I've told this story so many times over the years that a few people I know now use "think about something else" as a euphemism for going to the bathroom! As in, "Be right back. I'm going to think about something else."
We've all been there, Eric! I still make sure I'm saying the double "nn" when wishing folks Buon Anno...My "no condoms with contact lens solution" false friend embarrassment will never be forgotten, as I recalled in this Half Roman post https://francesdemilio.substack.com/p/wordless-in-italy
Frances, I think your post from last summer helped plant the seed for this one!
I read your post when it first went up and I guess it stayed in my sub-conscious.
The specific lede for this essay came at a recent dinner party when I recounted the "sono bloccata" story for the hundredth time (it's one of my go-to stories). And while the idea was simmering, I think it linked up with the "false friends" thoughts from your essay.
Anyway, thank you for the inspiration! It's so interesting (and beyond my capacity to understand) how the mind works.
Anyone who hasn't read Frances's essay follow the link in her comment.
fascinating.. when I learned Italian I had already studied French and was fluent in English, so I cross referenced every query in 3 dictionaries.. German Italian, French/Italian and English/French (the English vocabulary offers a host of adjectives that have latin roots), but never the pocket size variety.. I found this an endlessly fascinating and very thorough way to learn languages as the Larousse, Oxford and Langenscheidt complete versions offer a lot of the more colloquial usage and everyday phrases as well.. I can still get lost in dictionaries for hours.. unfortunately, I find that nowadays (I occasionally help friends’ children with French or English homework), kids revert only to google or AI, which might help instantly, but will not make them gain the deeper knowledge that makes knowing a foreign language so much fun.. in your case, as an English native speaker you were probably at a slight disadvantage as far as pronunciation and those double consonants go 😉
I speak three languages well -- English, Spanish, Italian, with very so-so French a distant fourth. I don't think I have a natural talent for languages and for me the biggest challenge is to keep them separate in my head. It's a constant struggle.
I agree 100% with the use of AI for translation being a dangerous short-term fix. Think about the use of map software. It helps us get places more efficiently. But not developing our sense-of-direction has consequences related to memory, awareness, it reduces serendipity, etc.
you did very well with mastering three foreign languages, congratulations! I remember saying quaranta (instead of cuarenta) in the market in Madrid.. not that it mattered.. being able to express ourselves in different languages/cultures is a gift well worth the effort
This was a fun read. Based on your subtitle talking about false friends, I truly thought your date bailed on you at the end to get out of paying the tab. Alas, she was stuck -- what a twist! haha
Haha. I've had some bad dates, but so far nobody's run out on my mid-date! Knock on wood.
I was going for a subtle misdirection with the title and sub-title. When I was learning Italian, I learned the concept of "false friends." I already spoke Spanish going in and there are hundreds of them between the two closely-related languages: bravo, pronto, burro, caldo, etc.
Heehee. I thought the same ... that she left (not to avoid paying but because she wasn't having a good time ... sorry, Eric) or that she decided to run off with a waiter or something. I was thinking, warm milk? What does that have to do with anything?
Americans were also nice when I moved there. I spoke english from school but still made mistakes. If I'm tired, I still sometimes say "Im knowing him since I was a kid" and that kind of thing.
Nowadays, if I hear foreigners trying to speak Italian I'm very supportive. Anyone who speaks more than one language knows the struggles of a non-fluent speaker..
I remember a friend recounting the point at which they realised they had enthusiastically and inadvertently been singing the praises of condoms (preservativi) as a treat, when really they were a big fan of preserves. The kindness is always there, even when people are laughing with you.
This was so fun to read, Eric! I love Zucchero di cane 🐕, that could be a nice expression to describe a sweet friendly dog.
I had similar stories because of English words mispronouncing. The most hilarious happened when an Italian colleague said to an American one that in a certain region there was "a lot of chaos", saying "chaos" with A like Alfa (as the original Greek term). He first looked unsure, then puzzled, and after a while he asked: "Do you mean muuuuh 🐮?" as he thought she meant "cows". He had visualized a cows invasion!
That's a funny mixup! No you have me worried about the cow invasion on top of everything else!
I've always been unsure about the pronunciation of "chaos" ... but I don't think I never say it so it could be confused with "cows" -- except maybe in Italian.
A dozen or so years ago, I was at a big dinner with my relatives in Reggio Calabria. Much of the Italian I was able to speak came from my relentless practice with Pimsleur language lessons, all three levels. There was one phrase in particular that I committed to memory because I just loved the sound of it. After a few glasses of wine, I decided I should get the attention of the entire table (perhaps 15 cousins) and dazzle them with my language skills.
A few cousins clinked their glasses to quiet the din. Seated at the center of the group, I leaned in and, and with great flair, intended to say, "Mi hanno detto che..." (They told me that ... you would be leaving next week).
Unfortunately, I missed the nuance of precise enunciation and it came out, "Mi ano detto que..."
My cousins were wide-eyed and slack-jawed for a moment, before they erupted in laughter, deep rolling belly laughs with tears rolling down their faces. Natale, seated to my right, literally fell out of his chair. Germaine, who often translated for me, caught her breath long enough to ask, "Did you mean to say that...?" Umm, say what? I wasn't sure what had just happened.
Paola, a cousin who loved to needle me, asked all evening, and the next day, too, "What is your a--hole telling you now, Justin?"
Excellent stories. I remember mispronouncing words in Russian while serving at the embassy in Moscow, and the Russians I was trying to "honor" with my attempts at their language would start laughing, but then would kindly correct me. As you just wrote, learning the local language is important, but learning the miniscule differences of the words is priceless!
I think learning the tiny shades of meaning is an ongoing project -- not the least of which because they're evolving in real time. I actually miss some of that evolution in English, since I'm only back a few weeks a year.
I can't imagine how difficult Russian must be! One of the reasons I chose to move to Italy is because I thought Italian would be fairly easy because I already spoke English and Spanish. In my considerations I excluded moving to any country that had a language that used a different alphabet.
Yes, Russian is very difficult. But more difficult is learning the Cyrillic alphabet and trying to read it! I remember the night Betty and I had our "breakthrough" moment in reading Russian. We had just left a restaurant in Moscow and were walking back to the embassy when we looked up at a billboard and managed to "sound-out" the words. When we decrypted "Internet" we started laughing, hugging and dancing on the sidewalk. It was an add for an internet provider. After that, we survived the next 23 months with an ability to get around more efficiently. Being able to "roll the 'r's' " when speaking is absolutely essential.
Oh, Eric, just what is needed. Thank you for making me laugh! Mostly at myself. One of the most memorable for me was a time we were still traveling to Florence from the US - maybe 20 years ago before we had much sense about Italian. My husband, Lee, loved to have a gin and tonic at the end of the day. But finding Gin in Florence at that time was almost impossible. Worse, still, was finding tonic. We finally found a little out of the way grocery with tonic. It was way up high, on a shelf we couldn't reach and there were both big and smaller bottles of it. I thought I was smart when I asked for the big bottle. Vorrei la tonica grosso!!! Surely grosso meant big! In fact, it means fat! I asked for Fat Tonic. The clerk just looked at me like I was crazy. So so easy to make mistakes! My husband almost called a woman's poodle a whore! Somehow mixing up the word for poodle with whore = puta! He stopped himself in the nick of time.
Fat Tonic is funny, but at least it wasn't embarrassing in and of itself. I mean, you could have asked for big penne! Sorry for the vulgar comment!
Isn't it interesting how things like tonic (or peanut butter, breakfast cereals, syrup, cheesecake, etc.) have become so readily available over the last 20 years? It's like someone sent a memo to retailers.
I am having plenty of those moments - luckily with my friends. As you say - born by confidence and the mixture of the many languages I have to use simultaneously. Some time ago I was telling a story to a friend and it was about a female mouse. Well, I said TOPA. She bursted out laughing... (I prefer not to explain why I shouldn't have said it - in case some kids are reading). The proficiency in Italian can be taken to impossible levels.
I still go back to the same restaurant now and then and one of the co-owners still chuckles about the story more than 20 years after the fact. But it can never happen again: they've now installed a steel frame inside the doorframe!
Eric, I absolutely love this anecdote! I can’t tell you how easy it is for some odd reason to get stuck in Italia bathrooms. My advice to everyone is always take your cell phone with you. I have upon occasion needed to call a dinner companion to come and rescue me. And it’s funny how these little expressions can seem like the perfect translation but actually not be the right one at all. I often hear Americans complimenting dishes in Italian restaurants, and saying they are “tremendous“ which is a compliment in English, but quite the opposite in Italian.
I will leave you with something I almost said down in Campo dei Fiori when I lived in that area on the occasion of my first Thanksgiving in Italy. I needed a basting instrument for the turkey so I was thinking just a little pump and so I translated it into just that, a pompino. And when I told my husband I was going down to the market to ask for a little pompino he promptly sat me down and said “no wait a minute, sit down. We need to discuss this.” it was close to being one of my most terrifying language gaffes ever!
"Pompino" is a loaded word for sure! I'm sure you weren't the first to make this kind of mistake, but I'm also positive it makes Italians laugh every time! Was your husband laughing or worried that you might embarrass yourself? Or both?
It's just as hard for non-English speakers (the same date mentioned in the bathroom anecdote thought I was talking about a "one-night stand" when I was just talking about a "nightstand.")
I had no idea there was a rash of people getting "bloccati" in Italian bathrooms! The story above happened before the universal use of cell phones, so it wasn't an option then. I don't think I've ever been stuck in an Italian bathroom, but as someone who sometimes uses bathroom trips to check sports scores, I know that a lot of them are built so deep in buildings they don't get mobile phone signals!
In my first month in Rome during my sabbatical 25 years ago, I asked an elderly woman in the public market if her ripe tomatoes had "preservitivi." She howled. I think it was the first time she'd been asked about condoms since the Mussolini administration.
I wonder what the most common "false friend" mistake is. This has got to be top ten, but, surprisingly, Italians never seem to get tired of the same errors foreigners make again and again!
Ah so many false friends and pronunciation hiccups…
My favourite wasn’t mine though. A friend was on an exchange trip in France, where to his surprise his host family shared his love of golf. They all went to play a round together, including the Grand-mere. Deferring to age, she teed off on the first hole and landed nicely on the fairway, causing my friend to exclaim “Belle coup!” Or so he thought, but his pronunciation actually delivered “Belle cul!”
While the rest of the family collapsed in laughter, Grand-mere looked over her shoulder, smiled, gave a tap to her derrière and said “merci!”
I don't speak French well, and one thing holding me back is how tonal the language as -- as your anecdote illustrates. I'm worried about making mistakes like this.
I think the grand-mere should have had a stroke deducted from her score for the quick and hilarious deadpan answer! That's the kind of reply that would have occurred to me ten minutes later when it would have been too late to use it.
Tell me about it - several years of expensive French education never got me anywhere. My own surprise at actually picking up Italian is far exceeded by my parents', but the clear pronunciation rules of Italian are a massive reason for that (almost on a par with marrying an Italian).
This was a fun reminder of my attempts to learn just a dash of Mandarin and invariably flubbed the tones. Luckly, most of the people I tried it with understood, but they definitely had a good laugh.
Or even the stories my father told about learning English. The difference between whole and hole, pi and pee, and the general hilarity that would ensue in a small town in rural Kentucky as he fumbled around with the language.
Im learning Persian now. It is definitely easier than Mandarin. Which isnt as tough as it seems, but the tones are killer. Grammar isnt all that bad. I just lost interest knowing I wasnt going to be there much longer and likely wouldnt go back.
"Zucchero di cane" is what I call a BIM, a Beautiful Italian Mistake.
Zucchero di cane perfectly describes that sacred bar ritual: you sweetening your coffee with zucchero di canna under the approving gaze of your dog, who knows this is precisely the moment she may position herself elegantly in front of the bancone, waiting for cornetto crumbs.
Zucchero di cane names the perfect symbiosis between human and dog, al bar. ☕ 🐕 ✨
Nowadays I take my coffee “amaro,” so I no longer have a chance to say “zucchero di canna” or “di cane” but Mocha still makes a production out of looking for cornetto crumbs at the bar, even if it means making coffee drinkers take a step backwards!
Lost in translation: “Just try to relax!” he said forcefully, in Italian. “Try to think about something else! Anything else!”
Too funny, lol.
Very interesting to read, Eric.
"What I remember is kindness."
I've told this story so many times over the years that a few people I know now use "think about something else" as a euphemism for going to the bathroom! As in, "Be right back. I'm going to think about something else."
We've all been there, Eric! I still make sure I'm saying the double "nn" when wishing folks Buon Anno...My "no condoms with contact lens solution" false friend embarrassment will never be forgotten, as I recalled in this Half Roman post https://francesdemilio.substack.com/p/wordless-in-italy
Frances, I think your post from last summer helped plant the seed for this one!
I read your post when it first went up and I guess it stayed in my sub-conscious.
The specific lede for this essay came at a recent dinner party when I recounted the "sono bloccata" story for the hundredth time (it's one of my go-to stories). And while the idea was simmering, I think it linked up with the "false friends" thoughts from your essay.
Anyway, thank you for the inspiration! It's so interesting (and beyond my capacity to understand) how the mind works.
Anyone who hasn't read Frances's essay follow the link in her comment.
fascinating.. when I learned Italian I had already studied French and was fluent in English, so I cross referenced every query in 3 dictionaries.. German Italian, French/Italian and English/French (the English vocabulary offers a host of adjectives that have latin roots), but never the pocket size variety.. I found this an endlessly fascinating and very thorough way to learn languages as the Larousse, Oxford and Langenscheidt complete versions offer a lot of the more colloquial usage and everyday phrases as well.. I can still get lost in dictionaries for hours.. unfortunately, I find that nowadays (I occasionally help friends’ children with French or English homework), kids revert only to google or AI, which might help instantly, but will not make them gain the deeper knowledge that makes knowing a foreign language so much fun.. in your case, as an English native speaker you were probably at a slight disadvantage as far as pronunciation and those double consonants go 😉
I speak three languages well -- English, Spanish, Italian, with very so-so French a distant fourth. I don't think I have a natural talent for languages and for me the biggest challenge is to keep them separate in my head. It's a constant struggle.
I agree 100% with the use of AI for translation being a dangerous short-term fix. Think about the use of map software. It helps us get places more efficiently. But not developing our sense-of-direction has consequences related to memory, awareness, it reduces serendipity, etc.
Thanks for the interesting comment!
you did very well with mastering three foreign languages, congratulations! I remember saying quaranta (instead of cuarenta) in the market in Madrid.. not that it mattered.. being able to express ourselves in different languages/cultures is a gift well worth the effort
If it happens to Italy veterans like you and Eric I don't feel so bad when it happens to me!
This was a fun read. Based on your subtitle talking about false friends, I truly thought your date bailed on you at the end to get out of paying the tab. Alas, she was stuck -- what a twist! haha
Haha. I've had some bad dates, but so far nobody's run out on my mid-date! Knock on wood.
I was going for a subtle misdirection with the title and sub-title. When I was learning Italian, I learned the concept of "false friends." I already spoke Spanish going in and there are hundreds of them between the two closely-related languages: bravo, pronto, burro, caldo, etc.
Heehee. I thought the same ... that she left (not to avoid paying but because she wasn't having a good time ... sorry, Eric) or that she decided to run off with a waiter or something. I was thinking, warm milk? What does that have to do with anything?
Nicky, Ari ... many thanks for your vote of confidence in my ability to be an interesting dinner companion. Hmm.
Americans were also nice when I moved there. I spoke english from school but still made mistakes. If I'm tired, I still sometimes say "Im knowing him since I was a kid" and that kind of thing.
Nowadays, if I hear foreigners trying to speak Italian I'm very supportive. Anyone who speaks more than one language knows the struggles of a non-fluent speaker..
See? Kindness from a native Italian speaker! Great job on continuing the tradition!
I wasn’t thinking about that but I guess so!!
I remember a friend recounting the point at which they realised they had enthusiastically and inadvertently been singing the praises of condoms (preservativi) as a treat, when really they were a big fan of preserves. The kindness is always there, even when people are laughing with you.
That's a classic!
There's a related version between Brits who come to study in the U.S. They ask for a "rubber" when they need an eraser.
These misunderstandings can be very funny.
This was so fun to read, Eric! I love Zucchero di cane 🐕, that could be a nice expression to describe a sweet friendly dog.
I had similar stories because of English words mispronouncing. The most hilarious happened when an Italian colleague said to an American one that in a certain region there was "a lot of chaos", saying "chaos" with A like Alfa (as the original Greek term). He first looked unsure, then puzzled, and after a while he asked: "Do you mean muuuuh 🐮?" as he thought she meant "cows". He had visualized a cows invasion!
That's a funny mixup! No you have me worried about the cow invasion on top of everything else!
I've always been unsure about the pronunciation of "chaos" ... but I don't think I never say it so it could be confused with "cows" -- except maybe in Italian.
A dozen or so years ago, I was at a big dinner with my relatives in Reggio Calabria. Much of the Italian I was able to speak came from my relentless practice with Pimsleur language lessons, all three levels. There was one phrase in particular that I committed to memory because I just loved the sound of it. After a few glasses of wine, I decided I should get the attention of the entire table (perhaps 15 cousins) and dazzle them with my language skills.
A few cousins clinked their glasses to quiet the din. Seated at the center of the group, I leaned in and, and with great flair, intended to say, "Mi hanno detto che..." (They told me that ... you would be leaving next week).
Unfortunately, I missed the nuance of precise enunciation and it came out, "Mi ano detto que..."
My cousins were wide-eyed and slack-jawed for a moment, before they erupted in laughter, deep rolling belly laughs with tears rolling down their faces. Natale, seated to my right, literally fell out of his chair. Germaine, who often translated for me, caught her breath long enough to ask, "Did you mean to say that...?" Umm, say what? I wasn't sure what had just happened.
Paola, a cousin who loved to needle me, asked all evening, and the next day, too, "What is your a--hole telling you now, Justin?"
Well told! It's such a common and funny mistake! I'm kind of surprised an alternative term hasn't evolved in Italian.
I think it's common for foreigners who speak good Italian to have to coach themselves to say "annnnnno" (or in your case, "hannnnno").
Excellent stories. I remember mispronouncing words in Russian while serving at the embassy in Moscow, and the Russians I was trying to "honor" with my attempts at their language would start laughing, but then would kindly correct me. As you just wrote, learning the local language is important, but learning the miniscule differences of the words is priceless!
I think learning the tiny shades of meaning is an ongoing project -- not the least of which because they're evolving in real time. I actually miss some of that evolution in English, since I'm only back a few weeks a year.
I can't imagine how difficult Russian must be! One of the reasons I chose to move to Italy is because I thought Italian would be fairly easy because I already spoke English and Spanish. In my considerations I excluded moving to any country that had a language that used a different alphabet.
Yes, Russian is very difficult. But more difficult is learning the Cyrillic alphabet and trying to read it! I remember the night Betty and I had our "breakthrough" moment in reading Russian. We had just left a restaurant in Moscow and were walking back to the embassy when we looked up at a billboard and managed to "sound-out" the words. When we decrypted "Internet" we started laughing, hugging and dancing on the sidewalk. It was an add for an internet provider. After that, we survived the next 23 months with an ability to get around more efficiently. Being able to "roll the 'r's' " when speaking is absolutely essential.
Oh, Eric, just what is needed. Thank you for making me laugh! Mostly at myself. One of the most memorable for me was a time we were still traveling to Florence from the US - maybe 20 years ago before we had much sense about Italian. My husband, Lee, loved to have a gin and tonic at the end of the day. But finding Gin in Florence at that time was almost impossible. Worse, still, was finding tonic. We finally found a little out of the way grocery with tonic. It was way up high, on a shelf we couldn't reach and there were both big and smaller bottles of it. I thought I was smart when I asked for the big bottle. Vorrei la tonica grosso!!! Surely grosso meant big! In fact, it means fat! I asked for Fat Tonic. The clerk just looked at me like I was crazy. So so easy to make mistakes! My husband almost called a woman's poodle a whore! Somehow mixing up the word for poodle with whore = puta! He stopped himself in the nick of time.
Fat Tonic is funny, but at least it wasn't embarrassing in and of itself. I mean, you could have asked for big penne! Sorry for the vulgar comment!
Isn't it interesting how things like tonic (or peanut butter, breakfast cereals, syrup, cheesecake, etc.) have become so readily available over the last 20 years? It's like someone sent a memo to retailers.
Love it!!!!
I am having plenty of those moments - luckily with my friends. As you say - born by confidence and the mixture of the many languages I have to use simultaneously. Some time ago I was telling a story to a friend and it was about a female mouse. Well, I said TOPA. She bursted out laughing... (I prefer not to explain why I shouldn't have said it - in case some kids are reading). The proficiency in Italian can be taken to impossible levels.
I had to look that up ... I did not know that slang!
OK, I'm not going to ask how you or anyone knew the mouse's gender. I'm assuming nobody picked it up to look.
But how are you supposed to say "female mouse"? Topo femmina? Topolina? Language can be so complicated ....
Fake news!! No way that happened! The warm milk conversation AND the maintenance guy! I call fiction!
I still go back to the same restaurant now and then and one of the co-owners still chuckles about the story more than 20 years after the fact. But it can never happen again: they've now installed a steel frame inside the doorframe!
Eric, I absolutely love this anecdote! I can’t tell you how easy it is for some odd reason to get stuck in Italia bathrooms. My advice to everyone is always take your cell phone with you. I have upon occasion needed to call a dinner companion to come and rescue me. And it’s funny how these little expressions can seem like the perfect translation but actually not be the right one at all. I often hear Americans complimenting dishes in Italian restaurants, and saying they are “tremendous“ which is a compliment in English, but quite the opposite in Italian.
I will leave you with something I almost said down in Campo dei Fiori when I lived in that area on the occasion of my first Thanksgiving in Italy. I needed a basting instrument for the turkey so I was thinking just a little pump and so I translated it into just that, a pompino. And when I told my husband I was going down to the market to ask for a little pompino he promptly sat me down and said “no wait a minute, sit down. We need to discuss this.” it was close to being one of my most terrifying language gaffes ever!
Hey Eric, I was sure you would have replied to my comment which I thought was such a fun comment, particularly with my market experience, lol!
"Pompino" is a loaded word for sure! I'm sure you weren't the first to make this kind of mistake, but I'm also positive it makes Italians laugh every time! Was your husband laughing or worried that you might embarrass yourself? Or both?
It's just as hard for non-English speakers (the same date mentioned in the bathroom anecdote thought I was talking about a "one-night stand" when I was just talking about a "nightstand.")
I had no idea there was a rash of people getting "bloccati" in Italian bathrooms! The story above happened before the universal use of cell phones, so it wasn't an option then. I don't think I've ever been stuck in an Italian bathroom, but as someone who sometimes uses bathroom trips to check sports scores, I know that a lot of them are built so deep in buildings they don't get mobile phone signals!
In my first month in Rome during my sabbatical 25 years ago, I asked an elderly woman in the public market if her ripe tomatoes had "preservitivi." She howled. I think it was the first time she'd been asked about condoms since the Mussolini administration.
I wonder what the most common "false friend" mistake is. This has got to be top ten, but, surprisingly, Italians never seem to get tired of the same errors foreigners make again and again!
Ah so many false friends and pronunciation hiccups…
My favourite wasn’t mine though. A friend was on an exchange trip in France, where to his surprise his host family shared his love of golf. They all went to play a round together, including the Grand-mere. Deferring to age, she teed off on the first hole and landed nicely on the fairway, causing my friend to exclaim “Belle coup!” Or so he thought, but his pronunciation actually delivered “Belle cul!”
While the rest of the family collapsed in laughter, Grand-mere looked over her shoulder, smiled, gave a tap to her derrière and said “merci!”
I don't speak French well, and one thing holding me back is how tonal the language as -- as your anecdote illustrates. I'm worried about making mistakes like this.
I think the grand-mere should have had a stroke deducted from her score for the quick and hilarious deadpan answer! That's the kind of reply that would have occurred to me ten minutes later when it would have been too late to use it.
Tell me about it - several years of expensive French education never got me anywhere. My own surprise at actually picking up Italian is far exceeded by my parents', but the clear pronunciation rules of Italian are a massive reason for that (almost on a par with marrying an Italian).
This was a fun reminder of my attempts to learn just a dash of Mandarin and invariably flubbed the tones. Luckly, most of the people I tried it with understood, but they definitely had a good laugh.
Or even the stories my father told about learning English. The difference between whole and hole, pi and pee, and the general hilarity that would ensue in a small town in rural Kentucky as he fumbled around with the language.
You have my admiration for even attempting Mandarin!
Do you speak Farsi? I think you could give me ten years and I'd never learn either one.
Your poor dad. I don't think I pronounce "whole" and "hole" differently, but "pi" and "pee," yes.
I used to do stand-up comedy and one of my jokes was that with the word "pee" the "ee" was silent!
Im learning Persian now. It is definitely easier than Mandarin. Which isnt as tough as it seems, but the tones are killer. Grammar isnt all that bad. I just lost interest knowing I wasnt going to be there much longer and likely wouldnt go back.
I admit to being intimidated by languages that require using a new alphabet!
Well that certainly is a factor.
"Zucchero di cane" is what I call a BIM, a Beautiful Italian Mistake.
Zucchero di cane perfectly describes that sacred bar ritual: you sweetening your coffee with zucchero di canna under the approving gaze of your dog, who knows this is precisely the moment she may position herself elegantly in front of the bancone, waiting for cornetto crumbs.
Zucchero di cane names the perfect symbiosis between human and dog, al bar. ☕ 🐕 ✨
(sorry !! I couldn't resist!! 🙈)
Nowadays I take my coffee “amaro,” so I no longer have a chance to say “zucchero di canna” or “di cane” but Mocha still makes a production out of looking for cornetto crumbs at the bar, even if it means making coffee drinkers take a step backwards!