I'll never forget the shocking moment I first saw the name for the spicy Italian ham capicola spelled out on a deli menu.

I must've been 12 or 13, having spent a solid five or so years eating pizza joint lunches with my mostly Italian buddies, at which we regularly ordered sandwiches made with '

"gabagool." And, often, the cheese known as "mutzadell".

As they might say in a Geico ad, "When you live in New Jersey, you order gabagool with mutzadell. It's what you do."

But capi-i-co-la? I had no idea what that stuff was.

When a buddy explained to me the two were indeed one and the same, I became seriously confused.

And I remained confused over this important matter for a full three decades, until this morning, when I read this amazingly well researched and detailed explanation on the web site Atlas Obscura by writer Dan Nosowitz, which delves deep (18th century Italian kingdoms deep) into why New Jersey Italian-Americans speak the way they do.

Through interviews with linguists, Nosowitz traces the New Jersey Italian pronunciation of capicola, ricotta (often pronounce rih-goat) and other words to southern Italian dialects, immigration patterns and other myriad quirks of history, from shipping routes to rivalries among 19th century Italian kingdoms.

Writes Nosowitz:

"If you were to go to southern Italy, you wouldn't find people saying "gabagool." But some of the old quirks of the old languages survived into the accents of Standard Italian used there. In Sicily or Calabria, you might indeed find someone ordering "mutzadell." In their own weird way, Jersey (and New York and Rhode Island and Philadelphia) Italians are keeping the flame of their languages alive even better than Italian-Italians."

I am always on the lookout for great explanations of New Jersey accents, and this is one of the best to come along in some time. For the full article, click here. It's definitely something to chew on along with your next gabagool and pruhshoot.

Brian Donohue may be reached at bdonohue@njadvancemedia.com Follow him on Twitter @briandonohue. Find NJ.com on Facebook.