poetry |publisher=Userhome.brooklyn.cuny.edu |access-date=September 3, 2010 }}</ref> of the City University of New York, publisher of ''The Journal of Italian Translation'' at Brooklyn College, has fostered Italian dialectic poetry throughout Italy and the U.S. [[Joseph Tusiani]] of New York and New York University,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://siba3.unile.it/ctle/tusiani/biography.htm |title=Joseph Tusiani – Biography |publisher=Siba3.unile.it |access-date=September 3, 2010 |archive-date=July 16, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716104922/http://siba3.unile.it/ctle/tusiani/biography.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> a distinguished linguist and prize-winning poet born in Italy, paved the way for Italian works of literature in English and has published many bilingual books and Italian classics for the American audience, among them the first complete works of [[Michelangelo]]'s poems in English to be published in the United States.

[[File:Don't Speak the Enemy's Language, Speak American.jpg|left|thumb|A war-time poster]]
Author Lawrence Distasi argues that the loss of spoken Italian among the Italian American population can be tied to U.S. government pressures during World War II. During World War II, in various parts of the country, the U.S. government displayed signs that read, "Don't Speak the Enemy's Language". Such signs designated the languages of the [[Axis powers]], German, Japanese and Italian, as "enemy languages". Shortly after the Axis powers declared war on the U.S., many Italian, Japanese and German citizens were interned. Among the Italian Americans, those who spoke Italian, who had never become citizens and who belonged to groups that praised [[Benito Mussolini]], were most likely to become candidates for internment. Distasi claims that many Italian language schools closed down in the [[San Francisco Bay Area]] within a week of the U.S. declaration of war on the Axis powers. Such closures were inevitable since most of the teachers in Italian languages were interned.

Despite previous decline, Italian and Sicilian are still spoken and studied by those of Italian American descent and it can be heard in various American communities, especially among older Italian Americans. The official Italian taught in schools is [[Italian language|Standard Italian]], which is based on 14th century literary [[Florentine dialect|Florentine]].<ref>{{Treccani|storia-della-lingua_(Enciclopedia-dell'Italiano)|titolo=Storia della lingua|autore=Vittorio Coletti|accesso=22 maggio 2017|data=2011}}</ref> However, the "Italian" with which Italian Americans are generally acquainted is often rooted in the [[Regional Italian]] and [[Italo-Dalmatian languages]] their immigrant ancestors brought from Italy to American, primarily [[Neapolitan language|southern Italian]] and [[Sicilian language|Sicilian dialects]] of pre-unification Italy.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained|title=How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained|last=Nosowitz|first=Dan|date=November 5, 2015|website=Atlas Obscura|access-date=June 14, 2019}}</ref>
[[File:Italian USC2000 PHS.svg|thumb|upright=1.4|[[Italian language in the United States]]]]

Despite it being the fifth most studied language in higher education (college and graduate) settings throughout America,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.vistawide.com/languages/us_languages.htm |title=Languages Spoken and Learned in the United States |publisher=Vistawide.com | access-date=September 3, 2010 }}</ref> the Italian language has struggled to maintain being an [[Advanced Placement|AP course of study]] in high schools nationwide. It was only in 2006 that AP Italian classes were first introduced, and they were soon dropped from the national curricula after the spring of 2009.<ref>{{cite news |author-link=Mary Pilon |last=Pilon |first=Mary |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703674704575234232176866638?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth |title=Italian Job: Get Back on AP Exam |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |date=May 10, 2010|access-date=September 3, 2010}}</ref> The organization which manages such curricula, the [[College Board]], ended the AP Italian program because it was "losing money" and had failed to add 5,000 new students each year. Since the program's termination in the spring of 2009, various Italian organizations and activists have attempted to revive the course of study.

Web-based Italian organizations, such as ItalianAware,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.italianaware.com/|title=ItalianAware-Home|date=January 31, 2019|accessdate=March 3, 2024|archive-date=January 31, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190131020041/http://www.italianaware.com/|url-status=bot: unknown}}</ref> have begun book donation campaigns to improve the status and representation of Italian and Italian American literature in the [[New York Public Library|New York public libraries]]. According to ItalianAware, the [[Brooklyn Public Library]] is the worst offender in New York City.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.italianaware.com/literaturedonations |title=Literature Donations |publisher=Italianaware.com |access-date=September 3, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110713064613/http://www.italianaware.com/literaturedonations |archive-date=July 13, 2011 }}</ref> It has 11 books pertaining to the Italian immigrant experience available for checkout, spread across 60 branches.

==== Italian American pidgin ====
Italian American pidgin or Italian American slang is a [[pidgin language]] thought to have developed in the early 1900s in American cities with a large Italian population, primarily [[New York (state)|New York]] and [[New Jersey]]. It soon spread to many [[Little Italy|Italian communities]] across cities and metropolitan areas in both the [[United States|U.S.]] and [[Canada]]. It is not a language in its own right but is a mix of the various [[Languages of Italy|Italian dialects]] and [[American English]].<ref>{{cite web |title=AMERICAN ITALIAN SLANG WORDS |url=https://letslearnslang.com/italian-american-slang-words/ |website=LETS LEARN SLANG|date=June 15, 2021 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=American-Italian dictionary |url=https://americanitalian.net/ |website=americanitalian.net}}</ref>