If Nintendo stars Mario and Luigi immigrated to Canada, chances are they would keep their jobbas as plumbers, but they probably wouldn't buy a new carro to drive around in.

A new undergraduate course being offered by the Department of Linguistics and Languages is introducing students to the culture and language of Italian immigrants who developed their own way of communicating with each other after arriving in Canada.

Italiese, a mixture of English words (like car) with Italian endings (like "o"), is one of the many subjects the Italian-Canadian Experience course tackles. Created by immigrants to deal with the new realities they faced in their adopted home, Italiese helped unite those who came from different places in Italy, all with their own dialects, and allowed them to communicate with one another. It also created confusion for Italian-Canadians who returned to Italy only to find that some Italiese words, such as carro, already had meanings in Italian - in this case a cart or haywagon.

"The course takes a new slant on culture," said Vikki Cecchetto, associate professor and course instructor. "It looks at how an ancestral language has been changed by the immigrant experience."

Students will also experience the challenges of immigrant life through the eyes of those who left Italy for Canada, with guest speakers from Hamilton's large Italian-Canadian community scheduled to visit the class, and will study the Italian-Canadian identity in the arts, literature, film and music.

With the popularity of the course, similar classes involving German-Canadian and Spanish-Canadian language and life are planned for next year. According to Cecchetto, classes such as these appeal not only to linguistics students but also to third- and fourth-generation immigrants who are interested in their own heritage.

"They see their culture being studied in an academic setting and realize that it is incredibly important to Canadian society," she said. "The class provides an opportunity for students to research their own language and identity and define for themselves what that identity consists of."

Later this term students will perform research throughout the community to determine whether or not Italiese continues to thrive and, if so, amongst what segments of the Italian-Canadian population.

"The course really gives students insights into the effects that the immigrant experience has had on those who went through it," said Cecchetto. "I hope they come to understand how it has affected even the ancestors of those original immigrants."

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