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Old 02-06-2015, 04:27 AM
 
935 posts, read 809,053 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by in_newengland View Post
Most cultures become assimilated into the mainstream culture of their new country... You can still maintain some of the old customs and especially the foods. Italian food is practically mainstream anyway in this country. Most cultures have lost their foods along with the language and other features of their original culture.

So true. My father's side of the family, which was Scots-Irish, settled in rural Iowa from Ohio about 160 years ago. Shortly after they settled there, a group of 2,000 immigrants from Holland arrived and built the town of Pella, Iowa. My family then intermarried with the Dutch. (My grandmother's family was Pella Dutch.) ( Pella, Iowa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ).

Pella is a wonderful example of how it's possible to keep the old European customs alive in America. Since it was a small, isolated town in rural Iowa, people there for several generations continued to speak Dutch and live as if they were still in Holland. You could have heard hundreds of people speaking Dutch on the town square on a Saturday morning as recently as 30 or 40 years ago. But as these old timers died away, the language died with them. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren (like me), who had no memory of Holland, became Americanized and never learned the language. But they are still proud of their Dutch heritage and they keep it alive through the town's Dutch-style architecture, food, and yearly festivals. Pella has a four-story Dutch windmill on the town square and they plant more than 50,000 tulips each year.

Here are a few photos of Pella. --Some people say that it's the most beautiful town in Iowa-- it looks like a small Dutch village.
Attached Thumbnails
American Italians vs. European Italians...-009_9861_molengracht_exterior_nightshot_canal_ppt.jpg   American Italians vs. European Italians...-images.jpg  
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Old 02-06-2015, 09:08 AM
 
Location: Jamestown, NY
7,840 posts, read 9,138,991 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RDM66 View Post
So true. My father's side of the family, which was Scots-Irish, settled in rural Iowa from Ohio about 160 years ago. Shortly after they settled there, a group of 2,000 immigrants from Holland arrived and built the town of Pella, Iowa. My family then intermarried with the Dutch. (My grandmother's family was Pella Dutch.) ( Pella, Iowa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ).

Pella is a wonderful example of how it's possible to keep the old European customs alive in America. Since it was a small, isolated town in rural Iowa, people there for several generations continued to speak Dutch and live as if they were still in Holland. You could have heard hundreds of people speaking Dutch on the town square on a Saturday morning as recently as 30 or 40 years ago. But as these old timers died away, the language died with them. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren (like me), who had no memory of Holland, became Americanized and never learned the language. But they are still proud of their Dutch heritage and they keep it alive through the town's Dutch-style architecture, food, and yearly festivals. Pella has a four-story Dutch windmill on the town square and they plant more than 50,000 tulips each year.

Here are a few photos of Pella. --Some people say that it's the most beautiful town in Iowa-- it looks like a small Dutch village.
This is an excellent example of what happened with many immigrant groups. Social historians studying immigrants to the US have found that where immigrants settled in large groups of almost exclusively their own ethnicity, whether in city neighborhoods or in rural settlements, they tended to maintain their language and customs generations longer than those immigrants who settled in predominantly "American" or in ethnically mixed communities because they were culturally isolated.

Some ethnic groups tended to settle in their own ethnic communities more than often than spread out. I think that the Jews from Eastern Europe and the Poles who immigrated between 1880 and 1920 were more likely to settle among their own than to go off and settle elsewhere. The Italians who came during this time seem to have been more split: some clumped together in "Little Italys" and some left the security of the large ethnic communities to venture out and form smaller ones as part of larger, very "American" communities. The families who stayed in the bigger group remained "Italian" longer than the ones who left individually or in small groups.

My Italian grandparents came to the US in 1909 with a couple of kids in tow and settled in Niagara Falls, NY, from Abbruzzi. City life didn't suit them, so they joined a group of other Italian immigrants who went to work in the farm fields in the agricultural area south of Buffalo in towns like Eden, Angola, and North Collins. In the winter they returned to Niagara Falls. After nearly a decade, they managed to save enough money to buy a small farm in North Collins and move there in 1918. There were other Italian American truck farmers in the area, too, but the town was predominantly WASP. All the children attended the little one-room school house up the road where they absorbed American culture and language. They only spoke Italian at home because their parents did. They attended the local Catholic Church but the priest spoke English not Italian because he also ministered to the good sized German Catholic population in the area. My father as well as several of his 8 siblings did not marry "good Italian" girls or boys but spouses of other ethnicities and raised their kids a "Americans".

Within another generation, all that was left of the Italian culture in my family was the family surnames, common Anglicized first names, and some recipes for traditional dishes ... as well as a knowledge of wine-making.
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Old 02-06-2015, 12:10 PM
 
15,630 posts, read 26,105,565 times
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Originally Posted by PA2UK View Post
My Nan told me herself that her father said this to her/her family and since she's the one who grew up in a household where English was banned from then on, I think she'd know. Even if you don't believe that specific quote, the fact of the matter remains that my Italian immigrant great grandfather obviously spoke Italian but NONE of his seven children could even say a complete sentence in Italian, and none of them or their children can remember my great grandfather ever speaking Italian.

Just because it doesn't fit your political agenda doesn't mean it's not true. FTR I have no issue with the US becoming multilingual - I actually wish my Nan had grown up bilingual and taught me Italian too! But this is not a political topic and the truth is that the attitudes of many immigrants in the past was often very, very different than it is today.
My father said the exact same thing about his father, who was German. In fact, we had a joke about it. German is verboten. I think in my grandpa's case, he came here speaking perfect English, but couldn't read it, and never naturalized. He never technically became a citizen, and passed himself off as one forever.

He pitched a fit when his son (my uncle) went into the Army and applied for a higher security job and his own family was vetted, which freaked my grandpa out. Uncle got the job... and grandpa stayed in the country...
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Old 02-11-2015, 02:59 PM
 
Location: Texas
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My Grandparents too on the Italian side said to their kids, my parents but a little differently, "We're in America now, we speak American".

However being from both Italian and Czech cultures it is more complicated. Each was different in terms of how they handled language. My Dad's 1st language was Czech although he was American born, due to his family's adherence to that part of their culture. I celebrate all of it, love it embrace it and hope parts of it will always remain somehow.
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Old 02-11-2015, 06:11 PM
 
Location: Jamestown, NY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by creepy View Post
My Grandparents too on the Italian side said to their kids, my parents but a little differently, "We're in America now, we speak American".

However being from both Italian and Czech cultures it is more complicated. Each was different in terms of how they handled language. My Dad's 1st language was Czech although he was American born, due to his family's adherence to that part of their culture. I celebrate all of it, love it embrace it and hope parts of it will always remain somehow.
There was a lot of pressure for immigrants and their children to assimiliate during the 1950s. It wasn't like threats but just more a sense of wanting to be like everybody else, to conform, to be "Americans". Maybe it stemmed from the fact that so many young men had seen service in the military during WW II and Korea. A lot of younger people today cannot fathom that.

The agitation by African Americans to study their own history (an off-shoot of the Civil Rights Movement) also made it "okay" for white Americans of various ethnic groups to investigate their own history. Prior to the 1970s, the only history 99% of Americans learned in school -- even in college -- involved rich or famous (or sometimes infamous) WASP Americans. School children might learn about the Irish who came in the 1850s, and about all the "gifts" immigrants brought to American like ethnic food.

Apparently, no Italians did much except cook spaghetti until Enrico Fermi came along.
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Old 06-25-2016, 10:32 PM
 
Location: Phoenix
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Originally Posted by the city View Post
Growing up, I was raised around traditional italian lifestyles because of my grandparents. After my grandparents passed on, old school italian traditions weren't passed on and all seem lost as my dad and his siblings are deep into modern culture. Italian food is about the only part of the culture left.

It seems even younger generation European italians are losing the old culture. As my siblings in Italy are turning to partying and partaking more into the modern culture.

I do see more American Italians upholding the old school values in areas like in Little Italys.

However, I think the Italian culture in America will eventually die into the American pot.

Thoughts? Is this to become the fate of most cultures as younger generations don't take on the older generation old traditions?
My wife's grandparents immigrated from Italy and she was raised in a predominantly Italian community. Some cultural identity remains but now our kids aren't really experiencing any of the Italian culture she grew up with and have no idea about it. So yea, melting pot scenario.
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Old 06-25-2016, 11:43 PM
 
1,519 posts, read 1,322,821 times
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Originally Posted by Linda_d View Post
This is an excellent example of what happened with many immigrant groups. Social historians studying immigrants to the US have found that where immigrants settled in large groups of almost exclusively their own ethnicity, whether in city neighborhoods or in rural settlements, they tended to maintain their language and customs generations longer than those immigrants who settled in predominantly "American" or in ethnically mixed communities because they were culturally isolated.

My father as well as several of his 8 siblings did not marry "good Italian" girls or boys but spouses of other ethnicities and raised their kids a "Americans".

Within another generation, all that was left of the Italian culture in my family was the family surnames, common Anglicized first names, and some recipes for traditional dishes ... as well as a knowledge of wine-making.

Yes when ethnic groups stick together their cultures thrive and live,the end part you wrote is so sad,thousands of years of traditions just gone.
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Old 06-25-2016, 11:58 PM
 
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What is considered traditional culture changes throughout time. What is considered traditional now was considered new and different at some time prior.
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Old 06-26-2016, 12:46 AM
 
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yes ethnic groups play with change but not wholly, that's what makes it a tradition.
in my little tribe most traditions have not changed for thousands of years,concepts like Lobola,dowry etc haven't changed much in thousands of years,
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Old 06-26-2016, 01:11 PM
 
Location: near bears but at least no snakes
26,634 posts, read 28,419,191 times
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When my grandparents came from working class England in 1912, my grandfather told the kids they would learn to play baseball and be American.

The kids lost their English accents and traditions but some of the foods did live on. We still ate Yorkshire pudding and fish and chips. When my aunt grew up she subscribed to UK magazines like Royalty. But that's about it. Only at Christmas time did everyone get together and the talk would inevitably drift to speaking about England and the English relatives. A few overseas phone calls would be placed to wish a Merry Christmas to them.

We never knew anything about our heritage. That was for the rich, not for ordinary people.

It is said that the first generation wants to FORGET. The second generation often wants to REMEMBER. Those of us who are the grandchildren of the immigrants are now the family historians.
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