Ricotta, Resolved by Bart Irace
So goes the monthly discussion on the pronunciation of Italian words like cavatelli, manicotti, and mozzarella between my wife and mother, a discussion that I always enjoy and if bored, will actually make happen by saying something as simple as “how about some GAVA-deel for dinner”. Mind you, Italian-American though I am, I’ve not once eaten cavatelli (there’s a package of it in my freezer that I bought half as a joke, half out of curiosity). We’ll eat it for dinner at some point – it’s pasta, we have to – but I can only imagine where the discussion will head and what new four-letter words my daughter might learn during the process.
Growing up the only Italian words I heard were either food items or curses. My first word in dialect was probably one I uttered every Sunday when Grandma made her tomato sauce: ‘RIGUT’, with its slight roll of the “r”, mysterious ‘g’, and blatant disregard for the final vowel which, when I learned how to read, made the actual container of “Ricotta” something of a mystery. Bringing it to the attention of my family crossed my mind, but it tasted good and if I actually wanted any, it was a really good idea to say it in a way that fellow diners would understand. So, pass the ‘Rigut”. Or the MON-I-GUT, my childhood favorite and Italian equivalent of an enchilada, which hardly sounds appetizing, perhaps even less so when you consider that even when properly pronounced, “manicotti” translates to “cooked hands”. Yum.
Cured meats like prosciutto (PRU-SHOOT or BRU-SHOOT) and cappicola (GOBI-GOAL) – there’s that magic ‘g’ again – were not particularly popular in my house. My diet at the time consisted primarily of hot dogs, bologna, cheese, pretzels, and iced tea. While my grandfather owned a grocery store/deli, he didn’t sell them or at least not as far as I knew. Plus, my grandparents grew up on a (usually) steady diet of pasta, fish and vegetables, which didn’t change when they emigrated to the U.S.
When my mother remarried twelve years after my father’s death, her new husband regularly ate a lot of this stuff, and before long I found myself in the deli asking for them. I had a list that I’d written myself with strange words like “gobigoal” on it, a word that, hard as I tried, I could not find anywhere on the plastic-sealed hunks in the refrigerated case. Standing on line in the deli, my adolescent insecurities were only magnified by the impending uncertainty. How about just some plain old ham? American cheese, anyone? Feeling somewhat intimidated by the moody deli clerk, I went ahead and just asked for a pound of gobi-goal. Smelling my fear, he asked for confirmation. So I repeated again, although that was the last time I promised myself, if he didn’t understand this, I was going down the block to the supermarket for some turkey and American cheese. Thankfully, he reached into the case and picked out the hunk of meat labeled “Capicola”. Talk about enlightenment.
While this sort of linguistic uneasiness is frustrating, it is probably ever more so for non-Italian-Americans. Watching them fearfully order a hero with prosciutto (do I pronounce it with a ‘p’ or a ‘b”? drop off the ‘o’ at the end?) makes me squirm. Whatever comes out of their mouths, they get their sandwich and walk away happy. But that indecisiveness, inevitably, stems from the criticisms of a very proud Italian-American, who at one point in that sandwich orderer’s life, scolded him for “not saying it right”. I once worked with a girl who said she hated when people mispronounced manicotti. “It’s monegut”. This seems all the more ridiculous when I imagine the example of a transplanted Bostonian American telling native Italians that the proper pronunciation of the word “car” is “CAH” - and being indignant about it. There’s a difference between admitting that a dialect is just a variation on the standard language, to be used around the house or in the neighborhood among familiar faces and insisting that it is the right way, the only way. It is equally wrong for traditionalists to call for the death of all dialects. There is a time and a place, not to mention room, for both - I think.
If I get off of my soapbox for a minute and sit back down at the dinner table with my family, I’m faced with an old problem; having someone pass me the ricotta. Do I, with my daughter listening, ask for manicotti with an American accent, break my English with a little overemphasized Italian just like some news reporters do, or revert to ‘monigut’? Something tells me the middle ground between the first two options will be the way to go, especially with my wife staring me down from across the table. Then again, old habits are hard to break. But if my daughter is even a little bit like her mother, she, unlike me, will not hesitate for a second to ask why ricotta is pronounced ‘rigut’. I’ll tell her what I realize now: That it has something to do with sitting around my grandparents’ table on a Sunday afternoon surrounded by family, many of them now long dead, and anxiously digging into the fruit of Grandma’s morning long labors.
“Where do you get the ‘g’ from? There’s no ‘g’ in that word. And how does the ‘t’ turn into a ‘d’? How do you get ‘GAVA-deel’ from ‘CAVA-TELLI’?”
So goes the monthly discussion on the pronunciation of Italian words like cavatelli, manicotti, and mozzarella between my wife and mother, a discussion that I always enjoy and if bored, will actually make happen by saying something as simple as “how about some GAVA-deel for dinner”. Mind you, Italian-American though I am, I’ve not once eaten cavatelli (there’s a package of it in my freezer that I bought half as a joke, half out of curiosity). We’ll eat it for dinner at some point – it’s pasta, we have to – but I can only imagine where the discussion will head and what new four-letter words my daughter might learn during the process.
Growing up the only Italian words I heard were either food items or curses. My first word in dialect was probably one I uttered every Sunday when Grandma made her tomato sauce: ‘RIGUT’, with its slight roll of the “r”, mysterious ‘g’, and blatant disregard for the final vowel which, when I learned how to read, made the actual container of “Ricotta” something of a mystery. Bringing it to the attention of my family crossed my mind, but it tasted good and if I actually wanted any, it was a really good idea to say it in a way that fellow diners would understand. So, pass the ‘Rigut”. Or the MON-I-GUT, my childhood favorite and Italian equivalent of an enchilada, which hardly sounds appetizing, perhaps even less so when you consider that even when properly pronounced, “manicotti” translates to “cooked hands”. Yum.
Cured meats like prosciutto (PRU-SHOOT or BRU-SHOOT) and cappicola (GOBI-GOAL) – there’s that magic ‘g’ again – were not particularly popular in my house. My diet at the time consisted primarily of hot dogs, bologna, cheese, pretzels, and iced tea. While my grandfather owned a grocery store/deli, he didn’t sell them or at least not as far as I knew. Plus, my grandparents grew up on a (usually) steady diet of pasta, fish and vegetables, which didn’t change when they emigrated to the U.S.
When my mother remarried twelve years after my father’s death, her new husband regularly ate a lot of this stuff, and before long I found myself in the deli asking for them. I had a list that I’d written myself with strange words like “gobigoal” on it, a word that, hard as I tried, I could not find anywhere on the plastic-sealed hunks in the refrigerated case. Standing on line in the deli, my adolescent insecurities were only magnified by the impending uncertainty. How about just some plain old ham? American cheese, anyone? Feeling somewhat intimidated by the moody deli clerk, I went ahead and just asked for a pound of gobi-goal. Smelling my fear, he asked for confirmation. So I repeated again, although that was the last time I promised myself, if he didn’t understand this, I was going down the block to the supermarket for some turkey and American cheese. Thankfully, he reached into the case and picked out the hunk of meat labeled “Capicola”. Talk about enlightenment.
While this sort of linguistic uneasiness is frustrating, it is probably ever more so for non-Italian-Americans. Watching them fearfully order a hero with prosciutto (do I pronounce it with a ‘p’ or a ‘b”? drop off the ‘o’ at the end?) makes me squirm. Whatever comes out of their mouths, they get their sandwich and walk away happy. But that indecisiveness, inevitably, stems from the criticisms of a very proud Italian-American, who at one point in that sandwich orderer’s life, scolded him for “not saying it right”. I once worked with a girl who said she hated when people mispronounced manicotti. “It’s monegut”. This seems all the more ridiculous when I imagine the example of a transplanted Bostonian American telling native Italians that the proper pronunciation of the word “car” is “CAH” - and being indignant about it. There’s a difference between admitting that a dialect is just a variation on the standard language, to be used around the house or in the neighborhood among familiar faces and insisting that it is the right way, the only way. It is equally wrong for traditionalists to call for the death of all dialects. There is a time and a place, not to mention room, for both - I think.
If I get off of my soapbox for a minute and sit back down at the dinner table with my family, I’m faced with an old problem; having someone pass me the ricotta. Do I, with my daughter listening, ask for manicotti with an American accent, break my English with a little overemphasized Italian just like some news reporters do, or revert to ‘monigut’? Something tells me the middle ground between the first two options will be the way to go, especially with my wife staring me down from across the table. Then again, old habits are hard to break. But if my daughter is even a little bit like her mother, she, unlike me, will not hesitate for a second to ask why ricotta is pronounced ‘rigut’. I’ll tell her what I realize now: That it has something to do with sitting around my grandparents’ table on a Sunday afternoon surrounded by family, many of them now long dead, and anxiously digging into the fruit of Grandma’s morning long labors.
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3 comments:
I really liked this piece.
Just noticed that in last sentence of the third paragraph I used "latter" instead of "former". Guess that's why they call them drafts.
I think its a great piece favoring preserving dialects. Language is constantly changing -- look at online dialects and music lyrics. Your story lightens up the attitude that one's own way is not the only right way.
Moving to the South last year has given me a whole new perspective on Southern dialects as well and their acceptence - whether proper or not. Its funny when you hear "professionals" saying "I might could" instead of "maybe."
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