Language snob speaks out!

[muckefuck]

(If you read through--or at least skim over--all the pedantry, you will be rewarded with a quiz.)

I'm looking to sign my mother up for a few cooking classes as a birthday gift (for whom? you might well ask...) and I came across one that offers to teach the following recipe:

Pera Còtto Rose con Zabaglione

I know some of you are asking "Why the hell can't they just use good English?" and others are dying a little inside. For me, it's both. My feeling is, if you're going to abuse a foreign language that badly, you should have your right to use anything but English (and maybe play languages like Pig Latin and Esperanto) suspended indefinitely.

How badly? Oh, let me count the ways:

1. The grave accent, when used in Italian at all, only appears on stressed final vowels (e.g. Niccolò). Some dictionaries will put it over stressed antepenultimate vowels as well, but this is strictly a crutch for learners and not part of the written language proper. There is no excuse for putting it over a penultimate vowel, particularly in a two-syllable word.
2. Pera is a feminine noun; if Cotto modifies it, it should agree in gender, i.e. Cotta.
3. Presumably, the recipe requires ones to cook more than one pear. Thus, it should be plural, i.e. Pere Cotte.
4. Why the hell is everything In Caps anyway? This is Italian, not German!
5. I don't know what in the name of all that is lemon-scented that "Rose" is doing there. Are the pears pink? Is the wine a rosé? Are there roses in the dish? Even if the answer to any of these questions is "yes", the syntax is still wrong, wrong, wrong.

I think five errors in the first three words is about enough, don't you? Someone with first-year Spanish could've done a better job than this monolingual clod with nothing more than an English-Italian dictionary. Need I add that no mother of mine is going to take cooking classes there, at least not on my dime!

Now, the promised quiz: In the same mall as this cooking store/school, there stands a branch of the Ohio-based home furnishings store named Arhaus. Does the pun work in your native dialect of English? (If you find yourself saying, "What pun?", then you should answer "No.")

Comments

yes

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

But is that English or German speaking?
I don't know.

The pun...

[zerbie.livejournal.com]

works for me.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I get it too, even tho I say "ow-er."

[go-wade-in.livejournal.com]

maybe "cotto" modifies "rose", rather than "pera".

Objections, your honour!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

A valiant attempt, lad! However, if that's the case:

1. Rose must be mispelled. Rosè could presumably be an abbreviation of (vino) rosè.
2. Even so, the syntax is still screwed, since there's no way of relating cotto rosè to pera. What does "pear cooked rosé" mean in English?
3. With few exceptions, adjectives folow nouns in Italian, so the expected order would be rosè cotto rather than vice versa.
4. I know what cooked pears are; what the hell is cooked wine?

Alternately, if Rose is spelled correctly, the same objections about agreement (feminine plural vs. masculine singular), word order, relationship to the rest of the noun phrase ("pear cooked roses"?), and recipe ("cooked roses"?) obtain.

It's a mess, plain and simple, and there's no salvaging it.

Re: Objections, your honour!

[go-wade-in.livejournal.com]

i think you're right that "rose" must be misspelled since the online italian-english dictionary came up with zip.

using various search engines, "cotto rose" does come up with some hits, including a couple that uses it as a type of color or design (in reference to tile!). there was also an italian restaurant that used the same phrase for a fish course: Pavé di tonno cotto rosé al lardo d'Arnad".

maybe it's a pear that's cooked a certain kind of red or pink?

Re: Objections, your honour!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Your attempts to defend the indefensible are sweet in a doomed, quixotic sort of way.

First of all, interior decorating colour descriptions have zero relevance to cooking--and to any other area of human endeavour, as far as I can tell. They are a jargon unto themselves.

As for the Italian restaurant site, I find it très amusant that the "English language" menu reads exactly the same as the Italian-language one with only the headings (e.g. "Appetisers") changed. It also mixes Italian and French rather promiscuously, as the macaronic moniker you've posted above attests.

Note the gender agreement, however: tonno cotto. So at least I know it's the tuna that's cooked. As for the rosé...a browse of sites reveals it could refer to colour, to the wine used in the cooking, or to something else entirely. Presumably the author of the recipe knows which, but lacks sufficient knowledge of Italian to tell us.

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

Thanks to you, I now have no idea how I normally pronounce the word "our."

I did get the pun, though.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Why the hell is everything In Caps anyway? This is Italian, not German!

But the recipe's in English, isn't it? Titles, including recipe titles in my experience, use initial caps (or all caps) in American English, even if the name or phrase is from another language.

In the same mall as this cooking store/school, there stands a branch of the Ohio-based home furnishings store named Arhaus. Does the pun work in your native dialect of English? (If you find yourself saying, "What pun?", then you should answer "No.")

I think so. I think my pronunciation varies, but overlaps enough with "ar"="our" that it works.

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

They need '...eeentur meed loffters treat' as a tagline.

So, yes, it works for me :-)