The term "button"

[B.]

I lean toward what Tony said, that caporegime is a phonetic corruption of capodecina. It initially shows up as "caporegima", with a soft "a" at the end. R and D are easily swapped in dialect, same with G and C. M has a similar sound to N. There's an old FBI report where they make the same conclusion.

Caporegime and capodecina are used interchangably, not based on the size of the crew, so my guess is as more members became Americanized they just repeated what they heard phonetically without knowing the original word and it became its own term.

I know Antiliar found a report where investigators used the term "caporegime" relatively early in Italy, so there could well be more to his theory, too, that the word was deliberate.

What I'm curious about is when the term "capo" stopped referring to boss and became shorthand for capodecina. Frank Bompensiero used "capo" to refer to captains by the late 1960s and some of the NYC informants from that era used "capo". This must have been a gradual change because saying "capo" pre-1930s would have been universally understood to mean boss / rappresentante.

[Antiliar]

I lean toward what Tony said, that caporegime is a phonetic corruption of capodecina. It initially shows up as "caporegima", with a soft "a" at the end. R and D are easily swapped in dialect, same with G and C. M has a similar sound to N. There's an old FBI report where they make the same conclusion.

Caporegime and capodecina are used interchangably, not based on the size of the crew, so my guess is as more members became Americanized they just repeated what they heard phonetically without knowing the original word and it became its own term.

I know Antiliar found a report where investigators used the term "caporegime" relatively early in Italy, so there could well be more to his theory, too, that the word was deliberate.

What I'm curious about is when the term "capo" stopped referring to boss and became shorthand for capodecina. Frank Bompensiero used "capo" to refer to captains by the late 1960s and some of the NYC informants from that era used "capo". This must have been a gradual change because saying "capo" pre-1930s would have been universally understood to mean boss / rappresentante.

Investigators concluded that the term "regime" was used for crews larger than "decinas."
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... rch=decina

Caporegime Capodecina.jpg

[PolackTony]

Yes, and Joe Costello in Chicago who they transcribed as referring to his “gobracheen”.

Personally, I’ve wondered if the whole “capo regime” thing is just a phonetic rendering of capodecina in dialect that wound up sticking. To me it shows several clear signs of phonetic shifts common to Ital-American pronunciation based on various Southern dialects. “D” between vowels is often rendered as an “r” (such as the shift from “Madonn’” to “Maronn’”). “C” and “g” before a vowel often are realized as the same or very similar phonemes (closer to a “j” sound in English in many cases). And a word-final vowel in an unstressed position either becomes a schwa (like an “uh” sound) or is dropped entirely. “M” and “n” are of course both nasal consonants, so easily confused.

Capo decina -> capo “regime”. I think it’s fully possible that the Feds misheard it (as in “causa nostra”, until Valachi made it clear) as “regime” and that’s how it initially got propagated.

Unless there some evidence that proves me wrong, which in that case then forget the above.

You are correct that "Cosa Nostra" was misheard as "causa nostra," but there's an easy explanation for this. Their strong New York accents. It's why Joe Valachi's nickname, Joe Cargo, was heard as "Joe Cago." This doesn't explain "decina" becoming "regime," however. Again, I think there's a simple reason. In Sicily a decina was a crew of ten or fewer picciotti. In the United States some crews became very large with twenty or thirty soldiers, so calling them decinas wouldn't make sense. A regime is a variation of "regiment," a large military unit and is applied to large crews. The Genovese Family was known to have very large crews, so I think it's likely that they started using caporegime instead of capodecina for all their crews (after all, it might create unwanted hostility and jealousy if one crew boss had a decina while another had a regime) and it caught on in the other Families.

That’s a good hypothesis and it might be correct. The sort of phonetic shifts that I point to wouldn’t be unique to NYC or the East Coast, however, as they’re common to any Ital-American community with a Southern dialect influenced manner of speech. “Decina” in these cases could very plausibly have been rendered as something like “ruhJEEN”, which is fully consistent with Southern dialect phonetics. “Regiment” in Italian is of course “reggimento”, which in Sicilian/Calabrese dialects I imagine would come out something like “rejimentu” and in “Neapolitan”-group dialects something like “ruhjiMENT” (would be great if any dialetti speakers here could weigh in as well).

They’re both hypotheses, but if yours fits the evidence better, than obviously it’s the preferable one. What documentary evidence do we have on the use of “regime” or “reggimento” in the mafia, whether in Sicily or the US? When was “capo regime/a” as opposed to capodecina first documented, and based on what sources — wiretap, or CI/CW account?

[PolackTony]

I lean toward what Tony said, that caporegime is a phonetic corruption of capodecina. It initially shows up as "caporegima", with a soft "a" at the end. R and D are easily swapped in dialect, same with G and C. M has a similar sound to N. There's an old FBI report where they make the same conclusion.

Caporegime and capodecina are used interchangably, not based on the size of the crew, so my guess is as more members became Americanized they just repeated what they heard phonetically without knowing the original word and it became its own term.

I know Antiliar found a report where investigators used the term "caporegime" relatively early in Italy, so there could well be more to his theory, too, that the word was deliberate.

What I'm curious about is when the term "capo" stopped referring to boss and became shorthand for capodecina. Frank Bompensiero used "capo" to refer to captains by the late 1960s and some of the NYC informants from that era used "capo". This must have been a gradual change because saying "capo" pre-1930s would have been universally understood to mean boss / rappresentante.

Investigators concluded that the term "regime" was used for crews larger than "decinas."
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... rch=decina

Caporegime Capodecina.jpg

Thanks, I just saw this after my above response. They could be right, or they could be just trying to make a coherent account of what they didn’t realize were two different pronunciations of the same word. I’m not wedded to my own hypothesis, but I’m very much interested to know on what grounds investigators made this distinction. Did an informant specifically tell them this and draw this distinction? Or did the Feds themselves postulate it?

[B.]

Cool to see the FBI looking into the language more. You don't often see them do much analysis of the terms beyond reporting them. Like Tony said, I'd be curious if a member source told them that or if it was them speculating in an effort to reconcile the two different terms.

In the report where they discuss "caporegime" being a corruption of capodecina, it was apparently a conclusion drawn by two Sicilian-American FBI agents. Still speculation either way.

If the explanation of regime came from a member, you have to wonder if the mafia sort of retconned the definition. It appears they may have done that with "button" -- the term was in use earlier, but the metaphor used by Allegra was forgotten and members came up with their own understanding of what the term meant. Even if "regime/regima" started as a corruption of decina, members might have later come to believe the change was deliberate and filled in their own definition.

[Antiliar]

I lean toward what Tony said, that caporegime is a phonetic corruption of capodecina. It initially shows up as "caporegima", with a soft "a" at the end. R and D are easily swapped in dialect, same with G and C. M has a similar sound to N. There's an old FBI report where they make the same conclusion.

Caporegime and capodecina are used interchangably, not based on the size of the crew, so my guess is as more members became Americanized they just repeated what they heard phonetically without knowing the original word and it became its own term.

I know Antiliar found a report where investigators used the term "caporegime" relatively early in Italy, so there could well be more to his theory, too, that the word was deliberate.

What I'm curious about is when the term "capo" stopped referring to boss and became shorthand for capodecina. Frank Bompensiero used "capo" to refer to captains by the late 1960s and some of the NYC informants from that era used "capo". This must have been a gradual change because saying "capo" pre-1930s would have been universally understood to mean boss / rappresentante.

Investigators concluded that the term "regime" was used for crews larger than "decinas."
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... rch=decina

Caporegime Capodecina.jpg

Thanks, I just saw this after my above response. They could be right, or they could be just trying to make a coherent account of what they didn’t realize were two different pronunciations of the same word. I’m not wedded to my own hypothesis, but I’m very much interested to know on what grounds investigators made this distinction. Did an informant specifically tell them this and draw this distinction? Or did the Feds themselves postulate it?

There are wiretaps from the late 1950s and early 60s where they use the term "caporegime" or "caporegima." The variation could simply be due to accent or favored pronunciation. I don't know if an informant provided the explanation or if that was their conclusion. If I were to guess, it would be their conclusion. Honestly, I think either explanation is plausible. We do have many examples of Italian words being Americanized (based on Italian regionalisms):

Mozzarel and Mutz from Mozzarella
Prozhoot (or similar) for Prociutto
Pasta fasul from Pasta e fagioli
Manicot from Manicotti
Gabbagool from Capicola

Likewise, borgata became "brugad." Since the O is often pronounced like a U in Sicilian, we can see borgata (meaning "village") becoming "burgata." If the ending was clipped off, then "burgat." "Brugad" is very close to "burgat," We can also see the G substituted for the letter C in decina to become "degina." On the other hand, so the Mafia utilized the military terms it was familiar with, we can also see regime as a shortened version of reggimento, which meant something like a battalion or regiment. "Regime" as an English word means "system of government" and usually has a negative connotation. In this older Italian dictionary we can see that regimine (very similar spelling to "regime") is a variation of reggimento. Of course, some continued to use the proper Italian word borgata.

Since I have no skin in this game, I just found another document that supports your contention that it's a corruption of the original Italian word:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... capodecina

Not all words were Americanized though. Rappresentante was consistent, as were capo, sottocapo and soldato. Older members used picciotti just as they did in Italy. For adviser they sometimes used consigliere or "consulieri." A Commission member was an "avugad" or "avugat," a corruption of avvocato, meaning advocate and lawyer.

Whatever the case, I don't think that we're going to find a detailed explanation from an insider. We see capodecina being used by the Fratellanza of Favara in the 1870s/1880s, and Nick Gentile writing about 1940 using "capo di cina." Then in the 1950s when wiretaps are used we see caporegime and "caporegima" being used in New York and Philadelphia. We also know that the Genovese and Gambino Families had crews much larger than what existed in Sicily, so it's very possible they updated the word. Both explanations make sense.

[PolackTony]

I lean toward what Tony said, that caporegime is a phonetic corruption of capodecina. It initially shows up as "caporegima", with a soft "a" at the end. R and D are easily swapped in dialect, same with G and C. M has a similar sound to N. There's an old FBI report where they make the same conclusion.

Caporegime and capodecina are used interchangably, not based on the size of the crew, so my guess is as more members became Americanized they just repeated what they heard phonetically without knowing the original word and it became its own term.

I know Antiliar found a report where investigators used the term "caporegime" relatively early in Italy, so there could well be more to his theory, too, that the word was deliberate.

What I'm curious about is when the term "capo" stopped referring to boss and became shorthand for capodecina. Frank Bompensiero used "capo" to refer to captains by the late 1960s and some of the NYC informants from that era used "capo". This must have been a gradual change because saying "capo" pre-1930s would have been universally understood to mean boss / rappresentante.

Investigators concluded that the term "regime" was used for crews larger than "decinas."
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... rch=decina

Caporegime Capodecina.jpg

Thanks, I just saw this after my above response. They could be right, or they could be just trying to make a coherent account of what they didn’t realize were two different pronunciations of the same word. I’m not wedded to my own hypothesis, but I’m very much interested to know on what grounds investigators made this distinction. Did an informant specifically tell them this and draw this distinction? Or did the Feds themselves postulate it?

There are wiretaps from the late 1950s and early 60s where they use the term "caporegime" or "caporegima." The variation could simply be due to accent or favored pronunciation. I don't know if an informant provided the explanation or if that was their conclusion. If I were to guess, it would be their conclusion. Honestly, I think either explanation is plausible. We do have many examples of Italian words being Americanized (based on Italian regionalisms):

Mozzarel and Mutz from Mozzarella
Prozhoot (or similar) for Prociutto
Pasta fasul from Pasta e fagioli
Manicot from Manicotti
Gabbagool from Capicola

Likewise, borgata became "brugad." Since the O is often pronounced like a U in Sicilian, we can see borgata (meaning "village") becoming "burgata." If the ending was clipped off, then "burgat." "Brugad" is very close to "burgat," We can also see the G substituted for the letter C in decina to become "degina." On the other hand, so the Mafia utilized the military terms it was familiar with, we can also see regime as a shortened version of reggimento, which meant something like a battalion or regiment. "Regime" as an English word means "system of government" and usually has a negative connotation. In this older Italian dictionary we can see that regimine (very similar spelling to "regime") is a variation of reggimento. Of course, some continued to use the proper Italian word borgata.

Since I have no skin in this game, I just found another document that supports your contention that it's a corruption of the original Italian word:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... capodecina

Not all words were Americanized though. Rappresentante was consistent, as were capo, sottocapo and soldato. Older members used picciotti just as they did in Italy. For adviser they sometimes used consigliere or "consulieri." A Commission member was an "avugad" or "avugat," a corruption of avvocato, meaning advocate and lawyer.

Whatever the case, I don't think that we're going to find a detailed explanation from an insider. We see capodecina being used by the Fratellanza of Favara in the 1870s/1880s, and Nick Gentile writing about 1940 using "capo di cina." Then in the 1950s when wiretaps are used we see caporegime and "caporegima" being used in New York and Philadelphia. We also know that the Genovese and Gambino Families had crews much larger than what existed in Sicily, so it's very possible they updated the word. Both explanations make sense.

I agree that both hypotheses are plausible. This is a great thread and discussion. Always worth digging into the accounts of investigators — as well as internal accounts from members, which as B. alluded to above can’t simply be taken as transparent “windows onto the past” themselves — in order to question the basis for specific claims.

The question of nomenclature is really interesting, as it touches not just on the structures and concepts of the organization itself, but also the ways that these things became adopted, adapted, and transformed within the new Italian-American social context.

[Antiliar]

(I tried to add this on, but the edit function expired):

EDIT: When researching this I noticed that "moozadell" (the spelling used in The Sopranos) from mozzarella is an example of the r > d consonant change in the Naples area, but I did not see examples of the reverse where the d becomes an r (as in decina becoming regime). Maybe there's something that I missed. One source indicates that they did that in Campano, near Rome, but none in the Mezzogiorno. The New York/New Jersey forms where they used "mozzadell" and "gabagool" apparently came from the greater Naples area, maybe including Salerno and Caserta. This makes sense due to them emigrating in large numbers before Sicilians began leaving in large numbers for the East Coast. It makes me wonder about the origin of "brugad" since - according to the sources I read - Sicilians did not clip off vowel endings (but the mainlanders did).

[PolackTony]

(I tried to add this on, but the edit function expired):

EDIT: When researching this I noticed that "moozadell" (the spelling used in The Sopranos) from mozzarella is an example of the r > d consonant change in the Naples area, but I did not see examples of the reverse where the d becomes an r (as in decina becoming regime). Maybe there's something that I missed. One source indicates that they did that in Campano, near Rome, but none in the Mezzogiorno. The New York/New Jersey forms where they used "mozzadell" and "gabagool" apparently came from the greater Naples area, maybe including Salerno and Caserta. This makes sense due to them emigrating in large numbers before Sicilians began leaving in large numbers for the East Coast. It makes me wonder about the origin of "brugad" since - according to the sources I read - Sicilians did not clip off vowel endings (but the mainlanders did).

Yes, the dropping of a final, unstressed vowel is a feature of Neapolitan dialects, which had a major impact on Ital-American speech more broadly. There are examples of the d->r shift, “Madonna” rendered as “Maronn’” being perhaps the most common.

[Antiliar]

(I tried to add this on, but the edit function expired):

EDIT: When researching this I noticed that "moozadell" (the spelling used in The Sopranos) from mozzarella is an example of the r > d consonant change in the Naples area, but I did not see examples of the reverse where the d becomes an r (as in decina becoming regime). Maybe there's something that I missed. One source indicates that they did that in Campano, near Rome, but none in the Mezzogiorno. The New York/New Jersey forms where they used "mozzadell" and "gabagool" apparently came from the greater Naples area, maybe including Salerno and Caserta. This makes sense due to them emigrating in large numbers before Sicilians began leaving in large numbers for the East Coast. It makes me wonder about the origin of "brugad" since - according to the sources I read - Sicilians did not clip off vowel endings (but the mainlanders did).

Yes, the dropping of a final, unstressed vowel is a feature of Neapolitan dialects, which had a major impact on Ital-American speech more broadly. There are examples of the d->r shift, “Madonna” rendered as “Maronn’” being perhaps the most common.

I've only heard "Madone" (pronounced mad-ohn). One person here implies that "Maronn'" is intentionally being mispronounced to use as a profanity:
https://www.quora.com/What-does-marone- ... ng?share=1

Another writer did say that in Neapolitan that the R can be substituted for D. It seems that there's a lot of debate over the word.

Interesting to consider that if "regime" does derive from decina then it probably came from the Neapolitan members. If so, why did so many members of Sicilian ancestry use it? (I will note, however, that Stefano Magaddino did prefer to use capodecina.)

[PolackTony]

(I tried to add this on, but the edit function expired):

EDIT: When researching this I noticed that "moozadell" (the spelling used in The Sopranos) from mozzarella is an example of the r > d consonant change in the Naples area, but I did not see examples of the reverse where the d becomes an r (as in decina becoming regime). Maybe there's something that I missed. One source indicates that they did that in Campano, near Rome, but none in the Mezzogiorno. The New York/New Jersey forms where they used "mozzadell" and "gabagool" apparently came from the greater Naples area, maybe including Salerno and Caserta. This makes sense due to them emigrating in large numbers before Sicilians began leaving in large numbers for the East Coast. It makes me wonder about the origin of "brugad" since - according to the sources I read - Sicilians did not clip off vowel endings (but the mainlanders did).

Yes, the dropping of a final, unstressed vowel is a feature of Neapolitan dialects, which had a major impact on Ital-American speech more broadly. There are examples of the d->r shift, “Madonna” rendered as “Maronn’” being perhaps the most common.

Interesting to consider that if "regime" does derive from decina then it probably came from the Neapolitan members. If so, why did so many members of Sicilian ancestry use it? (I will note, however, that Stefano Magaddino did prefer to use capodecina.)

I think that while things vary considerably between communities and families, Neapolitan dialects had a major influence in Italy-American speech patterns in general. It’s an interesting question and I think it’s good to be thinking about it. My impression is that once one became assimilated into a wider Ital-American culture, there was lots of cross-influence between provincial and regional forms. Given that varieties of the Neapolitan group (not in the narrow sense of Napoli itself) were spoken across most of the former Kingdom of Naples, there were broad similarities (though with major local idiosyncrasies) in dialect across a wide swath of the immigrants arriving in the US. Thus, even if someone’s family came from Sicily, once the kids were raised and socialized in a broader Southern Ital-American milieu, they would pick up lots of these influences. This was the case I think not only in NYC/NJ (with the typical “Soprano-ese”, which of course exhibits very marked Neapolitan influences), but in Chicago as well. These are the two Ital-American communities that I have personal experience and interaction with, so I don’t know how much the local, informal, folkloric Ital-American speech in places like, say, Detroit or KC differ.

Even “ugob” shows pretty clear Neapolitan influence. In a typical Sicilian pronunciation I would expect lu capu (though local dialects in Sicily ~100 years ago may have been more diverse). In Neapolitan, o’cap’, which would come out sounding very much like “ugob”.

[B.]

Major sources for terminology were the DeCavalcante and DeCarlo tapes, plus Valachi. There were other bugs and informants, but for whatever reason those three came up most often when the public was first learning about mafia terms.

New Jersey had a large Neapolitan population, so that could have influenced the way those guys talked. The DeCarlo crew came up around the Neapolitan Boiardo and most of the guys on the DeCavalcante tapes were fully Americanized and grew up in Jersey. Valachi was Neapolitan and from a crew with mostly Neapolitans and mainlanders.

Could very well be that the FBI got a more Americanized / Neapolitan-influenced take on these terms given the sources.

Since I have no skin in this game, I just found another document that supports your contention that it's a corruption of the original Italian word:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... capodecina

There's also an FBI report where they mention how agents had originally transcribed the word phonetically as "caporegima", but when two Italian SAs heard the same recording and made their own transcription, they wrote down "capodecina". So some of this depended on who was transcribing it.

Seems CI reports usually use the terminology used by the informant. In Frank Bompensiero's reports from the late 1960s he uses capo and caporegime. Other sources in NYC from the 1960s use those terms, too. Whatever its origin, "caporegime" seems to have spread nationally and was in use by the 1950s.

[Antiliar]

Assuming the language corruption theory is correct, if I were to guess which Family was most responsible for this change it would be the Genovese Family. The first boss in the modern era, Lucky Luciano, was an Americanized Sicilian and much of the rest of the leadership were mainlanders. Vito Genovese, Mike Miranda, Joe Adonis, Tony Bender, Ritchie Boiardo and many others were all from the Naples area. The Genovese Family was probably the most influential Family as well, and was especially close to Chicago. Not making a factual claim, just an educated guess.

[PolackTony]

(I tried to add this on, but the edit function expired):

EDIT: When researching this I noticed that "moozadell" (the spelling used in The Sopranos) from mozzarella is an example of the r > d consonant change in the Naples area, but I did not see examples of the reverse where the d becomes an r (as in decina becoming regime). Maybe there's something that I missed. One source indicates that they did that in Campano, near Rome, but none in the Mezzogiorno. The New York/New Jersey forms where they used "mozzadell" and "gabagool" apparently came from the greater Naples area, maybe including Salerno and Caserta. This makes sense due to them emigrating in large numbers before Sicilians began leaving in large numbers for the East Coast. It makes me wonder about the origin of "brugad" since - according to the sources I read - Sicilians did not clip off vowel endings (but the mainlanders did).

Yes, the dropping of a final, unstressed vowel is a feature of Neapolitan dialects, which had a major impact on Ital-American speech more broadly. There are examples of the d->r shift, “Madonna” rendered as “Maronn’” being perhaps the most common.

I've only heard "Madone" (pronounced mad-ohn). One person here implies that "Maronn'" is intentionally being mispronounced to use as a profanity:
https://www.quora.com/What-does-marone- ... ng?share=1

Another writer did say that in Neapolitan that the R can be substituted for D. It seems that there's a lot of debate over the word.

Interesting to consider that if "regime" does derive from decina then it probably came from the Neapolitan members. If so, why did so many members of Sicilian ancestry use it? (I will note, however, that Stefano Magaddino did prefer to use capodecina.)

While the claim that Madonna -> Maronn’ is a euphemism to blunt the sacrilegious nature of taking the Holy Mother’s name in vain (like people in the US saying “gosh” instead of God) is certainly plausible and possible, the D -> R shift before a vowel definitely occurs in various southern dialects. Another example is “dormire” (to sleep) in Italian which becomes “rurmì” (Napuletano proper) or “rormé” (Irpino, spoken in most of Avellino). The same D -> R before a vowel shift is well-documented also in the cluster of Lucano/Putenzese dialects spoken in much of Potenza and bordering localities in Campania: e.g. “catena” (chain) In Italian -> “cadena” in Putenzese -> pronounced as “carena”. Closer to home, there are other examples of this shift in Ital-American vernacular, like “marinara” -> “madinad’”.

I’ve also read that this shift occurred in some local Palermitano dialects of Sicilian (e.g. “due” -> “rue”), but I don’t know enough to confirm or elaborate. Maybe CC or another Sicilianu can shed further light on this.

Back to “ugob”. Even more than Napuletano proper, this might be Salernitano, where the masculine definite article (“il” in Italian) is “u’”, whereas around Naples it’s “o’”: “u’cap’”, which would be pronounced “oo gahb” (to an English speaker).

Two things to keep in mind. First, these sorts of phonetic shifts are not “corruptions” or “distortions” of standard Italian, but rather derive from local Southern Italian languages shaped by a separate and distinct political and cultural history. Corresponding literary varieties flourished centuries ago in Sicily and Naples, independent of the Florentine Tuscan dialect of Dante that gave rise to modern standard Italian. While of course many of the guys that we study in the world of LCN were second or later generation Ital-Americans, often with poor facility in Italian, many of the pronunciations and vocabulary items in Ital-American speech directly reflect the actual speech patterns and folkways of the large waves of Southern contadini who formed the bulk of Ital-American settlement in the Northeast and Midwest ~120 years ago, rather than a debased corruption of standard Italian (I’m not ascribing this viewpoint to anyone here, needless to say, but this uninformed assumption seems to color a lot of discourse that I read and hear on Ital-American vernacular). Second, the Neapolitan and Siculo-Calabrian language groups are themselves composed of “dialect continua”, where local varieties share certain broad phonological, grammatical, and vocabulary features while also exhibiting marked differences. The complexity and need for granularity/nuance becomes all the more clear when we take into account change over time. The Mezzogiorno that people left in 1900 was a very different place than the post-WW2 south, not least in terms of language, education, and literacy. A snapshot of southern dialects today doesn’t really capture the even more marked and distinct local languages spoken by the Ellis Island generation of US immigrants, many of whom had little to no familiarity with standard Italian.

[PolackTony]

I realized after it was too late to edit that in the above I used the example of “marinara” -> “madinad”, when of course that is an example of the opposite shift, R > D lol.

Plenty of other examples of the D -> R shift in Neapolitan proper. For instance, the word for “where” in Italian is “dove”; in Napulitano it’s “addò” but often pronounced “ah-RO”. The infinitive “to see” In Italian is “vedere”; in Napulitano it’s “vidè” but often pronounced as “vee-RAY”. Many examples of this shift in contemporary Napulitano if you listen to the dialogue in the series Gomorra.