Why We Lost the Language And Why That’s Not the Whole Story

I’ve been thinking a lot about what gets passed down, and what gets quietly left behind.

I’m the great-grandson of Sicilian immigrants who landed in Buffalo, New York, before the First World War. Like so many families who came to the Northeast, their story was about survival. Starting over. Becoming American.

But somewhere along the way, in becoming American, a lot of the Sicilian part got lost.

The Language Wasn’t Taught, But It Was There

Recently, I sat down over the phone with my dad and my aunt. I had questions. A lot of them. I wanted to understand why the Sicilian language didn’t make it to my generation. Why we didn’t have stories or family phrases or songs from the old country. Why I grew up with no real sense of what it meant to be Sicilian beyond vague references to food and temperament.

Truth be told, I wasn’t a great interviewer. I had an agenda. I was looking for confirmation of what I already thought the story was. But the truth rarely plays along with your outline.

As it turns out, the language was there.

My aunt remembers it vividly. The kitchen on holidays, especially Thanksgiving, filled with women cooking and chattering away in Siciliano. Loud. Expressive. Chaotic. Sometimes laughter. Sometimes fighting. Sometimes tears. But always Sicilian.

The men were quiet. My dad remembered his grandfather barely speaking. My aunt jumped in and said, “That’s because his English was terrible.”

And just like that, the shape of it became clear to me. The language wasn’t erased. It was contained. Held in corners of the house. In kitchens. Spoken under the breath.

Two Sandwiches, Two Worlds

Then my aunt shared a memory that stayed with me.

She remembered being a little girl and asking her mother, my grandmother, for lunch. Her mom would hand her a slice of bologna or cheese between two pieces of white bread and say, “Here’s your American sandwich.”

Simple enough.

But later in the day, when her father was getting ready for the night shift, my grandmother would make him something entirely different. Something warm. Slow-cooked. Full of aroma.

My aunt once asked, “Ma, what are you making?”

Her mother replied, “Food from home.”

That line stopped me.

What did she mean? Why the distinction? Why the bologna sandwich for a child and a home-cooked Sicilian meal for her husband? Maybe she assumed my aunt, a young American-born girl, wouldn’t understand. Maybe she wanted her children to belong here. Maybe she didn’t think the old world had a place in the new one.

And yet it was there. Quietly. Persistently.

What Got Preserved

I asked about recipes. I was hoping for a good family debate. Who made the best arancini. Whose spaghetti alla Norma was the gold standard. But there wasn’t much there.

What I got instead was a memory of my grandmother’s kitchen.

I closed my eyes and it all came back. The laminate tabletop with metal trim. Plastic chairs. Depression-era glass cups. A breadbox. Little choochkies on the shelf that seemed like they had been there forever.

And on the table, a lemon meringue pie. Always there. Sometimes whole. Sometimes missing a slice, usually because I got there first.

I told my aunt that. She smiled.

“That was for your uncle,” she said. “That was her way of showing love. By making something sweet. Not just any sweet, but his favorite.”

Her favorite was cherry pie. I never saw one. By then, my aunt said, she had already moved out of the house.

In Sicily, Sweet Means Love

It made me think.

In Sicily, sweetness isn’t just sugar. It’s love, expressed quietly through food. A granita and brioche in the morning. A box of cookies. Cuccidati. Biscotti regina. Pasta di mandorla. Offered when you visit someone’s home.

These are the ways Sicilians say, you matter to me. You belong.

So maybe we lost the language. Maybe the songs and poems didn’t make it. But the culture, the love, that still got through. In sandwiches. In pies. In quiet gestures.

It Wasn’t Lost. It Was Adapted.

I used to think my father turned his back on being Sicilian.

He and my aunt were the first to go to university. A Vietnam-era American who never spoke the language, never cooked the food, never passed it on. I assumed he wanted to build an identity outside the immigrant shadow.

But after hearing these stories, I see it differently.

He didn’t reject the past. He grew up in a moment when silence meant safety. When assimilation was the path forward.

That isn’t rejection. That’s love too, in its own way.

And now maybe it’s my turn. To take what’s left. The memories. The flavors. The symbols. And build something new with them.

Not a museum version of Sicilian-American life. Something living. Something honest.

Because culture isn’t only preserved in language.
It’s preserved in care.
In noticing.
In remembering.
In making someone their favorite pie.