Italian Elitism
So, I know this post is completely elitist, and I know I’m ridiculous (it’s inspired by this post on Stuff White People Like). But it drives me absolutely crazy to see signs for things double-pluralized in Italian. I’m talking about “raviolies,” “connolies,” and the oddest yet, “calamaries.” (WordPress doesn’t even think that last one is a spelling error, though Firefox, to its credit, does.)
Things ending in “i” in Italian are generally plural already. It’s one thing for your average American to not know this, and continue to pluralize Italian words the English way. However, my Italian grandparents do it, too. Doesn’t that bother them? Why doesn’t that seem wrong?
It’s just as bad, too, when Italian restaurants do it. I’ve seen many a menu offering “zities.” What gives? Errors in straight-up English would probably be embarrassing if brought to the attention of the management. Yet these Italian dishes are chronically misspelled and never corrected. Not cool, people.
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And about the Italian elitism, well, one could argue that the words have entered into American mainstream culture well enough that they are essentially english words now. Double pluralization and similar syntactical issues are probably a common “problem” in any language when a foreign word enters the vocabulary.
I think its quite humorous that you chose to concentrate on food words though. Isn’t “Concertos” just as “wrong”? (Perhaps less egregious because its not double pluralized?)
First off, Stuff White People Like is possibly the funniest thing on the internet. Second, my Italian grandmother does this with only the word “zities” — seems like a frightening trend among Italian grandparents. Third, Maxx brings up an interesting point: the anglicized plural of the singular “concerto,” “concertos,” has long been considered acceptable alongside the connoisseur-preferred “concerti.” Why weren’t Italian dishes pluralized by English rules early on?
Well, wait. It’s a little bit different in this case. We don’t pluralize it “zitos,” or “raviolos,” which would be the analogy to “concertos.” We’re double pluralizing (bilingually, but still), which is my real gripe here.