"Italglish" (like Spanglish)

[Boatti, Stephen]

I think our family (from Northern Italy) also used something like "la
boghza" for "box" in general. The funniest incident of Italglish occurred
when my father, who was born in Italy and came to the US as a teenager,
returned to Italy for the first time for a visit after 35 years. He was a
bartender in this country, and he called his place of employ "la bara". Now,
in fact, the Italian word for "bar" is the English loanword - "il bar".  But
the immigrants here never called it that. On the Italian trip, people would
ask him where he worked. He naturally replied - "in una bara."  Well, "una
bara" means "a bier'" or coffin. He sure got a lot of funny looks!


Steve

 -----Original Message-----
From:   jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM [mailto:jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM]
Sent:   Friday, March 09, 2001 7:55 AM
To:     ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:        Re: "Italglish" (like Spanglish)

P.S.  I also recall my grandmother calling a box of tissues "la
boghezeh."  I'm sure my mother would be able to think of many
other examples as well.  How widespread these words were within
my grandmother's immigrant speaking community, though, I
couldn't say.

Joanne