Rigatoni (1894)

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:04 AM -0400 6/14/05, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>Italian i-plurals (perhaps particularly those which (ooops! that)
>refer to foodstuffs) are regularly pluralized in English. When they
>can be taken as noncount (e.g., spaghetti), however, they are not,
>although, most peculiarly, in Italian-heritage families, these
>reanalyzed noncounts are often English pluralized - spaghettis,
>macaronis, etc...., not referring to kinds but in such constructions
>as "We're having spaghettis tonight." Am Italian-American once
>explained this to me as a result of "Well, they're plural, you know."
>
>dInIs
>
>>"Chicken Rigatonies" in my last post, from 1994 usenet, can probably be
>>expected. Rigatoni, though, is plural.
>>...
And I'll believe "rigatoni" is a plural count noun _in English_ when
I hear someone say "Oops, I dropped a rigatono".  (Well, actually,
that's the kind of thing I'd say, but that doesn't count.)

Larry