“Apizza” for Pizza and Pronounced “Ah-BEETS”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Jody and I’m calling from Norfolk, Virginia.

Hi, Jody. Welcome. What’s up?

My husband and I were looking to go to dinner and a new pizza place popped up in our neighborhood. It was, they were advertising Connecticut style pizza and the restaurant is called District and it’s a pizza.

So it was called District of Pizza. And so we go into the restaurant and we look at the menu and they said that their pizza place is District of Beets because that’s how they pronounce it in Connecticut.

And so I want to know why it’s pronounced a beats instead of a pizza and where it came from. I love that Connecticut-style pizza is branching out into the rest of the country, which is why you’re having this question, because you wouldn’t usually encounter this, at least in the United States, outside of Connecticut.

Exactly. So a pizza, they’re spelling the word pizza with an A at the beginning, right?

Correct. Yeah, and say the, how do they pronounce it again?

A-beets. A-beets. Like it would be A-B-E-E-T-S, a-beets. With a stress on the last syllable, right?

Abits. Correct. Correct. It’s really a curious little dialect remnant having to do with Italian immigrants settling in Connecticut.

There are two Italian dialect things that have happened here. One is a pizza is a contraction of the two words la pizza, which is Italian for pizza. So a pizza is now one word where it used to be two, la pizza.

The second thing that happens is there’s a tradition of lanition. This is a softening or weakening of a syllable in the form of what’s known as apocope, in which the final syllable is swallowed or dropped, especially when it’s following a stressed syllable.

So you see this in other words, like mozzarella becomes mozzarella, or prosciutto becomes prosciutto. And many of these are from Southern Italian dialects. And many of the people who came to the New World from what is now Italy came here before Italian was more standardized, and when Italian dialects were even stronger and more regional.

A lot of these may be Neapolitan, for example, although there are others. And it just so happens that many of them settled in New Haven, Connecticut in particular, but nearby as well in Connecticut, and brought their food traditions, their foodways with them.

And so their particular dialect pronunciation of pizza, a pizza, which they say is a vitz, which has that last syllable disappearing, is now just kind of a tradition in New Haven. And I guess it’s now a tradition in Norfolk, Virginia as well.

It has come down here and they it’s delicious. They say it’s coal fired instead of, I guess.

Yeah. So it’s a little charred on the bottom, but it was thin and delicious.

Oh, yeah, that’s so good. What’s your go-to on toppings?

I am a pepperoni mushroom type of girl. All right, mushrooms, yeah. I have a hard time convincing anyone in my family to get mushrooms on a pizza, but that’s my fave.

Well, next time you have a Beetz in Norfolk or New Haven, think of us, all right?

I will. Next time I have a Beetz, I’m going to send a picture.

Oh, yeah, please. Please do. All right, Jodi, take care of yourself.

Great. Thank you so much. All right, take care.

Bye-bye. Take care. Thank you, too. Bye-bye.

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