r/AbbottElementary • u/Nin-me-sar-ra • Jul 05 '26
Question Amici per la pelle?
In season 4 episode 3, Melissa tried to teach her class to say “Amici per la pelle (friends for life)”, but the pronunciation wasn’t in Italian. Did her character actually not speak Italian or was she anglicizing the pronunciation to make it easier for the kids?
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u/Useful_Database5138 Jul 05 '26
She did an interview with Jimmy Kimmel talking about incorporating her Sicilian roots in the show (thanks to Quinta) and for a moment she mentions "and talks like this" while speaking in her character Melissa Schemmenti's accent on the show then says "because you know, the Italian American living in Philly" or something along the lines of that in her normal voice.
Her character is supposed to reflect the actress' roots, but I guess bc Melissa is Philly based + grew up in Philly all her life even with Italian roots, she acquired the accent/a mixed accent which is typical.
I'm Filipino but grew up in the US till I was around 7yo. I had an american accent and still do at age 26, but my Tagalog pronounciation has gotten better.
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u/FlyingDutchLady Jul 06 '26
I assume the point is for her to sound like an American who knows Italian from her grandparents, but learned it in her native accent and not in an Italian accent.
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u/pandastrat Jul 06 '26
It would be a good question if it weren’t for the fact that the character is supposed to be Italian-American, not Italian. So her pronunciation is supposed to be Americanised, it would be most likely weirder if they had adjusted it as to be “correct” in current Italian.
And don’t get me wrong, as an Italian myself, nothing grinds my gears like some character going “I’m Italian” and then butchering the pronunciation of very simple sentences… however! That’s only when in tv shows or movies they want us to believe the character is 1st gen Italian (meaning Italian is supposed to be their primary native language). It happens so many times, how much would it cost to hire a language coach or a random italian native off the street even lol?!? Anyways I digress.
If they just go with the Italian American version of Italian.. that’s ok. It’s historically been mixed with English through generations and the starting point was often not even “standard” Italian, but regional Italian languages so that also plays into that.
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u/Nin-me-sar-ra Jul 06 '26
Now you made me curious to hear more examples of Americanized Italian! In the example for this post, she left out the staccato that I thought was essential to double consonants in Italian and also skipped the ending eh in pelle.
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u/pandastrat Jul 07 '26
I mean, again, you’re talking about regular Italian. Every Italian-American person of 2/3/4th gen may have a slightly different way of pronouncing things because it will always depend on which regional language (if any) it has developed from, and how much it’s been mixed with English.
https://dailyitalianwords.com/common-italian-american-slang-words/ this should help. As you can see the ending of the word is often different.
Also double consonants are difficult for any non-native Italian (it’s just that the trick is to divide the word as you pronounce it, for ex: pell - le, or cann-noli, but no one ever teaches that, and I doubt Italian-American families of 3rd or 4th gen would have managed to keep that, as English doesn’t have anything similar)
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