Marscapone. I know it’s incorrect but I live in a heavily Italian area and that’s how everyone says it. Shrug.
The ways that italian americans pronounce some italian things is amazing to me. I'm familiar with the versions in Philly - which to my ear sound similar to your area, but not entirely.
I just googled trying to find a reasonable phonetic spelling of how south philly italians say prosciutto as an example for those who aren't familiar (I was going to go with Pruh-shoot) and found this old, but pretty cool article:
I'm not sure Ive ever heard the old s. philly italian version of mascarpone.
That article is too funny.
Right out of college I was a manager at a supermarket in South Philly. (for the locals- 4th & Or-gan)
It was quite the learning curve for me with a clientele asking for things I'd never heard of in a language I could not make out. My BFF, whose family owned the restaurant with the singing waiters that doubled as "Adrienne's" in Creed, would translate for me. I phoned her pretty often back then. It must've been a year before I figured out that "Robbie" in produce was a green vegetable and not a store clerk.
This is fascinating to me. Being Puerto Rican and speaking Spanish, I’m super aware of different dialects (and our tendency to replace R sounds with L sounds in some words and just drop the ending sounds of words and other fun dialect things).
Looking at that Philly article, “gabigilisy” for cavatelli feels like a stretch though, lol 😂