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Comment by sklivvz1971 | Hacker News Reader

sklivvz1971

Yes, people are not really aware how ignorant and arrogant they look when they use the wrong Italian words to describe Italian food :-)

* cantucci NOT biscotti

* salame NOT salami or pepperoni

* zucchine NOT zucchini

* melanzane alla parmigiana, NOT parmigiana

etc. etc. etc.

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Salami and zucchini are actual English words, and salami is actually the plural for salame in Italian anyway.

Italian Wikipedia on the aubergine dish: "La parmigiana di melanzane, anche melanzane alla parmigiana o semplicemente parmigiana..."

And biscotti encompass cantucci. So I don't know what the big deal is.

> I don't know what the big deal is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Its an extension of this, "your Italian food isn't real Italian food".

Combine with nit-picking the language people use to delegitimize their positions.

I'm just glad we have a very wide variety of different things. I love tracking down/cooking both things that are very, very traditional Italian dishes (my family is all from Italy originally) and I also enjoy lots of American bastardizations of those dishes and there's nothing wrong with liking both. I absolutely love cooking dishes from recipes that are from the era in my family where they immigrated to the USA (great-grandmother, pre-WWI), they have a mix of traditional Italian with practical realities of the fact that they were now in the USA, which resulted in them having less access to traditional ingredients (and being dirt poor for a good while).

I mean with all do respect WTF am I supposed to do lol, get a PhD in Italian language and cuisine before touring Italy?

Naah, it is not necessary at all, you just enter a bakery (or other similar eating shop) and point your finger on something in the showcase, the natives will understand that you want that product ;) and almost invariably it will taste good. Do not go to the restaurant and try ordering spaghetti with meatballs, however.

Or I suppose fettuccine Alfredo :P

That would be excessive, just learn to write properly, like most people do when communicating in your language aha ;)

You can do whatever you want, I am merely pointing out how that looks to us :-)

This is a very narrow view. I am Italian-American in the literal sense (a citizen of both countries), we are fairly recent immigrants although I grew up in the US. There is simply no way for the average American to be that exact regarding Italian cuisine without having grown up there. The same way it is nearly impossible for the average Italian to be that exact regarding American cuisine without having grown up here. Asking someone to understand the different names and types of biscotti or cantucci, for instance, is similar to me expecting you to know the various local varieties of lobster rolls depending on where in New England you are, and then also holding you accountable to know that someone in New Jersey will probably not be able to make you one, and someone in coastal Virginia may not even know what one is.

Everyone does the best with the words they know. Help a tourist out, they'd do the same for you in their home.

> Help a tourist out, they'd do the same for you in their home.

Gracefully accepting corrections when your language is incorrect are part of receiving help.

If I were to write these posts in broken Itanglish do you really think native speakers would not correct me? Would it be acceptable to call them "narrow minded"?

I'm all for helping but please stop assuming that a US-centric point of view and language are the default for everything. For most people on the internet, neither assumptions hold.

I think the point wasn't that you shouldn't help people understand your language or culture. It's expecting everyone to know this stuff automatically and looking down on someone for not knowing everything about it. That isn't very nice/fair.

"Yes, people are not really aware how ignorant and arrogant they look when they use the wrong Italian words to describe Italian food "

Gracefully accepting corrections is fine. I get that plenty when I visit Italy, and Italian is my first language even if it's decayed a bit. You don't make it sound like you're doing it constructively, though. Not sure if it's your intent, but you're coming across as though Americans are ignorant because they don't grasp the finer details.

Actually in Italian you can say a "parmigiana di melanzane", but "parmigiana" by itself is meaningless, there are "parmigiana di carciofi", "parmigiana di gobbi", and of course "parmigiana di patate" (that has completely different ingredients).

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