Self: Oooo, what are you making there, is that a cake?
Italian Child: No, lentils with red onion.
Buon appetito.
The culinary preferences of children can be mystifying. Consider the following conversation with an Italian Child pretending to be cooking something in the park:
Self: Oooo, what are you making there, is that a cake? Italian Child: No, lentils with red onion. Buon appetito.
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In general, if you are a parent or a pet owner, and you really want to blend in with Italians, you should say everything you would ordinarily say to your child to your pet, and vice versa. Consider these two examples, overheard at the park today:
Woman (to obese beagle): Come on, Bruno, let's get going. How many times have I told you that if you eat as much as you do and don't get a little exercise, you'll gain weight? But you never listen to me... Come on, seriously. We have to get dinner started before Daddy comes home... Woman (to child): Princess! ...Treasure! Do you want a little snackey? A little, itty-bitty treatsy? Ok, then sit down. Sit. Ok. Ok. Italians are proud that they, like most of the world that is not America, use the oh-so-intuitive, oh-so-reasonable metric system for measuring things. But do they really? Consider the following conversation with an Italian person:
Self: So, the new house has a balcony, sweet. Italian Person: Yeah, but as soon as I have the money I'm going to enlarge it. S: Why, how big is it? IP: Big enough to go out and have your cigarette, but not big enough that you can put a little table out there and have yourself a pasta. Size DOES matter. There was a tie for gold medal in the Best/Worst Mispronunciation of Italian event last year (2014). Both medals go to friendly Americans ordering Italian food. And the winners are....
PROSCIUTTO: Really pronounced pro-shoot-oh. Winningly pronounced prosquito (rhymes with mosquito). PANETTONE: Really pronounced pah-nay-toe-nay. Winningly pronounced pain-town (but the person ordered it anyway). The gold medal for Best/Worst Mispronunciation of English went, once again, to anything with the letter "R." Italian tourist in the Midwest:
"I was so excited to be in America for Thanksgiving. I thought it was supposed to be this big feast. Instead it was, you know, your average sixteenth birthday party." American tourist, surveying the ruins of Pompeii:
"It could be nice here. I don't understand why they don't clean this place up." |
AuthorI'm an American living in Italy and making gross generalizations about it. Categories
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