Italians of the Diaspora

Hi Azzurro

Have you ever visited 'a Vaddi dî Tempî ?

We have an expression from my neck of the woods, appropriate for this site: aviri passatu vaddi e vadduna - said of someone who has travelled widely, experienced much of the world, who has been a bit adventurous in his life, who has been there done that, etc.

Hi Joey,

I visited quite abit, but not as much as I wanted too, how about you? Austrailia must be nice, alot of Italians in Melbourne if I am not mistaken? What exact paese are you from in la buona Sicilia?
 
I like them. The lastone comes Alessandria, where my great-grandmother's hometown is located. Thanks for the recommendations! I have to start listening more Italian music. The last song I listend was the one of the 1990 World Cup (my favorite World Cup), I think it's called "estate italiana".

Yes, that's the name of the song. We also have a thread for regular, i.e. not classical and not folk music of Italy for about the last 80-100 years. I almost always provide an English translation. It's under Arts and Entertainment and then music.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ngs-in-Italian

For me, of the World Cups I've watched, it's the 2006 one that I love, both for the drama of the Italy-Germany game, and for the great squad, and, of course, because we won the World Cup that year. There used to be a great compilation of goals of that Italy-Germany game with commentary by a man called Andres Montes, I think. I can't find it quickly, but it was wonderful; he was as excited as the Italian announcers.

This is a funny video of commentary on those miracle goals against Germany by announcers from seven different countries. Montes does the Spanish language one. He's absolutely stupendous. Que barbaro, he said, Lo quiero ver otra vez!Also, he was chanting, Alessandro Magno!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prGwgU8BMyo

This is a compilation of the goals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eGO6flHA8

I watched that Italy-Germany game on a huge screen at an Italian restaurant in Sarasota, Florida while we were on vacation. I totally embarrassed my husband and children because I couldn't sit in my seat. It was ok because the owners were actually from Argentina, and once Argentina was gone, they supported Italy, especially against Germany. When those two goals were scored in the last moments the whole place went wild. Some of the staff even went out dancing in the street, and the owner gave everyone a drink on the house. It's a great memory.
 
Hi Joey,

I visited quite abit, but not as much as I wanted too, how about you? Austrailia must be nice, alot of Italians in Melbourne if I am not mistaken? What exact paese are you from in la buona Sicilia?

I've visited twice. My family came from the Eastern side of Mt Etna, on the foothills before you drop down to the sea. I visited my mother's old farmhouse, long abandoned. Behind you sits Mt Etna, snow capped for about 8 months of the year, below are beautiful vistas over the Mediterranean, and you can even make out the cliffs of Taorminal in the distance.

It's amazing that such desperately poor people could live in such a beautiful spot.
 
Yes, that's the name of the song. We also have a thread for regular, i.e. not classical and not folk music of Italy for about the last 80-100 years. I almost always provide an English translation. It's under Arts and Entertainment and then music.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ngs-in-Italian

For me, of the World Cups I've watched, it's the 2006 one that I love, both for the drama of the Italy-Germany game, and for the great squad, and, of course, because we won the World Cup that year. There used to be a great compilation of goals of that Italy-Germany game with commentary by a man called Andres Montes, I think. I can't find it quickly, but it was wonderful; he was as excited as the Italian announcers.

This is a funny video of commentary on those miracle goals against Germany by announcers from seven different countries. Montes does the Spanish language one. He's absolutely stupendous. Que barbaro, he said, Lo quiero ver otra vez!Also, he was chanting, Alessandro Magno!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prGwgU8BMyo

This is a compilation of the goals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eGO6flHA8

I watched that Italy-Germany game on a huge screen at an Italian restaurant in Sarasota, Florida while we were on vacation. I totally embarrassed my husband and children because I couldn't sit in my seat. It was ok because the owners were actually from Argentina, and once Argentina was gone, they supported Italy, especially against Germany. When those two goals were scored in the last moments the whole place went wild. Some of the staff even went out dancing in the street, and the owner gave everyone a drink on the house. It's a great memory.
The 2006 Cup is the one I hate the most beacuse Germany cheated and they had the referee on their side. The referee was a corrupt! After Argentina lost and left the Cup I supported Italy too, like almost all Argentinians, so the owners of the restaurant were okay haha
 
Hello everyone!
I'm from Montevideo (Uruguay). My paternal grandfather was from San Martino di Lupari (Veneto). We still have relatives there, with whom we are in contact through Facebook. My paternal grandmother, Uruguayan, was a granddaughter of Italians, of Liguria, I believe. And my maternal grandmother, also Uruguayan, had a Neapolitan grandfather. Here in Uruguay, as in Argentina, Italian immigration has influenced the peculiar accent of our Spanish, and has contributed many words. In addition to eating various types of pasta, and pizza (brought by immigrants and not by Hollywood movies), we also have fainá, Pasqualina cake, polenta, etc. The Italian presence is very noticeable in my country, and influences even those who do not have a drop of Italian blood ...
 
Hello everyone!
I'm from Montevideo (Uruguay). My paternal grandfather was from San Martino di Lupari (Veneto). We still have relatives there, with whom we are in contact through Facebook. My paternal grandmother, Uruguayan, was a granddaughter of Italians, of Liguria, I believe. And my maternal grandmother, also Uruguayan, had a Neapolitan grandfather. Here in Uruguay, as in Argentina, Italian immigration has influenced the peculiar accent of our Spanish, and has contributed many words. In addition to eating various types of pasta, and pizza (brought by immigrants and not by Hollywood movies), we also have fainá, Pasqualina cake, polenta, etc. The Italian presence is very noticeable in my country, and influences even those who do not have a drop of Italian blood ...

Welcome, Italouruguyan,

Obviously some Ligurians did immigrate there if you eat fainá! :)
 
My Italian side came from 3 regions of Italy from my mother. Kind of like a Frankenstein, patched together from different parts of Italy to end up in upstate NY to marry one another. My mother's paternal grandfather came from a small mountain town commune called Ferrazzano, Campobasso in Molise. I always hear the joke when I'm in Italy when I mention Molise is that "it doesn't exist". They say it's so small, that nobody ever goes there and it's full of drunk people. Maybe some of that is true. One thing that is true that the ancient inhabitants were a fierce, stubborn warrior group called the Samnites who fought the Romans on many occasions. The tribe was called the Pentri. The Lombards and Avar/Bulgars settled the area where they have excavated their graves goods and were buried with their horses. Paul the Deacon in the 8th century wrote about them and how they still spoke "Latin" but also their language at home. They have some interesting religious traditions and festivals in Molise including Castelnuovo del Volturno. I'm also related to Robert de Niro, who's family were from Ferrazzano and who's grandparents also moved to my city in NY.

My mother's paternal grandmother all came from a region miles from the swiss border of Lombardia in a small town in Brescia. Not much is known to me about them because my great-grandmother died of the flu when she was quite young during the Flu epidemic in the US. My grandfather was sent to an orphanage with his brothers. His father remarried a Sicilian woman who's family hated my family. My grandfather wasn't too fond of her for the many troubles she put them through including involving the FBI with an unknown "Sicilian witch" who threatened to put a curse on my family unless a ransom was paid. Old world malocchio.

My mother's maternal side all came from Avellino in Campagna. They left Italy because my great-grandmother didn't want to marry the man she was set up with. So she ran off with her lover, and came to NY. After giving her 8 children, my great-grandfather disappeared and changed his name, starting a new family in Massachusetts for god knows why. The family didn't speak about it. My great-grandmother started a boarding house for Italians needing a contact, looking for work and a place to stay. Avellino is another area steeped with Samnite traditions. They were the tribe called Hirpini. This name means the wolf in ancient Oscan but oddly it made it's way into English from Oscan via Latin, French and into English and became the word hearse. Strange. Italian diaspora interests me deeply. A great book called On the Ocean about emigration is by Elmondo De Amicis. It's his personal account on board the Nord America from the port of Genoa to Uruguay in 1884. Funny thing is that I'm moving to Sassari Sardinia with my fiance this winter. My mother says I'm going in reverse! I would love to make a film documentary about all of the places in the world that the Italian diaspora settled. Below is a little video about Samnites in Molise and the pictures are the deer man in Castelnuovo del Volturno.
orso-e-cervo-ridotta.jpg2727a307e412ca41aa03e7c590a088b0--the-dance-blog-entry.jpg
 
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My Italian side came from 3 regions of Italy from my mother. Kind of like a Frankenstein, patched together from different parts of Italy to end up in upstate NY to marry one another. My mother's paternal grandfather came from a small mountain town commune called Ferrazzano, Campobasso in Molise. I always hear the joke when I'm in Italy when I mention Molise is that "it doesn't exist". They say it's so small, that nobody ever goes there and it's full of drunk people. Maybe some of that is true. One thing that is true that the ancient inhabitants were a fierce, stubborn warrior group called the Samnites who fought the Romans on many occasions. The tribe was called the Pentri. The Lombards and Avar/Bulgars settled the area where they have excavated their graves goods and were buried with their horses. Paul the Deacon in the 8th century wrote about them and how they still spoke "Latin" but also their language at home. They have some interesting religious traditions and festivals in Molise including Castelnuovo del Volturno. I'm also related to Robert de Niro, who's family were from Ferrazzano and who's grandparents also moved to my city in NY.

My mother's paternal grandmother all came from a region miles from the swiss border of Lombardia in a small town in Brescia. Not much is know to me about them because my great-grandmother died of the flu when she was quite young during the Flu epidemic in the US. My grandfather was sent to an orphanage with his brothers. His father remarried a Sicilian woman who's family hated my family. My grandfather wan't too fond of her for the many troubles she put them through including involving the FBI with an unknown "Sicilian witch" who threatened to put a curse on my family unless a ransom was paid. Old world malocchio.

My mother's maternal side all came from Avellino in Campagna. They left Italy because my great-grandmother didn't want to marry the man she was set up with. So she ran off with her lover, and came to NY. After giving her 8 children, my great-grandfather disappeared and changed his name, starting a new family in Massachusetts for god knows why. The family didn't speak about it. My great-grandmother started a boarding house for Italians needing a contact, looking for work and a place to stay. Avellino is another area steeped with Samnite traditions. They were the tribe called Hirpini. This name means the wolf in ancient Oscan but oddly it made it's way into English from Oscan via Latin, French and into English and became the word hearse. Strange. Italian diaspora interests me deeply. A great book called On the Ocean about emigration is by Elmondo De Amicis. It's his personal account on board the Nord America from the port of Genoa to Uruguay in 1884. Funny thing is that I'm moving to Sassari Sardinia with my fiance this winter. My mother says I'm going in reverse! I would love to make a film documentary about all of the places in the world that the Italian diaspora settled. Below is a little video about Samnites in Molise and the pictures are the deer man in Castelnuovo del Volturno.
View attachment 9435View attachment 9436

Great video. I have a lot of respect for them that they want to keep this tradition and the ancient method of producing cheese alive.
 
Parents' grandparents ancestry locations

How the ancestry locations of someone from the "diaspora" looks like. :)

How to read the map:

Orange - father side
Yellow - mother side

Circles - locations of their grandparents
Bigger quadrates - locations of great-grandparents' who were born in different places from grandparents
Smaller quadrates - known ancestry locations even farther in time

Polygons (total of 8 clusters) cover ancestry locations of each of their grandparents.

Red traces above the quadrates indicate the origin of the most distant known ancestor in male line. The associated cluster is therefore related to the paternal grandfather.
Red traces below the quadrates indicate the origin of the most distant known ancestor in female line. The associated cluster is therefore related to the maternal grandmother.

PGM indicates the cluster related to the paternal grandmother.
The remaining cluster is related to the maternal grandfather.



I met only my maternal grandfather. His native language was what they call "Talian", a mix of North Italian dialects and traces of Portuguese. He barely spoke Portuguese itself, and he usually "italianized" Portuguese words, so the communication with him was not easy. More or less like this (the difference is that he did speak "some" Portuguese, even if very badly, and with a huge accent):

Or like the vecieta in this documentary:

I remember to ask him, a little before he passed away, if he would like to know Italy. He said no, because there was just misery in there. Lol Well, he was a very simple man from the country, illiterate (hadn't have the opportunity to study, as many in that time and place), then he didn't know that Italy became a rich country. He was probably based on what his immigrant father told him many decades before. A point of view more than one hundred years old then. :)

My parents were born in "Italian" cities, and talked in Talian when they were children. My mother spoke it as first language till abt. 12 years old. I remember they talked in Talian when they didn't want we (me and my siblings) understand what they were talking. It worked just for a while, je je je.

Now we're all Italian citizens.
 
How the ancestry locations of someone from the "diaspora" looks like. :)
How to read the map:
Orange - father side
Yellow - mother side
Circles - locations of their grandparents
Bigger quadrates - locations of great-grandparents' who were born in different places from grandparents
Smaller quadrates - known ancestry locations even farther in time
Polygons (total of 8 clusters) cover ancestry locations of each of their grandparents.
Red traces above the quadrates indicate the origin of the most distant known ancestor in male line. The associated cluster is therefore related to the paternal grandfather.
Red traces below the quadrates indicate the origin of the most distant known ancestor in female line. The associated cluster is therefore related to the maternal grandmother.
PGM indicates the cluster related to the paternal grandmother.
The remaining cluster is related to the maternal grandfather.

I met only my maternal grandfather. His native language was what they call "Talian", a mix of North Italian dialects and traces of Portuguese. He barely spoke Portuguese itself, and he usually "italianized" Portuguese words, so the communication with him was not easy. More or less like this (the difference is that he did speak "some" Portuguese, even if very badly, and with a huge accent):
Or like the vecieta in this documentary:
I remember to ask him, a little before he passed away, if he would like to know Italy. He said no, because there was just misery in there. Lol Well, he was a very simple man from the country, illiterate (hadn't have the opportunity to study, as many in that time and place), then he didn't know that Italy became a rich country. He was probably based on what his immigrant father told him many decades before. A point of view more than one hundred years old then. :)
My parents were born in "Italian" cities, and talked in Talian when they were children. My mother spoke it as first language till abt. 12 years old. I remember they talked in Talian when they didn't want we (me and my siblings) understand what they were talking. It worked just for a while, je je je.
Now we're all Italian citizens.

Just watched the second video. Fascinating. A subculture of a subculture, the Cimbri. As he said, a mixture of Italian and German.

I was very moved by that poveretta, the ninety year old. She travelled those thirty-six days by sea, and then who knows how long by land, to a strange place, for "a better life". It doesn't seem any better to me. Worse, if anything. My great-aunt died in her mid-nineties. She too worked like a mule most of her life, but in her later decades she got rid of that black kerchief and clothes. In fact, she told me that of all the changes she had seen, cars, planes, electronics, that's what she appreciated the most, saying goodbye to those kerchiefs and getting her hair done once a week. :) She also loved her tv and the car and going to the shops or making a passeggiata. While she still cleaned and cooked until the very end, she wasn't farming. The old woman in the video was still out there with her zappa. Yet, everyone is different. I shouldn't be substituting my values and judgments for hers. She said she prefers the fields to work in the house. God bless her. Her eyesight may be going, but as of the time of this video her brain was still sharp and alert.

What difficult lives they led, what sacrifices they made for their children and grandchildren, our ancestors. It always broke my heart listening to them recount stories of the past.

I don't know if you ever looked the Cimbri up. This Wiki article on them is pretty good. You can see the Lessinia area mentioned in the Video.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbrian_language

Btw, there was a paper which discussed the Cimbri speaking groups in northeastern Italy.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081704

"The German speaking populations show the most marked signatures of genetic drift. As predicted by the outlying positions of Sappada, Timau and Luserna in the plot of genetic distances, the intra-group variation is very high (0.240, p<0.05), around two times higher than that found for geographically distant European populations. Moreover, the haplotype diversity values in these populations are the lowest of the the dataset, with the exception of Lessinia (see Table S6). Different haplogroups prevail in Sappada (E1b-V13 63%) and Timau (R1a-M17 56%), and different R1b subhaplogroups in Sauris (S139 34%), Lessinia (S116 17%) and Luserna (M269 84%). The considerable differentiation among German-speaking populations may be also seen as a consequence of their demographic history. In fact, they are in continuity with small founding groups [47] which settled in the present day location in Medieval times. Furthermore, as we have recently proposed [30], a relative reciprocal isolation could have occurred even among the linguistically closely related communities of Sappada, Timau, and Sauris as a result of “local ethnicity”. In this condition, the members of each community tend to identify their ancestry with their own village rather than considering themselves as part of the same ethnic group, similarly to what occurs in other alpine regions [48].

The genetic differentiation between the two Cimbri populations of Luserna and Lessinia deserves further discussion. Both these communities derive from Bavarian populations that colonized a vast territory of the Eastern Italian Alps starting from 1053 AD (Veneto; [49]) to 1216 AD (Trentino; [44]). Luserna is genetically very distant from all the other Alpine populations (average Fst=0.328; see Table S6) and shows a strikingly low intra-population diversity (0.483±0.119). Paternal lineages are represented mostly by the R1b-M269* (frequency of 84%), with six different STR haplotypes associated with only one founder surname. Lessinia shows different, if not opposite, features. The average genetic distances from other populations (Fst=0.097; see Table S6) is less than one third compared to Luserna, while HD is close to the highest values of our dataset (0.978±0.019; Table S6). The prevalent haplogroup, R1b-M269*, accounts for only one third of the total, the rest represented by different lineages (G-M201, I1-M253, M410-J2A and K-M9), which are associated with twenty-three different surnames. The demographic history of the Luserna and Lessinia communities may help explain their differentiation. Luserna was founded by few families which moved from Lavarone, the first known Cimbrian settlement in the territory of Trentino [44]. This could have led to a strong founder effect in this community, a hypothesis supported by a previous study of mtDNA polymorphisms [40]. Moreover, Luserna is located on a high plateau (1,333 m a.s.l.) and is quite isolated from the surrounding areas. By contrast, Lessinia, a more extensive area with reliefs of low altitude (Giazza, 758 m a.s.l.), and has been colonized since the XIII century AD through several migration waves of small groups of settlers for more than one century. From the XV century AD, this community opened to, and probably admixed with, Italian neighboring groups [49]."


That explains why the old women seemed so Italian to me.

We discussed it here:
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...-Alps?highlight=genetic+isolates+Italy-Cimbri
 
How the ancestry locations of someone from the "diaspora" looks like. :)
How to read the map:
Orange - father side
Yellow - mother side
Circles - locations of their grandparents
Bigger quadrates - locations of great-grandparents' who were born in different places from grandparents
Smaller quadrates - known ancestry locations even farther in time
Polygons (total of 8 clusters) cover ancestry locations of each of their grandparents.
Red traces above the quadrates indicate the origin of the most distant known ancestor in male line. The associated cluster is therefore related to the paternal grandfather.
Red traces below the quadrates indicate the origin of the most distant known ancestor in female line. The associated cluster is therefore related to the maternal grandmother.
PGM indicates the cluster related to the paternal grandmother.
The remaining cluster is related to the maternal grandfather.

I met only my maternal grandfather. His native language was what they call "Talian", a mix of North Italian dialects and traces of Portuguese. He barely spoke Portuguese itself, and he usually "italianized" Portuguese words, so the communication with him was not easy. More or less like this (the difference is that he did speak "some" Portuguese, even if very badly, and with a huge accent):
Or like the vecieta in this documentary:
I remember to ask him, a little before he passed away, if he would like to know Italy. He said no, because there was just misery in there. Lol Well, he was a very simple man from the country, illiterate (hadn't have the opportunity to study, as many in that time and place), then he didn't know that Italy became a rich country. He was probably based on what his immigrant father told him many decades before. A point of view more than one hundred years old then. :)
My parents were born in "Italian" cities, and talked in Talian when they were children. My mother spoke it as first language till abt. 12 years old. I remember they talked in Talian when they didn't want we (me and my siblings) understand what they were talking. It worked just for a while, je je je.
Now we're all Italian citizens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cla34bTSvIs
 
Just watched the second video. Fascinating. A subculture of a subculture, the Cimbri. As he said, a mixture of Italian and German.

I was very moved by that poveretta, the ninety year old. She travelled those thirty-six days by sea, and then who knows how long by land, to a strange place, for "a better life". It doesn't seem any better to me. Worse, if anything. My great-aunt died in her mid-nineties. She too worked like a mule most of her life, but in her later decades she got rid of that black kerchief and clothes. In fact, she told me that of all the changes she had seen, cars, planes, electronics, that's what she appreciated the most, saying goodbye to those kerchiefs and getting her hair done once a week. :) She also loved her tv and the car and going to the shops or making a passeggiata. While she still cleaned and cooked until the very end, she wasn't farming. The old woman in the video was still out there with her zappa. Yet, everyone is different. I shouldn't be substituting my values and judgments for hers. She said she prefers the fields to work in the house. God bless her. Her eyesight may be going, but as of the time of this video her brain was still sharp and alert.

What difficult lives they led, what sacrifices they made for their children and grandchildren, our ancestors. It always broke my heart listening to them recount stories of the past.

I don't know if you ever looked the Cimbri up. This Wiki article on them is pretty good. You can see the Lessinia area mentioned in the Video.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbrian_language

Btw, there was a paper which discussed the Cimbri speaking groups in northeastern Italy.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081704

"The German speaking populations show the most marked signatures of genetic drift. As predicted by the outlying positions of Sappada, Timau and Luserna in the plot of genetic distances, the intra-group variation is very high (0.240, p<0.05), around two times higher than that found for geographically distant European populations. Moreover, the haplotype diversity values in these populations are the lowest of the the dataset, with the exception of Lessinia (see Table S6). Different haplogroups prevail in Sappada (E1b-V13 63%) and Timau (R1a-M17 56%), and different R1b subhaplogroups in Sauris (S139 34%), Lessinia (S116 17%) and Luserna (M269 84%). The considerable differentiation among German-speaking populations may be also seen as a consequence of their demographic history. In fact, they are in continuity with small founding groups [47] which settled in the present day location in Medieval times. Furthermore, as we have recently proposed [30], a relative reciprocal isolation could have occurred even among the linguistically closely related communities of Sappada, Timau, and Sauris as a result of “local ethnicity”. In this condition, the members of each community tend to identify their ancestry with their own village rather than considering themselves as part of the same ethnic group, similarly to what occurs in other alpine regions [48].

The genetic differentiation between the two Cimbri populations of Luserna and Lessinia deserves further discussion. Both these communities derive from Bavarian populations that colonized a vast territory of the Eastern Italian Alps starting from 1053 AD (Veneto; [49]) to 1216 AD (Trentino; [44]). Luserna is genetically very distant from all the other Alpine populations (average Fst=0.328; see Table S6) and shows a strikingly low intra-population diversity (0.483±0.119). Paternal lineages are represented mostly by the R1b-M269* (frequency of 84%), with six different STR haplotypes associated with only one founder surname. Lessinia shows different, if not opposite, features. The average genetic distances from other populations (Fst=0.097; see Table S6) is less than one third compared to Luserna, while HD is close to the highest values of our dataset (0.978±0.019; Table S6). The prevalent haplogroup, R1b-M269*, accounts for only one third of the total, the rest represented by different lineages (G-M201, I1-M253, M410-J2A and K-M9), which are associated with twenty-three different surnames. The demographic history of the Luserna and Lessinia communities may help explain their differentiation. Luserna was founded by few families which moved from Lavarone, the first known Cimbrian settlement in the territory of Trentino [44]. This could have led to a strong founder effect in this community, a hypothesis supported by a previous study of mtDNA polymorphisms [40]. Moreover, Luserna is located on a high plateau (1,333 m a.s.l.) and is quite isolated from the surrounding areas. By contrast, Lessinia, a more extensive area with reliefs of low altitude (Giazza, 758 m a.s.l.), and has been colonized since the XIII century AD through several migration waves of small groups of settlers for more than one century. From the XV century AD, this community opened to, and probably admixed with, Italian neighboring groups [49]."


That explains why the old women seemed so Italian to me.

We discussed it here:
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...-Alps?highlight=genetic+isolates+Italy-Cimbri
Angela, thanks for this study. I'll read it with atention as soon as my little dude here allows. I took a while to do a simple map thanks to him. :)

That's what I thought when I first saw the vecieta: she looks Italian, not German at all. I guess that she was born in South Brazil. It was likely her parents who faced those "36 giorni di macchina e vapore", as the old song says. Merica, Merica... :)
I have a far ancestor "Cimbro del Cansiglio", who migrated from Altipiano di Asiago - where he married this ancestor from Ampezzo-UD - to North Treviso. I found it curious, since Ampezzo is relatively far from Asiago area. How did they meet?
Recently I figured out, thanks to a 23andMe match, that he probably belonged to Y J2b, which in fact is not exactly odd with we consider that some places in there must have lots of it, like Timau-UD: ~30%. Coincidently(?), Timau is not that far from Ampezzo.
http://cimbridelcansiglio.it
http://www.cimbri.info
(Probably not all infos concerning the origin are accurate, but...)

Cimbri in South Brazil were indeed a minority, but I'm not sure they were a minority among a minority. It depends. If we consider Brazil as a whole, then ok, sure; however, if we consider just that macro-area, then no: Italians were the majority by far, and still are, apart "perhaps" in Caxias do Sul, which became a big city.

I also found the documentary really touching. It inevitably brings us back to the difficulties those poor people encountered. Aside this exhausting journey that you mentioned, just in part through sea, they settled in a "virgin" area in South Brazil, with forests, and had to start from scratch. Not easy! Additionally, and perhaps the worst: many of them left relatives - sometimes very close ones - in Italy. I guess you know pretty well what I'm talking about, since you yourself had to migrate. Imagine the suffering with the separarion from siblings and parents, possibly knowing they would never see each other again. I know of situations like this in my own family, especially maternal. Four mother's great-grandparents left five 2nd great-grandparents in Italy. Not to mention siblings. For example, a father's maternal grandfather (so also his parents) left his sister (and daughter, respectivelly), who was already married at that time. (Then my father still has 3rd cousins in there, but they never met. Not yet.)

We have a good collection of stories on immigration btw, mainly from Est Editora (https://www.esteditora.com.br).

Well, things got better more recently, but I'm affraid that those immigrants and the first generation haven't reaped the fruits of their efforts. Who stayed in Italy were in better condition, apparently. Anyway, here we are. :)

Perhaps sometime in the near future I post more stuff related to the diaspora to (South) Brazil.
Cheers!
 
Still abt. ancestry locations, it astonishes me some migrations even inside Italy, like the one in my male line. It's not clearly represented in the map, but they stayed quiet just until ~1700. Since then, not a single man in male line was born in a same city, till my own little son. Just amazing! And I myself always wanted to migrate. Possibly some relatively recent mutations in Y-DNA? Just kidding! :)
 
Angela, thanks for this study. I'll read it with atention as soon as my little dude here allows. I took a while to do a simple map thanks to him. :)

That's what I thought when I first saw the vecieta: she looks Italian, not German at all. I guess that she was born in South Brazil. It was likely her parents who faced those "36 giorni di macchina e vapore", as the old song says. Merica, Merica... :)
I have a far ancestor "Cimbro del Cansiglio", who migrated from Altipiano di Asiago - where he married this ancestor from Ampezzo-UD - to North Treviso. I found it curious, since Ampezzo is relatively far from Asiago area. How did they meet?
Recently I figured out, thanks to a 23andMe match, that he probably belonged to Y J2b, which in fact is not exactly odd with we consider that some places in there must have lots of it, like Timau-UD: ~30%. Coincidently(?), Timau is not that far from Ampezzo.
http://cimbridelcansiglio.it
http://www.cimbri.info
(Probably not all infos concerning the origin are accurate, but...)

Cimbri in South Brazil were indeed a minority, but I'm not sure they were a minority among a minority. It depends. If we consider Brazil as a whole, then ok, sure; however, if we consider just that macro-area, then no: Italians were the majority by far, and still are, apart "perhaps" in Caxias do Sul, which became a big city.

I also found the documentary really touching. It inevitably brings us back to the difficulties those poor people encountered. Aside this exhausting journey that you mentioned, just in part through sea, they settled in a "virgin" area in South Brazil, with forests, and had to start from scratch. Not easy! Additionally, and perhaps the worst: many of them left relatives - sometimes very close ones - in Italy. I guess you know pretty well what I'm talking about, since you yourself had to migrate. Imagine the suffering with the separarion from siblings and parents, possibly knowing they would never see each other again. I know of situations like this in my own family, especially maternal. Four mother's great-grandparents left five 2nd great-grandparents in Italy. Not to mention siblings. For example, a father's maternal grandfather (so also his parents) left his sister (and daughter, respectivelly), who was already married at that time. (Then my father still has 3rd cousins in there, but they never met. Not yet.)

We have a good collection of stories on immigration btw, mainly from Est Editora (https://www.esteditora.com.br).

Well, things got better more recently, but I'm affraid that those immigrants and the first generation haven't reaped the fruits of their efforts. Who stayed in Italy were in better condition, apparently. Anyway, here we are. :)

Perhaps sometime in the near future I post more stuff related to the diaspora to (South) Brazil.
Cheers!

I would enjoy that.

The emotional and psychological cost of migration is sometimes too ignored. I think my mother cried continuously for five years after we came. My father worked all hours of the day and night, and my mother, who didn't speak a word of English, was left alone with us. Other than my father's family, none of whom lived within walking distance, no one spoke Italian. Well, there were a few people who spoke a sort of pidgen Neapolitan mixed with English, but that was about it. My own reactions were definitely not always positive. I remember crying and asking my mother why he'd brought us to a place where they didn't even have "BREAD"! :) Well, they had something they called bread, but I thought it was disgusting. It took a while to find Italian import stores so we could at least eat a semblance of our own food. Italian daughters are often very close to their mothers, but I think I became particularly so out of a sense that I had to protect her, translating for her at stores, banks, school conferences, since I picked up English so quickly. Heck, I was doing the banking when I was about thirteen. It does build character and fosters maturity, I'll say that for it.

It may have been different in South America, but in the U.S. the Italians had the highest rate of return to their home country out of all the immigrant groups. My paternal grandfather did it, dragging the first seven of his eleven children back to Italy with him (my father and the three youngest were born there). They made their money and went back home. I'm not surprised at all.
 
I would enjoy that.

The emotional and psychological cost of migration is sometimes too ignored. I think my mother cried for five years after we came. My father worked all hours of the day and night, and my mother, who didn't speak a word of English, was left alone with us. Other than my father's family, none of whom lived within walking distance, no one spoke Italian. Well, there were a few people who spoke a sort of pidgen Neapolitan mixed with English, but that was about it. My own reactions were definitely not always positive. I remember crying and asking my father why he'd brought us to a place where they didn't even have "BREAD"! :) Well, they had something they called bread, but I thought it was disgusting. It took a while to find Italian import stores so we could at least eat a semblance of our own food. Italian daughters are often very close to their mothers, but I think I became particularly so out of a sense that I had to protect her, translating for her at stores, banks, school conferences, since I picked up English so quickly. Heck, I was doing the banking when I was about thirteen. It does build character and fosters maturity, I'll say that for it.

It may have been different in South America, but in the U.S. the Italians had the highest rate of return to their home country out of all the immigrant groups. My paternal grandfather did it, dragging the first seven of his eleven children back to Italy with him (my father the three youngest were born there). They made their money and went back home. I'm not surprised at all.

This is a song of homesickness by a Ligurian immigrant to South America who returns so his bones can someday rest with those of his nonna. I know how he feels. :) It's in the dialect of Genova, so the Italian translation shows up at the bottom.

This is the English translation:



But if I think about it...

He had left without a single penny,
thirty years ago, perhaps even more.
He had struggled to put his money in a bank
and to be free to come back some day
and to build his house and his little garden
with a creeper, and a cellar for the wine
with a hammock tied to the trees to use it as a bed,
to rest on it in the evening and morning.
But his son told him «Don’t think about
Genoa, do you really want to go back there?!»


But if I think about it, then I see the sea,
I see my mountains, the Annunziata square1
I see Righi again, and I feel a pang in my heart,
I see the Lighthouse, the cave and the dock down there …
I see again Genoa by night, illuminated,
I see the foce on the shore and I hear the sea crashing,
and then I think to go back again
to lay my bones where my grandmother is.


And a lot of time passed, perhaps too much,
his son insisted: «We're fine here,
where do you want to go, dad? we’ll think about later:
the travel, the sea, you’re old... it isn’t convenient!»
«Oh no, oh no! I’m still quite spry and capable
I’m fed up, I can't stand it anymore,
I’m tired of hearing “señor caramba”
I want to go back again down there…
You speak Spanish since you were born here,
I was born in Genoa and …I won’t give up!»


But if I think about it, then I see the sea,
I see my mountains, the Annunziata square,
I see Righi again, and I feel a pang in my heart,
I see the Lighthouse, the cave and the dock down there …
I see again Genoa by night, illuminated,
I see the foce on the shore and I hear the sea crashing,
and then I think to go back again
to lay my bones where my grandmother is.


And without any fuss, like before, he departed
and in Genoa he built his nest again.

This is an English version which better captures the emotion, I think. I've heard this song dozens upon dozens, upon dozens of times, and still she makes me tear up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5CvEnRQqkA

Btw, not that it matters, but I think the old Cimbri woman made that journey. She talks about a young girl child dying and being buried in the sea. Can you imagine the suffering of the parents? No tomb with a picture to visit, to clean, to decorate with flowers. Horrible.
 
Nonna is Grandmother.

Nana is a Woman with Dwarfism.

People have various ways to call their Parents and Grandparents.
 
I know about the Darcy Loss Luzzatto, from Pinto Bandeira-RS, grandson of trentini and bellunesi. He is an enthusiast of the so-called Talian (https://youtu.be/YfnQkLHQQZs, and has done a grammar (~1994) and a dictionary (~2010).

I would enjoy that.

The emotional and psychological cost of migration is sometimes too ignored. I think my mother cried continuously for five years after we came. My father worked all hours of the day and night, and my mother, who didn't speak a word of English, was left alone with us. Other than my father's family, none of whom lived within walking distance, no one spoke Italian. Well, there were a few people who spoke a sort of pidgen Neapolitan mixed with English, but that was about it. My own reactions were definitely not always positive. I remember crying and asking my mother why he'd brought us to a place where they didn't even have "BREAD"! :) Well, they had something they called bread, but I thought it was disgusting. It took a while to find Italian import stores so we could at least eat a semblance of our own food. Italian daughters are often very close to their mothers, but I think I became particularly so out of a sense that I had to protect her, translating for her at stores, banks, school conferences, since I picked up English so quickly. Heck, I was doing the banking when I was about thirteen. It does build character and fosters maturity, I'll say that for it.

It may have been different in South America, but in the U.S. the Italians had the highest rate of return to their home country out of all the immigrant groups. My paternal grandfather did it, dragging the first seven of his eleven children back to Italy with him (my father and the three youngest were born there). They made their money and went back home. I'm not surprised at all.
So your grandfather migrated to America and then returned to Italy... Your father, years after, migrated to America. Is that right? Very interesting! It would be similar to what happened with my godfather. His maternal grandparents migrated to South Brazil, and his mother was born in Caxias do Sul. But then they returned to Treviso, where he was born, and married. In the 1940s, if my memory serves, the couple migrated to Argentina, and in 1950s to South Brazil, now definitely. His mother, born in South Brazil, lived in Treviso till her death with 107 years - believe me! Unfortunately, he himself didn't live that long.
These immigrations to Serra Gaúcha after 1900 were not common, that's why I think the vecieta was born in Antonio Prado-RS, Brazil, rather than Italy, and must have heard from her parents about that misfortune in the ship, involving the poor child. That was not rare, btw; I myself heard about it several times (on bodies thrown into the sea during the journey). Really horrible! Plus, at 9:25 the man asked: "Da dove sono venuti (i genitori)"?. At 17:40 she explains part of the journey, and uses "sono", not "siamo".
Anyway, I don't know how common returns were, compared to North America. I do know that many were disappointed (the propaganda in Italy was exaggerated). Still, some immigrants, satisfied, did send letters to relatives in Italy stimulating migrations; my guess is that sometimes they were absolutely sincere, and other times, still with good intentions, they were possibly distracted or induced by the fact they simply missed their folks. There were also letters of regret. It depends. So, some were really satisfied, some were not exactly happy but didn't want to go back for some reason, and some did want to return, as a mother-in-law's great-grandmother, just for example. After her husband tragically died, she wanted to go back to Italy with the kids, but she hasn't had the ways. To provide an example in my own family: years ago I sent a letter to the Anagrafe of a certain comune in Treviso, asking for a certificato di stato di famiglia storico, and the responsible person wrote more or less the following, in Italian:
- Hey, your ancestor was brother of my great-grandfather, who also migrated to Brazil, but returned to Italy soon after his twins died.
I myself didn't know, and later I saw it was in the same ship. Great coincidence! And it was her to said who my father's 3rd cousins from Italy are.
Anyway, some of these immigrants were very successful, and the descendants generally haven't lost the "attachment" to Italy. An example of both is Raul Randon and ancestors. Raul became a multimillionaire and has never forgotten his roots. You probably don't read Portuguese, but the Google Translator may help you to read this nice article about him and his visits to the ancestry location in Italy:
http://pioneiro.clicrbs.com.br/rs/c...mos-anos-de-vida-de-raul-randon-10803849.html

So, anyway the immigration thrived, and Brazilians, Italians, Germans etc. have done a good work in developing some areas: http://www.economist.com/news/ameri...eography-brazils-three-southern-states-escape

Interesting this story of yours. An additional difficulty your family faced apparently was this cultural "isolation", while in my area at least the Italians were almost completely surrounded by... Italians. :) I believe this fact softened a bit their way.

Thanks for the beautiful song. Really touching, and probably even more for those who experienced a migration to a distant place. You usually post some nice and interesting videos, btw. For example, I showed the trallalero for my father and the tammuriata for my mother. They liked them. My mother even shared it with the family. :)
 
I know about the Darcy Loss Luzzatto, from Pinto Bandeira-RS, grandson of trentini and bellunesi. He is an enthusiast of the so-called Talian (https://youtu.be/YfnQkLHQQZs, and has done a grammar (~1994) and a dictionary (~2010).

So your grandfather migrated to America and then returned to Italy... Your father, years after, migrated to America. Is that right? Very interesting! It would be similar to what happened with my godfather. His maternal grandparents migrated to South Brazil, and his mother was born in Caxias do Sul. But then they returned to Treviso, where he was born, and married. In the 1940s, if my memory serves, the couple migrated to Argentina, and in 1950s to South Brazil, now definitely. His mother, born in South Brazil, lived in Treviso till her death with 107 years - believe me! Unfortunately, he himself didn't live that long.
These immigrations to Serra Gaúcha after 1900 were not common, that's why I think the vecieta was born in Antonio Prado-RS, Brazil, rather than Italy, and must have heard from her parents about that misfortune in the ship, involving the poor child. That was not rare, btw; I myself heard about it several times (on bodies thrown into the sea during the journey). Really horrible! Plus, at 9:25 the man asked: "Da dove sono venuti (i genitori)"?. At 17:40 she explains part of the journey, and uses "sono", not "siamo".
Anyway, I don't know how common returns were, compared to North America. I do know that many were disappointed (the propaganda in Italy was exaggerated). Still, some immigrants, satisfied, did send letters to relatives in Italy stimulating migrations; my guess is that sometimes they were absolutely sincere, and other times, still with good intentions, they were possibly distracted or induced by the fact they simply missed their folks. There were also letters of regret. It depends. So, some were really satisfied, some were not exactly happy but didn't want to go back for some reason, and some did want to return, as a mother-in-law's great-grandmother, just for example. After her husband tragically died, she wanted to go back to Italy with the kids, but she hasn't had the ways. To provide an example in my own family: years ago I sent a letter to the Anagrafe of a certain comune in Treviso, asking for a certificato di stato di famiglia storico, and the responsible person wrote more or less the following, in Italian:
- Hey, your ancestor was brother of my great-grandfather, who also migrated to Brazil, but returned to Italy soon after his twins died.
I myself didn't know, and later I saw it was in the same ship. Great coincidence! And it was her to said who my father's 3rd cousins from Italy are.
Anyway, some of these immigrants were very successful, and the descendants generally haven't lost the "attachment" to Italy. An example of both is Raul Randon and ancestors. Raul became a multimillionaire and has never forgotten his roots. You probably don't read Portuguese, but the Google Translator may help you to read this nice article about him and his visits to the ancestry location in Italy:
http://pioneiro.clicrbs.com.br/rs/c...mos-anos-de-vida-de-raul-randon-10803849.html

So, anyway the immigration thrived, and Brazilians, Italians, Germans etc. have done a good work in developing some areas: http://www.economist.com/news/ameri...eography-brazils-three-southern-states-escape

Interesting this story of yours. An additional difficulty your family faced apparently was this cultural "isolation", while in my area at least the Italians were almost completely surrounded by... Italians. :) I believe this fact softened a bit their way.

Thanks for the beautiful song. Really touching, and probably even more for those who experienced a migration to a distant place. You usually post some nice and interesting videos, btw. For example, I showed the trallalero for my father and the tammuriata for my mother. They liked them. My mother even shared it with the family. :)

Thanks, Regio. I'm glad you and your family enjoyed them. :)

Yes, our adjustment to America was made much harder by the fact that we weren't surrounded by "Italians". We weren't even surrounded by "Italian-Americans". There were Italian descendants in the industrial town to which we migrated, but by the time we arrived, these people were third and even fourth generation Italians. If they spoke the language at all, it was their own dialect from Napoli or Reggio Calabria or Palermo, which was unintelligible to us. (The only Northern Italians I knew growing up were the members of my father's family, and the people at the "Parmigiano" club in Astoria, Queens, to which we drove a couple of times a year for events, and later, for some ill fated attempts to find me a husband among "our" kind of Italians. :) Most only had a smattering of it anyway.

Their food was different too. Even the Italy they knew from their grandparents' stories was a totally different Italy from ours. It no longer existed. It was surprising how little they actually knew of Italian culture and history, and that they didn't speak standard Italian. Then, it wasn't like New York City or Philadelphia or even Boston, where actual heavily "Italian" neighborhoods still existed and in fact still exist in part today. Everyone was scattered around, many had intermarried, etc. It also was a much bigger production in those days to stay in contact with family from home. My mother, and I, missed family desperately. Her father died suddenly of a stroke. When they finally let her know she screamed and fell to her knees in the kitchen. I still have it all in my head to this day.

All of this made it extremely difficult for my mother, and for me, because I was older and felt so attached to "home", and family, and friends. The very sights and smells here were so foreign, especially for my mother, who came from the Italian Riviera. Years later, my husband and I took my parents on a trip to California. When we got to Santa Barbara, and she saw the road hugging the sea, the palm trees, the fig trees, smelled the wild rosemary, and wild thyme and the flowers, she teared up. Why couldn't we have come here, she said. She had no idea America had a place like that. Not that the northeast isn't beautiful, but it's so very different.

La Spezia:
spezia.jpg


Lungomare:
la-spezia_dscf2066.jpg



Santa Barbara:
GettyImages-486896097.jpg



los-angeles-california-31-1024x768.jpg


Anyway, yes, my paternal grandparents went to the U.S. during the early migrations. My nonno started a logging company in Pennsylvania, where they had seven children. When he had made enough money he took them all back to Italy. It was all for nought. Instead of investing in good farmland near Sarzana in the plain, where he could have made an even bigger fortune, he bought apartment buildings and a restaurant and store. They didn't make the money he hoped. Then life became very difficult under the fascists, and slowly the much older children, who were American citizens, went back to the U.S. They had reverse homesickness. :) My father was the last holdout. A real Italian patriot, he didn't want to go, especially as things were finally starting to turn around. My grandmother literally forced him.

Oh well, it worked out in the long run. He became very successful, even though he was in his thirties when he arrived, with not one word of English, but it wasn't easy. Even my mother adjusted in time. She liked the convenience of life here, and the lack of the stultifying bureaucracy. Life in Italy can be spectacular if you have a good position, but even then it's not always convenient. :)
 

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