Godfather 2 Subtitles With Italian Parts

[Berna Cagley]

Pleaseindulge me and let me ask a question that, while not directly related

to translation, may be indirectly related.I have heard the expression 'kapeesh?' used as an informal or slang way of

asking 'do you understand?' for most of my life, but I don't think I have

seen it in print. I cannot find it in any dictionary so I don't really know

how the word should be spelled.I believe it comes from the Italian word 'capisci' (the tu form of capire,

to understand) but should the word be spelled in the Italian manner when

used to represent the English slang?On the web, I find various spellings such as 'kapeesh' 'capeesh' or

'capiche' but nothing definitive.Any advice?Regards,Alan Siegrist

Orinda, CA, USA

AlanFS...@Comcast.net

Thank you, Karen, Brian and Nora. It may very well be a dialect form of the

word and not necessarily an authentic Italian word in its form as appearing

in Italian-American slang.I just found this item in Wiktionary:

interesting bits were: English

Alternative spellings

capice, capic, capiche, capeesh, capisch, capishe, coppish, kabish,

kapeesh, kapiesh, kapisch, gabbishe, gabishe, gabeesh.and 1997 Eric Bogosian. Notes from Underground, page 138

It's very simple, George, you forget about this whole licensing lawsuit

pipe dream of yours or you can forget about your buddy working in my

factory for the next couple of years. I will be that angry. Capiche?

2003 Richard Chiappone. Water of an Undetermined Depth

I mean, if you were coming into the plant for the long haul, God forbid,

then you'd have to think seriously about the money. Capiche?and It is important to underline that this is NOT an Italian word, in the

use in American English here described.

It is one of a set of Italian-American words not part of the use of the

Italian language.I found it interesting to note that the spelling "Capiche?" was used in the

two citations of the word as appearing in edited literature.If the word is in fact a dialect form, it may very well be justifiable to

use an anglicized spelling that differs from the standard spelling of the

word capisce in Italian.Capiche, paisano?

---------------

This is the type of thing to which the Google plebocracy is ideally suited.

It looks to me like Nora's and Brian's suggestion ("capisce") is the

hands-down winner, capisce?W

Capisce. It certainly looks so, but an awful lot of the hits on the spelling

'capisce' are on pages written in Italian, since this appears to be the

correct spelling of a common Italian word. I am really only interested in

the use and spelling of the word in English, not Italian. I am not sure how

to filter out those Italian hits.The spellings capice (capic) and capiche are roughly tied for second,

followed by capish, kapeesh, capeesh, kapisch and capisch in this order,

with the others trailing far behind.

Regards,

> an awful lot of the hits on the spelling

> 'capisce' are on pages written in Italian, since this appears to be the

> correct spelling of a common Italian word. I am really only interested in

> the use and spelling of the word in English, not Italian. I am not sure

> how to filter out those Italian hits.

When I used the Google language tools to set the language to English before

searching, I find that 'capisce' is still most numerous, but 'capiche' is a

close second. The difference (131K vs 78K) is not nearly as overwhelming as

when no language was specified.

Actually, I'm fairly certain that "kapeesh" derives from a bastardised

version of "capisce". Pop culture can do such a thing to a word, and

when something becomes a catch phrase, then you're going to see an

awful lot of different varieties come of whatever was the original

term. I'm sure that "capisce" is the formal Italian word as the more

informed can educate me, but in terms of English slang, then I assure

you there will be many who will barely understand "capisce", but may

freely use variations of "kapeesh", "capiche" or "capich" in casual

conversation. They didn't learn the meaning of the word as an Italian

verb, they learnt it from their friends or from movies, comics,

books... and simply emulate the usage as they see it occur in that

context.

Alan Siegrist wrote:

>

> > an awful lot of the hits on the spelling

> > 'capisce' are on pages written in Italian, since this appears to be the

> > correct spelling of a common Italian word. I am really only interested in

> > the use and spelling of the word in English, not Italian. I am not sure

> > how to filter out those Italian hits.

Something else may well be the proper and accepted spelling, but in

terms of slang, well anything goes! With no knowledge of Italian, all

I can tell you is that "capiche" is the spelling I have seen most used

in the (English only) mediums that I have encountered it in.HTH,Jacqueline Woo.

> I believe that "capisce" as a word is full-blooded Italian. I heard

> this word used by Italian tourists at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow (ca.

> 1978) when an attendant accused them gruffly (in Russian) of having damaged

> the opera glasses they had rented, to which the accused replied "Chi

> capisce?" "Who understands?"

So "capisce" is the third person, but as our resident polyglot Kirill

(rubish'?) pointed out, when you're talking to someone, it's "capisci?"

in standard Italian. The phrase in question is Sicilian, tho, so who

knows. Brazilian Portuguese has almost completely gotten rid of the

second-person forms, so if something similar happened in Sicilian, then

"capisce" would do double duty as second and third person.

In the Hollywood version of "Mafiaworld", it's Sicilian. In fact, an

Italian friend in high school told me that when they dubbed "The

Godfather" into Italian, they used standard Italian for the English

parts, and Sicilian for the parts spoken in Italian (ostensibly spoken

in Sicilian in the movie, too, but apparently it wasn't very well done -

accents, etc.), adding subtitles in standard Italian for those parts,

since Sicilian it pretty much opaque to your Giovanni on the street in

Rome.--

Marc Adler

Austin, TX

Given the contexts in which "kapeesh" is used, I suspect that its

origin is more likely to be the informal second person form "capisci."

After all, Italian-Americans who still retain their ancestral language

are likely to have picked it up at home, not in the types of formal

contexts in which people address one another as "Lei."As far as the misspelling "capiche" is concerned, that could come from

writers who don't know Italian and think that the word comes from

French.Surmisingly yours,

Karen Sandness

> In the Hollywood version of "Mafiaworld", it's Sicilian. In fact, an

> Italian friend in high school told me that when they dubbed "The

> Godfather" into Italian, they used standard Italian for the English

> parts, and Sicilian for the parts spoken in Italian

A normal evolutionary approach would suggest that geographical

proximity correlates with dialectic similarity, but Sicily has been a

Mediterranean crossroads for millennia, and simple linguistic models don't

hold. No wonder they feel like a different people from the mainland

Italians.Matthew Schlecht

This, which has been pointed out by several people now, is the key

point. The "Kapeesh?" that is used in modern Amlish is synonymous with

"You feeling (pronounced "fillin") me?," both of which have a very

informal tone, whereas capisce has a more formal register. This

difference is akin to わかった? (or even いいか) versus わかりますか.

Plus, the final I of capisci is almost completely unvoiced in standard

Italian (I know little about the Sicilian flavor, so I can't comment on

that), just like the final vowel sound in です. The final E of capisce,

on the other hand, is more vocalized. This also makes it more likely

that the "kapeesh" we use comes from capisci (which is indeed pronounced

almost exactly as kapeesh in Italian).

Finally, "ch" in Italian (all dialects, as far as I know) is pronounced

as K, so "capiche" would be ka-PEE-kay. That version, therefore, is

unacceptable to me.

Of course, Alan is asking about how to spell this in English, and

foreign words sometimes change their spelling upon immigrating. For

example, the Japanese word 少し is romanized as sukoshi, but in its

English mode the proper spelling is skosh, as in "Give me a skosh more

coffee." Therefore, all bets are off when it comes to how English

speakers who don't know Italian will write Italian words.

Incidentally, given the enormous influence of Italian immigrants in

this country, I find it interesting that Italian is so routinely

mispronounced by Americans, even Italian-Americans. To give just two

examples, the names of baseball player Jason Giambi and musician Chuck

Mangione are pronounced as gee-AM-bee and man-jee-OH-nee, respectively,

instead of JAHM-bee and man-JOAN-nay (and I don't mean with the exact

Italian pronunciation, but rather the Amlish approximation thereof).

Nevertheless, since we on this list pride ourselves as professional

writers, I'd like to think that we will want to use the most correct

form, and since no real standard spelling of this word "kapeesh" has

been established in English (unlike the case of skosh), I think it

behooves us to spell it as in Italian, or capisci. I mean, we are,

after all, the cognoscenti, not the conyoshenti or, God forbid, the

cog-no-SEN-ti.James Sparks

Now that might be a promising tack to take. If it is indeed a word in the

Sicilian dialect, I suppose the "correct" spelling would be how the word is

spelled in Sicilian. I am not quite sure how to determine that, though.Some extremely anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that some Sicilians (or

Sicilian wannabees) prefer to spell it "capice". See: -14572.html

> what the hell is capisce? it's Capice, goddamnit! C-A-P-I-C-E!

> If you are speaking with a Sicilian accent, it is pronounced "gabeesh." -bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=5733

> The word: Capice (pronounced cap-ish and not spelt Capiche),Regards,

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