Pronunciation of Italian surnames in America

How do Italian-Americans pronounce their names? I was rather surprised when in a documentary Michael Franzese pronounced his surname as /frantsi:z/ instead of /frantse:ze/. I thought wrong pronunciation (compared to the Italian original) was a mistake by non-Italians.

d'angelo is don..gelo''sciaccia is shocka.. d'arco..is darko and so on

Franzeez as many say is actually "Fran-zeh-se". I do think the American way of saying them though sounds quite cool though, even though they are wrong.

sciaccia is actually pronounced shi-ak-chia, (cia)chia like chia pet.
but, sciacca is pronounced shi-ack-ka

D'Angelo is pronounced D-an-Jello

Not in Italy it's not. It's exactly how Bronx said it to be.

No, it's shi-ach'-chia, the double "c" has the "ch" sound, not the "k" one.

I don't think there is so much emphasis on the "Shi" part, it's more like "Shya-Cha". But anyhoo...I suppose it also depends on what region in Italy your from.

Here is a site you can use when looking for how exactly Italian words and names should be pronounced. It´s interesting! Click on the button, in front of the word/name.

http://sv.forvo.com/search/Sciascia/

Yes, I think you are right, I just don't know how to make sound transcription well, for many of them there are special letters, but if copied from wikipedia, they aren't visible here, maybe the site doesn't support the option.

First of all, you're all talking about a name that does not exist. There is no "Sciaccia".

You have Sciacca, like the town in Sicily and that's pronounced: Sha ka.

Then you have Sciascia, like the surname, and that's pronounced: Sha sha.

By the way, speaking of non-existent surnames presented as Italian, I for example never heard of the surname Pentangeli in real life, only in the Godfather movie. I once tried to search for this surname on a site that shows in which regions a particular surname is more common, but "Pentangeli" came with zero results.

The names Sollozzo and Tattaglia appear made up as well.

And sometimes they use real-life Italian surnames in mafia movies, but from the wrong region. For example, in "La piovra" ("The octopus") series some bosses of the Cupola are named Bartoli, Tirie', Caria, Salvati, Ceresa, Brocchieri, Lifredi and De Pisis. Some of the surnames maybe don't even exist and others are common in other regions, not Sicily. One of them (don't remember which) is common in Sardinia. De Pisis (the chairman of the Cupola in the series) is a Campanian surname, a rather rare one.