Embrace or change? Identity and the Italian-Montreal accent
CBC's Rebecca Ugolini looks at the complicated relationship some Italian-Montrealers have with their accent
Have you ever cringed at a recording of your own voice?
As a broadcast journalist, I've often sat in a radio booth listening to tape of myself, zeroing in on something I can't ignore: the Italian-Montreal accent that colours my speech.
It's hard to put to paper just what I mean by an Italian-Montreal accent, but when you hear it, you'll know.
There's starting a sentence with "Me, I..." There's "tree" instead of "three."
There's "ah" at the end of many words and other long, drawn-out vowels accompanied by hand gestures.
Or my personal favourite: the "g" in "sangwich." Yes, really, it's sangwich.
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I didn't always think it was a big deal.
I grew up in Villeray and went to school in Montreal's east end, where most people had a heavier accent than mine. But shortly after recording one of my first radio pieces, a colleague told me that she "never realized how Italian [I] sound."
The comment wasn't ill-intentioned, but it made me obsessed with the sound of my voice.
I wanted to sound professional, and I couldn't reconcile that with having an Italian-Montreal accent. I wondered if I was alone in that struggle, so I set out to find out how other Italian-Montrealers feel about the way we talk.
Keeping your accent in check
As far as interview subjects go, Fabrizio Sciola is just about the proudest Italian-Montrealer I could have hoped to find.
Sciola runs a website that catalogues Italian-Montreal slang, and when we sat down in his east-end office, he was even wearing a polo embroidered with the Ferrari logo.
But like me, Sciola says he keeps his accent in check in a business setting.
"I've given it a lot of thought, a lot of effort, and yeah, I'm always watching myself," said Sciola.
"I'm sure it seeps through, but if I wasn't on guard, it would sound a lot worse."
Sounding smart
I wanted to know what qualities Sciola felt society associated with the Montreal-Italian accent – feeling with some trepidation that I already knew the answer to my own question.
"It's not the most intelligent- or sophisticated-sounding accent," he said.
"It's all perception: It may not be true, but I find that this type of Italian accent, it's more in the lower — it will tend to make you look bad, not well."
Sciola wasn't alone.
The more people I spoke to, the more I found that concerns about being judged on how you sound – not what you say – were common.
Speech pathologist Victoria Patenaude worked with an Italian Montrealer who wanted to learn to switch his accent off when doing business outside of Montreal.
It was even something I'd heard from my own mother, Alessandra Zanello. She worried that speaking with a heavy accent would be associated with negative portrayals of Italians in the media.
"That person is maybe going to be viewed as not very smart or doesn't have a real opinion – or is gonna be typecast as maybe what, in a movie, you are gonna see, or on TV you're gonna see," she said.
Connecting with the community
As I mulled over whether I'd internalized at least some of those stereotypes, I wanted to hear from someone who knew how to use a typically Italian-sounding accent to his own benefit.
Enter Pino Pirillo, a stand-up comedian from Rivière-des-Prairies, whose performances are peppered with Italian words, expressions and a generous accent.
Let's embrace it, let's be proud of who we are, because at the end of the day, we're beautiful people, - Italian-Montreal comedian Pino Pirillo
"The Pino that you see on stage is the Pino who is at the bar, relaxing with his friends and having fun," he said.
Like Sciola and myself, Pirillo admits to speaking in a more conventional way when he's conducting business, but that doesn't mean he thinks Italian-Montrealers need to completely overhaul the way they talk.
"As long as whatever you're trying to say is intelligent, then say it the way you're most comfortable saying it," he said.
"Let's embrace it. Let's be proud of who we are, because at the end of the day, we're beautiful people."
No right answer
So where does this leave me and my struggle?
Italian-Montreal pride, media stereotypes and community links aside, this experience has left me no closer to knowing what to do the next time I'm sitting in a booth, listening back to a recording of myself and wondering if something needs a second take.
It's been comforting to me to see that other people in Montreal's Italian community share the same struggle and doubts that I do, and it's made me think more deeply about how I want to portray myself as a third-generation Italian-Canadian.
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