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#Post#: 13094--------------------------------------------------
Guess the language
By: Alharacas Date: March 5, 2019, 5:28 am
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There is an Italian restaurant near here where the food is quite
good. Which is remarkable where I live, so we keep going back.
However, the place has never really felt authentically Italian
to me. Yes, the menu is all Italian (names and dishes), they
even offer my favourite Pizza, Napoli, with capers and anchovis.
Even if they do call it "Sicilia". Yes, the waiters greet you
with "Buongiorno" and say "Prego" and "Grazie". Yes, my mother
once asked one of the waiters where the cook was from, and was
told he was Italian. Still, I kept feeling something was
slightly off.
The problem is, of course, that I don't speak Italian. It's just
that I usually manage to understand bits here and there, which I
don't when the staff are talking among themselves. So, maybe
they're all from some tiny little village with a really strong
regional dialect? But then, Italian is usually spoken with this
special kind of melodic intonation, isn't it? Not to mention
flourish? And that's what I feel is missing.
Now, the other day a group of young people were sitting at a
nearby table, obviously friends or relatives of the waiters who
kept stopping by to exchange a few words. I kept straining my
ears in order to catch a phrase which would finally allow me to
identify the language. Nothing. What it most sounded like was
some sort of Slavic language, with a word of French thrown in
here and there, plus lots of sounds I'd have expected from
Arabic speakers.
Please don't get me wrong, if it's good Italian food, I really
don't care whether it's been cooked by a chef from Pluto and
served by waiters from Atlantis. It's just that not being able
to identify the language was driving me mad.
So, when I got the bill, I asked the waiter which language the
people at that table spoke, and -
Can you guess the answer?
Hint: The staff just might actually be from Italy. Their
language, however, is definitely not Italian. :)
#Post#: 13096--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Sudeep Date: March 5, 2019, 7:59 am
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WOW! Thanks Susanne for mentioning and for eavesdropping ;D or
else I would not have known that Italy is linguistically
diverse! Soon after I read your post, I googled and got it:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Italy
and that is
something I was not expecting! I have no idea what that language
could be but let me take a wild guess: Friulian?
#Post#: 13097--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Allie Date: March 5, 2019, 8:12 am
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I have no idea (and I am really curious), but when someone
mentions a mix of Slavic and Latin languages, I automatically
think Romanian, so I am already biased.
#Post#: 13098--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Coligno Date: March 5, 2019, 9:17 am
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If the staff are really from Italy and really speak a Slavic
language, then I would guess it's Slovene, which is spoken in
parts of the region of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia.
#Post#: 13099--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Nikola Date: March 5, 2019, 9:36 am
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I'm going to guess Serbo-Croatian.
Even though it's not an official language anymore but it
probably was at the time their ancestors came to Italy.
Ok, I just wanted to squeeze as many countries in one guess as
possible.
#Post#: 13100--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Truman Overby Date: March 5, 2019, 11:07 am
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Forgive me for sounding cynical but I'm guessing that he told
you what he figured you wanted to hear. This is probably a
question they get all day, every day. I would guess they aren't
Italians at all. In the US, the majority of restaurant workers
are immigrants. Usually Hispanics.
Seriously though, this bloviating bletherskate babbled blague
and bombosh and you bit. :D
#Post#: 13102--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Aliph Date: March 5, 2019, 12:40 pm
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Are they Albanian from southern Italy? There is a community
especially in Sicily. There are also Greeks in the south but you
would have recognized the language since you studied Ancient
Greek.
Or Gypsies?
Or people from Slovenia?
Sunshine congratulations, yes in Italy there are many minority
languages. Even German and French.
Mangoose may be right, maybe they told you anything. In my
neighborhood the best Pizza Parlor is run by some Kurds...do not
know if they belong to the Kurmangi or the other kind of Kurds
(Kurds have two different languages). They only admitted it,
when I asked them if they were Turks and they didn’t appreciate
it.
#Post#: 13107--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Alharacas Date: March 5, 2019, 2:30 pm
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Erik, I'd also thought they might be Romanians, but that was
before I'd listened so hard to the people at that table.
Sunshine, glad you liked my post. :)
Sofia, thanks for giving everybody else a chance as I'd been
sure you'd guess it right away, and you did: it was Albanian,
the waiter said. Clap-clap!
Which is why you can be sure he wasn't bullshitting me, Jerry.
:)
#Post#: 13108--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Nikola Date: March 5, 2019, 3:18 pm
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Alharacas, I thought you said it sounded like a Slavic language.
#Post#: 13109--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guess the language
By: Alharacas Date: March 5, 2019, 7:02 pm
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Nikola, what I said was "what it most sounded like was some sort
of Slavic language". And it does - to me. Remember, my Polish
isn't that good and I know no other Slavic language. It's mostly
because of the intonation, I think.
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