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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 19
stranger
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stranger
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 19 |
I've always seen "zucchini" in the US, except for some Italian restaurants which spell it "zucchine." I haven't ever seen it without an aitch.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
I've checked the oracle for current usage - a search on AltaVista - it looks like both Zuccini and Zucchini are used, so I'll correct my posting again.
Perhaps it is more likely to be zuccini in the UK but as the orginal discussion began because we usually say courgette - weird!
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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 19
stranger
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stranger
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 19 |
Now that you mention it, I just did a search as well, and it did turn up a few US pages which spelled the word without an aitch. Which is a little odd; as Emanuela noted in a message to me earlier, the aitch is needed in Italian to make the cc sound hard. The pronunciations of "gnocchi" and "Gucci" illustrate this phenomenon.
I wonder now, do the people who spell it that way pronounce "zuccini" with the "ch" sound found in "Gucci?" Or with the k sound found in "gnocchi?"
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
let's look at the derivation: zuc*chi*ni (noun), plural -ni or -nis [Italian, plural of zucchino, diminutive of zucca gourd] (from MWC) my guess is that all those "zucinni" turned up by a search are misspellings! http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 315
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 315 |
Well, just to be EXTREMELY precise...
zucca is pumpkin;
gourd can be used for several vegetables of the same family:
for example, zucca, cetriolo ( = cucumber), cocomero ( = watermelon).
Ciao from the old stones of an ancient town in Middle Italy
Emanuela
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Fascinating!! With one comment (from the sunshine warrior),
this entire thread swung from a to z!
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
> my guess is that all those "zucinni" turned up by a search are misspellings!
Twenty pages of mis-spellings! In one of the previous sections - how many citations were needed for to enter a new word in a dictionary.
I accept that in the UK it isn't our word to begin with so it could be a misspelling. I've found almost every variation in cookery books, with the more serious Italian writers using "Zucchine" - which Emanuela tells us is the most common usage in Italy.
Looking at the websites, many of them are Germanic or Scandinavian, so I suspect that this is where the Zuccini spelling originates. Italian is spoken in parts of Switzerland, so there is plenty of opportunity for the languages to merge. Again this is strange as I can't think of many languages outside Italy that use two c's in this way. I'm sure someone on this list will know the answer!
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>Twenty pages of mis-spellings! how many of them are US? zuccini isn't even given as a variant spelling in any US dictionary I know of. http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
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