Request for ethnic terms

[Carmine Colacino]

Robert Orr wrote:
>I recently came across "il visio tedesco" ("the German vice"?) for homosexualit
>y,
>   Robert Orr


It sounds Italian, but, if that's the case, should be spelled: "il vizio
tedesco"; but I never heard this expression (I'm Italian); but maybe it is
confined to only some parts of Italy (and that could explain the "s"
instead of "z", i.e., being from a north-eastern Italian dialect.)

Probably, you already know about "chiave inglese" (monkey-wrench, according
to my dictionary), to be a "portoghese" in the sense of getting in (a
stadium, a movie theater, everywhere) without paying the ticket, or anyway
illegally (this, the story goes, started a century or so ago, when the
Portuguese embassy in Rome gave a reception only for Portuguese, and many
people went pretending to be Portuguese to enter).
Dutch treat, in Italian is "alla romana" (Roman way); "fumare come un
turco" to smoke like a Turk, refers to people that smoke a lot of
cigarettes. Parlare arabo, or sometimes Greek (this is somewhat outdated)
to speak Arabici/Greek, refers to someone that speaks in an
incomprehensible way. Alla francese (in the French way) to do a sloppy job.
There are more, but I guess you know them all.
Bye.

Carmine Colacino
12 October 1995