Friday, 23 November 2012

A series of unfortunate mispronunciations


Prosciutto … delicious cured ham. Served with maybe some melon and some breads makes a delicious starter or snack around the family dining table. Goes well on pizza too.
Heard in Aldershot’s tescos last night as being ‘shall me get some of that expensive Prosky ooto or just cheap ham?’.

As a much younger child I recall going to a friend’s house where they serving some lovely cheese and tomato ‘Pizer ‘.

It gets worse. Also a nice delicatessen in Farnham offered me some Pecorina cheese … now I’m not a native of Italy, but I have relatives that are and I’m pretty sure no one should talk about pecorina in a middle class delicatessen. I’m quite broad in thinking but I like to keep my cheese separate to my karma sutra.

Another one that actually came from a relative of my husband was the mispronunciation of the word ‘Penne’ …. I thought it was so simple and common most people would get it right … but this relative has spent a lot of time in Australia … she elongates her vowels and turned the nice quill shaped pasta into Peeene … you don’t put pene in pasta .. and if you do it’s because you are a fetish based Hanibal lecture.

My favourite came from the lovely garden centre in between Aldershot and Farnham. A well-spoken upper class nicely groomed elderly lady was picking up Jam jars and reading what they were. The was a selection of Jams from Italy. In English we often call Jam ‘Preserve’ although it’s quite an old reference and falling out of favour with younger people. As the fruits have been preserved it is a jam based preserve. We also think that Italian language is like English but with an ‘I’ at the end of each verb. So she picked up a Jam jar which had a lovely rustic picture on it … and shouted to her husband that there was some nice Italian preservativi  for sale. In a garden centre. In surrey? I think not because on the wall of the toilet of the café in cetona is a machine that sells flavoured preservativi for men and women to enhance their sex life. They don’t come in jars.

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