If ten different people from all over Italy were asked what they say “chewing gum”, surely each one would answer differently: cigarette butt, American butt, English butt, chewing gum, gommetta, gommina… The ways in which we call the chewing gum they tell a lot about our geographical origins, the areas of cultural influence and how regional varieties follow their own logic.
First of all, we need to give some context: chewing gum was born in 1871 by the American industrialist Thomas Adams who invented Chiclets, malleable and initially tasteless sweets. The name comes from chicleSpanish term for rubber extracted from the sapodilla tree (Manilkara chicle). Chiclets were therefore gum designed to be pulled and stretched while being chewed (“to chew a gum”).
This fantastic food landed in Italy at the end of the Second World War, with the allies giving it to the population to alleviate hunger, officially entering standard Italian with the more “neutral” term of chewing gum and still remaining so in commercial and formal contexts. However, in the daily speech of the different regions and provinces, different forms linked to local dialects soon emerged.
One of the most widespread variants that has crossed regional borders is “butt”. This term is used above all in the Centre-North, but not only. In Tuscany and in some areas of Emilia-Romagna, cicca alone without adjectives is often preferred, while elsewhere it may be specified as cicca american or cicca english to distinguish it from other types of chewing gum.
Precisely in Tuscany we find a particularly interesting and characteristic form: the “cilingumma”, “cirigumma” or “ciringomma”. These variants, probably born as popular adaptations of chewing gum and influenced by local speech, have been documented for decades and show how Tuscan speakers have reinterpreted the English loanword with sounds more similar to the Italian phonetic system. The structure of cilingumma or cirigumma, evident from the epenthesis (the addition of vowels) and the assimilation of sounds, is paradigmatic of a phenomenon typical of regional varieties where the linguistic loan it adapts to the native phonetics.
In many regions of Southern Italy, however, chewing gum can be called simply rubbery or erasersometimes with the addition of an affectionate diminutive (gommetta or rubber) as if to underline its pocket-sized form and recreational use. In the Ligurian or Piedmontese varieties, however, shot (not to be confused with the alcoholic “shot-tini” to drink or the gastronomic crostini typical of the Veneto) or even ciccone in family contexts, while in some areas of Central-Southern Italy the term prevails cicchino or shot English.
According to the Accademia della Crusca, this phenomenon is an example of how foreign words integrate into local linguistic varieties, being then modeled according to phonetic habits And lexical of speakers, and how many of them are consolidated in speech even before official vocabularies.
All these differences are indicators of linguistic and sociolinguistic identity which are also reflected in the way we call such an everyday object as chewing gum. Dialects, regional Italian variants and the historical linguistic substratum present on the peninsula are all elements that jointly influence living speakers and shape the geographical origin and linguistic habits acquired since childhood.
Finally, just to give a general overview of the numerous varieties that exist and which often overlap with each other, to ask for chewing gum in a particular way we can talk about tucks to Verona, I said to Genoa, chew to Arezzo or chewing to Messina, cycles to Turin or, to keep things broad, call it gingomma or ciga al Central-South and in Sardinia, gi(n)rubber in Calabriaor “pinching candy” in Campania And Basilicata.
In short, “good luck” in understanding what we are talking about in case they ask you for chewing gum around Italy.
