I find it funny when I am in the US and someone tells me: "Oh, you're Italian? So am I!"
My internal reaction is: "No you're not. Your an American of some Italian descent." I get your point about people the "I am ___" because it's simpler, esp. amongst Americans, but for me it just looks like equating having a grandparent of a certain nationality who landed in
Ellis Island in 1910 with having lived all your life in a country, speaking its language as a first language etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people preserving their immigrant culture, but as I said, this form is a bit funny from an Eruopean point of view.
Interesting about Italian names becoming popular in the US...Incidentally,
Gianna is the kind of name that has pretty much fallen out of use in Italy, so it's a bit like insisting on using Celtic spellings when even "real" Scots and Irish use the anglicized ones.
This message was edited 1/21/2008, 4:50 AM