La Niña

i have friends who live in Nutley, NJ. that's a big i-talian town. i'll ask them. they'll know. Ah - but would we then be talking about American-Italian, or Italian-Italian?

I bet that the second vowel in otto gets cut off somewhat in certain regions in the south.

Dominic tells me that maiale is more commonly used by northern Italians, and porco is more commonly used by southern Italians (referring to the animal). He also said that everybody would use porco, but southern Italians would not be inclined to use maiale.

"marketing gimmick" is a rather loaded phrase, and is probably not, to most people, read the same as "consideration for marketing." I might be inclined to believe that all marketing efforts are "gimmicks," in fact.

Not according to both of my Italian dictionaries. From the bigger dictionary: From English to Italian: pig n. (zool.) porco, maiale, suino from Italian to English: por-co m. pig, swine; pork; boar maial-e m. pig, swine; pork Also called Dominic (of DiFara fame) - who said porco, porci, and confirmed pronunciation of same. I'd be interested to know what the difference is between porco and maiale when used by Italians. I'll check it out.

I am sure that no restaurant names itself without consideration for marketing.

I suppose using foreign words for names of restaurants has been shown to be successful as a marketing gimmick. More power to 'em. No such thing as bad publicity, as they say.

Oh Cabby, how can you live with yourself?

"It's hard enough convincing people that swiss chard and artic char are different." And what about arctic char?

And for people who can't? And you know how many times I've heard people say "por-see-nee?"

Pig is porco. Plural is porci, pronounced por-chee (with an Italian r, and the last vowel is not as long as as the American ee-sounding vowel - use the w example that Rachel came up with before, but substitute a y). Imagine how many people would have said por-see or por-kee or por-sigh or porch-eye or pork-eye.

Gordon, that is unbelievably funny.

Rachel, that's really helpful, thanks. But also let's not forget that the two o's in Otto are not identical. The first one is shorter than the second one. The second one comes closer to closing toward that w thing that you mentioned, but still doesn't get there like a long English o. In other words (and I should have said this earlier), the o's in Otto are not dipthongs like the English long o.

And I aint' even a fat lady!

Nick, if you feel it's ridiculous, nobody's forcing you to read it and post in it. Obviously, for some of us, this discussion is interesting and entertaining. And Mario couldn't settle anything. The discussion isn't about Mario, or even about Otto, at this point. But of course you knew that, the thread being so ridiculous and all.

I got a guy to ask. Linguistics guy. I'll ask. I'll see if he'll log on and check it out.

Cabby, scroll up and read - we've been discussing this very subject. But anyway - who knows who'd answer the phone? And even if the owners tried to teach the staff a zillion times how to pronounce it, how do you know they can?

Cabby, dear heart - how would that help?

Not if they're saying oh-toe, they ain't.

But they oblige you. That strikes me as the right move, whether it sounds right to them or not. Because Nee-nah is one of the correct pronunciations of the word in English. But in the case of otto, it is NOT English.

FG - it's completely irrelevant. The owners can say anything they want. Why does that mean we have to pronounce it the way they say? I've been called Nine-ah by lots of southerners. And I say "I pronounce it Nee-nah" and they just think it's incorrect. They'll oblige me, but to them it doesn't sound right.

Wilfrid, I agree with you completely. I have a question about Brit pronunciation. I know Brits say val-et and duv-et and Quix-ot, etc - but what about Beethoven? Do Brits say Bee-thoven? What about that th?

Perhaps. Or, perhaps you are hearing it incorrectly. I think Batali called the place Otto and not Eight because the cuisine is Italian and not American or English. Just a thought. When I was a kid, one summer in Italy - my vocabulary was limited but my accent was so good that a woman in an ice cream store screamed at me and threw me out of the store because she thought I was some Italian kid making fun of her, pretending not to speak Italian. I hear the difference. Yes, surely they used Otto instead of Eight because it's Italian food - so at least the owners could pronounce it correctly, no?

No, Stone, they're Italian vowels, not English vowels.

First of all FG, you asked "If the owner of the establisment says it's "oh-toe" with full American long-"o"s, is that not the official pronunciation and should we not all accept it?" I wasn't talking about anyone specific. And you can call anything anything you want. Joe and Mario can do whatever they want - it's not a question of whether they're the arbiters - they can call it whatever they want. If I see the letters o-t-t-o together, and I know it's an Italian word, I'm going to pronounce it correctly. As opposed to the name Otto - which in German should be pronounced similarly to the way otto is pronounced in Italian - but take Otto Preminger - he came to the US, and it became ah-toe. Oskar Schindler is called oss-ker by Americans. But not by me.