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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Pizza: Spelled Exactly That Way in How Many Languages?
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Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 22:27:24 GMT
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In article <56o1c7$b0o@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>,
Cornell Kimball <cornell3@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>     No, this isn't, "I know how to say `pizza' in 80 languages and
>want to know how to say it in 200 more."
>
>     A year or so ago, there was a thread on `sci.lang' asking this:
>What word appears in the exact same form (i.e. spelling) with the same
>meaning in the most number of languages?  Someone came up with "opera,"
>being spelled the same way (and with the same meaning) in 19 languages,
>as I recall.
>
>     This is a similar question.  In how many languages is "pizza"
>(meaning the food "pizza" and not something else) spelled exactly like
>that?  We have of course Italian and English.

Do we?  My 1958 Cassell's defines 'pizza' as "Neapolitan savoury bun."
True, Cassell dictionaries tend to have an unmistakable 19th century air
to them--regardless of how recently they're published--but I'm still not
sure 'pizza' means the same thing to all Italians, much less the same
thing as it does to all Americans.

> Has "pizza" been more or less been incorporated, with that spelling and
> all, into Spanish?  Also, when I've seen it used in Spanish (albeit in
> the U.S., not in Latin America or Spain), it's feminine: "la pizza."
> What gender is "pizza" in Italian?  The other question is, what
> gender is "pizza" in other languages?

	"pizza", like the vast majority of Italian nouns ending in "a", is
feminine.  I would expect that this would carry over into all other
Romance languages.  It gets trickier when you move to other branches of
IE; for instance, I'm pretty sure it's still feminine in German (die
Pizza), but without checking a Duden Fremdwoertbuch, I wouldn't bet my
next meal on it.

>     Another word I've thought of that may appear in many languages
>with the same spelling and meaning (save for the fact that it has a
>diacritic over the "i" in Spanish, whence it came) is "cafeteria." 
>Does anyone know of languages where this word has been incorporated as
>such?

	Offhand, only English springs to mind.  Wasn't this ultimately the
coinage of a Cuban immigrant to the States?  You'd probably have better
luck with "cafe." (Damn ASCII!  Put an acute on that <e>!)  I know it's
identical in sound and meaning in French, English, and German, though not
Italian ("caffe", with a grave on the final <e>; a pet peeve of mine is
Italian-style cafes in the States who try to demonstrate how chic they are
by using the double-f spelling and then blow it by using the wrong type of
accent mark).



-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
