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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.

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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