Dėl trijų skolinių iš italų kulinarijos

STEFANO M. LANZA Vytautas Magnus University The power of a language is not that it rejects what is foreign, but that it devours it. J. W. Goethe A language is strong not because it rejects everything that is foreign, but because it devours what is foreign. J. V. Gėtė ON THREE BORROWINGS FROM ITALIAN CUISINE This article discusses three names of Italian dishes that have recently become widespread in Lithuania: calzone, carpaccio and tiramisù. None of them is listed in the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian or in dictionaries of international words (TŽŽ 2001 or VV TŽŽ 2003). There are no entries for them in the consultation databases of either the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language or the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, nor have linguists’ recommendations been found. In written language, they usually appear on restaurant menus. From there, carpaccio and tiramisù found their way into Albina Šiupienienė’s handbook A Guide for Menu Editors, published in 2005, simply as names of Italian dishes. They were not considered as possible borrowings; the question of their acceptability in Lithuanian was not addressed, and they were translated descriptively: raw beef appetizer (It. carpaccio di manzo) and raw salmon appetizer (It. carpaccio di salmone), as well as coffee pastry (It. tiramisù) (Šiupienienė 2005: 97, 100). The theoretical literature on onomasiology traditionally distinguishes three types of naming (as an act of giving a name): a) when a word already present in the language system is applied to a new object (semantic borrowing); b) when a new word is coined using the resources of one’s own language (neologism); c) when a model from a foreign language is adapted to the system of one’s own language, with the original form modified to a greater or lesser extent phonologically and morphologically (borrowing) (cf. Grzega 2003: 22). 308 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 82 A descriptive account of a new reality is the initial stage of the process of cognition. It simply explains what the new reality is. If descriptive phrases are understood as lexical units, describing a new reality could be considered a primitive process of creating a neologism. Descriptive phrases are primitive essentially for two reasons: 1) they are inconvenient to use—phrases consisting of two or more words to denote a single concept run counter to the principle of linguistic economy; 2) they are rarely sufficiently precise: a raw beef appetizer may be a dish that is not Italian carpaccio at all; an Italian appetizer of raw beef tenderloin or salmon fillet1 would be somewhat more precise (but also cumbersome); an even less specific, and therefore unsuitable, name for Italian tiramisu is a little coffee cake2. Language standardization guidelines have long been established3, and the following principles approved by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language are now followed: 1) do not accept loanwords that can be replaced by native Lithuanian words or equivalents; 2) adapt loanwords when replacing them with native words is not possible (cf. the 2007 General Criteria for the Standardization of New Loanwords). Which is more appropriate to use—a loanword or a lexical unit in Lithuanian form (whether an existing word or a newly coined one)—is decided after examining the loanwords themselves, their structure and usage4, and their relationship to the system (cf. Pupkis 2005: 252). C A L Z O N E In Italian, calzone (pronounced [kal’tsonə5]) refers to a particular type of pizza. The filling is first placed on a circle of rolled-out dough (the pizza base). The dough circle is then folded in half, and the resulting two halves are sealed together along the edges— 1 A. Šiupienienė’s proposed “terms” do not conform to the principles of linguistic economy and consistency: the same carpaccio is explained as an appetizer when made of meat, but as a small appetizer when made of fish. 2 In the traditional recipe for this dessert, coffee is by no means the main ingredient. 3 Trumpą lietuvių kalbos norminimo istoriją žr. Pupkis 2005: 251–252. 4 Unless otherwise stated, this article draws on data from pages found using the Google search tool. Quantitatively, Google statistics are unreliable: they are merely rough estimates of the number of pages (incidentally, results for the same query differ when other search tools are used, and even when the same query is entered using the same tool from different countries). However, Google is very useful for finding examples of usage, because the pages displayed are indisputable linguistic facts. Moreover, the language of the internet is so varied that the results are not limited to examples of written language (on the distinctive features of internet language, see especially Crystal 2001). 5 Pronunciation here and below is given in international IPA transcription. S. M. LANZA. Dėl trijų skolinių iš italų kulinarijos 309 …mos. Prepared in this way, the crescent-shaped dish is put in the oven. As early as the seventeenth century, when the word calzone was first recorded (according to DELI 1999), a puffed pastry of this shape was reminiscent of the bulging upper part of a trouser leg at the knee (Italian calzone, dialect cazone). The author of the Vocabolario napoletano-italiano (Neapolitan–Italian Dictionary), published in 1877, R. Andreoli (R. Andreoli), explains: ‘[calzone] is a kind of stuffed flatbread whose shape resembles the knee of a trouser leg at the thigh, and which it would be appropriate to continue calling by its own name, calzone.’ There is no word in contemporary Lithuanian that precisely corresponds to Italian calzone. Therefore, according to the principles mentioned above, it should be adapted to Lithuanian or replaced with a Lithuanian expression. In spoken usage, one often hears people refer to kalconę or kalconą, but this adapted form is extremely rare in writing6. It seems that the phonetic structure of the loanword is entirely clear to Lithuanian speakers, who reproduce the original pronunciation fairly accurately. This may also explain why, in the absence of a standard-language norm, people more often make do with the authentic spelling, for example: The pizzas are really delicious, especially calzone; You can also make a closed “calzone”-type pizza; How Italians handle calzone pizzas; The dough for stuffed pizza (calzone) is prepared in the same way. As the examples show, the Italian word is often accompanied by some explanation of its meaning; compare also: Ham and pineapple calzone (folded pizza); Calzone (closed pizza): cheese, ham, mushrooms, “salsa,” onions, sour cream; “Calcone”—you’ll immediately have a better opinion of pizzas! It’s a closed pizza; Vegetarian “Kalcone,” 13.90 litas, folded pizza with an eggplant and spinach filling; Folded / Calzone. sauce, cheese, ham, mushrooms, peppers. Although few examples were found overall, it is worth noting that several descriptive expressions already occur in usage; compare: stuffed pizza, folded pizza, the folded (pizza), closed pizza. As terms, only definite forms might be suitable, such as the aforementioned folded pizza. In other languages, calzone has become established as a loanword; compare: Tasty, economical and easy to fix, a calzone would make a fine lunch or dinner sandwich; Calzone ist eine gefüllte Pizza; Qui peut résister devant une pizza italienne, devant une calzone bien garnie?; Que bueno el calzone con una cerv ecita bien helada...; И да, и нет — кальцоне, это не что иное, как одна из разновидностей пиццы7. The spelling is often not phonetically adapted, but the word is morphologically integrated— 6 Found kalcone, kalzone, calcone, kalcioni. No examples of morphologically integrated forms could be found. 7 Sometimes calzone is used in a compound with pizza; compare: a pizza calzone, eine Pizza Calzone, une pizza calzone. 310 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 82 —ed, compare: two calzones; zwei große Calzonen; les calzones; los calzones8. Gender varies considerably even among examples in the same language. Feminine forms predominate in German and French; in Spanish, calzone was found only in the masculine, while in Russian it is neuter. In deciding what the Lithuanian name for Italian calzone should be, one should first acknowledge that calzone is not a pizza but a distinctive baked dish. Instead of the linguistically inefficient and semantically imprecise phrase folded pizza, it is proposed that the adapted loanword kalčonė, already found in usage, be accepted9. An adapted name is more suitable for naming the realities of foreign countries than a locally coined equivalent; moreover, it fits systematically alongside other loanwords naming non-Lithuanian dishes (compare pica). C A R P A C C I O Carpaccio is essentially a symbolic name for a dish: it has no semantic connection with the dish’s ingredients and does not describe its composition. Unusually, both the date and even the place where the word originated are known. In Venice in 196310, Giuseppe Cipriani (Giuseppe Cipriani), the eccentric owner of the Harry’s bar café, devised a new dish for a discerning customer who could eat neither boiled nor fried meat. The name for thin slices of marinated raw beef was inspired by current events in the city. From June to October that year, an exhibition of paintings by the renowned artist Vittore Carpaccio (Vittore Carpaccio) was on display. Thus the painter’s surname became a temporary name for the dish. This purely occasional coinage later became established in the lexicon as the dish and its method of preparation grew in popularity. Abroad, carpaccio spread as an exoticism and culinary term (it is already recorded in the 1973 French GR and the 1974 English OED). 8 In Russian, the word кальюне appears to be indeclinable; compare: Для Кальюне мне нравится не очень крутое тесто без опары; Разница с кальюне опять же в размере и принципе жарки. 9 Admittedly, for certain reasons the variant kalčonas might be more suitable. It is phonetically more accurate, since the final [n] in Italian calzone is not palatalized. In addition, kalconas retains the original grammatical gender (Italian calzone is specifically masculine) and is more regular in comparison with other loanwords from Italian (compare: balcone > balkon as, cartone > kartonas, vasone > vazonas). However, the Italian ending -e is naturally associated with the Lithuanian feminine ending -ė, and an analogy with the feminine pica probably plays a role here; therefore, the form kalčonė is likely to have better prospects. 10 This date is given by all Italian-language dictionaries. Some online sources cite different years and recount different circumstances surrounding the origin of the dish and its name. S. M. LANZA. Dėl trijų skolinių iš italų kulinarijos 311 The correspondent for Lietuvos ryto in Italy, writing in an article about carpaccio (12 June 2006), stated ironically: “[I] can imagine the purists of the Lithuanian language are presumably already wondering how best to translate that Italian foreignism, since it has nothing to do with carp. [...] This time our language purists will have to be left with egg on their faces, because the dish currently offered in almost all Lithuanian restaurants is named after a famous painter. And distorting names is very bad form.”11 This sort of formulaic humor was probably prompted by the cumbersome descriptive phrases mentioned earlier. In fact, there is no need for them. Still less is there anything to translate. When a proper name becomes a common noun, the usual practice is not to create a native substitute, but simply to adapt the loanword, e.g.: begonia (from the surname of the amateur botanist M. Begon), carnotite (from the surname of the French mineralogist M. A. Carnot), Keynesianism (from the surname of the English economist J. M. Keynes), volt (from the surname of the Italian physicist A. Volta), and so on. The question is which form of the loanword should be considered the most appropriate. Since the painter’s surname is adapted as Carpaccio, the name of the dish should correspondingly be—morphologically adapted12—carpaccio. However, carpaccio is rare in usage. In addition to numerous examples of the unadapted form carpaccio, other variants, more or less Lithuanianized, were also found; cf.: As soon as this place opened, it impressed us with its wonderful carpaccio; we slice the carpaccio into very thin pieces and place them straight on the plate; the wine does not clash too much with the salted and fresh salmon carpaccio13; beef and salmon carpacio, served somewhat unconventionally as salads, are also worth mentioning. The most common form is the indeclinable adapted form carpaccio. There are only a few examples of the form carpaccio, while the aforementioned instrumental case carpaccio (what would the nominative be?—carpaccis, carpaccias?) is a singular occurrence. Partly Lithuanianized and wholly non-Lithuanianized forms cannot be considered standard according to the principles mentioned above. The prevalence of the form carpaccio (with i) is probably determined by a certain similarity to the original spelling and by the fact that in Lithuanian the soft [tʃ] before back vowels—especially before o—is much more common than the hard sound. The advantage of the less common form carpaccio (without i) is its morphological adaptation. Recently, loans ending in the voiceless [tʃ] (and voiced [dʒ]) have not been adapted consistently. The spelling kapričio, which has a tradition of use (< capriccio), was abandoned in favor of kapričo or 11 It is rather paradoxical that in the same article the correspondent called the bar owner Giovanni instead of Giuseppe, and the painter Vittorio instead of Vittore. 12 Apie morfologinio adaptavimo būtinumą plg. Vaicekauskienė (2007: 186–187). 13 This is the only example found in the VMU corpus. 312 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 82 kapričas (TŽŽ 1985, TŽŽ 2001)14, – bet paliktas solfedžio (< solfeggio). Kai vartosena neprieštarauja vidinėms kalbos taisyklėms, ji turėtų būti palaikoma. Ne tik nekaitomas -o galūnės žodis karpačio neprieštarauja lietuvių kalbos normoms (plg. DLKG4 2006: 82), bet sistemiškai tinka prie solfedžio ir prie į normą grąžintino kapričio. Siūloma teikti vartoti pastovaus kirčiavimo vyriškosios giminės (plg. DLKG4 2006: 64) formą karpačio. T I R A M I S U There are various recipes for the traditional Italian dessert tiramisù (pronounced [tiramiʼsu]). According to the first dictionary to record the word (Zingarelli 1983), it is “a sponge-based semifrozen sweet covered with a layer of cocoa, made from mascarpone15, eggs and sugar.” The origins of tiramisù are not known with certainty, but dictionaries agree at least on the date it was first recorded: 1980. The name is made up of the two words tirami su16, which literally mean “pick me up.” Given the figurative meaning of the verb phrase tirare su—“lift someone’s spirits, restore their strength”—the purpose of this dessert is to revive. In considering theoretically what a Lithuanian equivalent for tiramisu might be, it should be clear that translating such a name literally is pointless (and, it seems, no calques have been proposed to date). This article has already expressed doubts about the usefulness of descriptive names: they are rarely precise enough, are inconvenient to use, and therefore have difficulty taking root in language practice. Usage data confirm all this. The indeclinable form tiramisu has already become established in Lithuanian, although it is still sometimes written with a capital letter, Tiramisu, as a symbolic name. Examples have been found in nearly all cases, cf.: Tiramisu is easy to make and takes only 30 minutes; the taste of tiramisu is different in every café; tiramisu should be left to stand and rest; before serving, sprinkle the tiramisu 14 The form kapričio, as a pronunciation-based equivalent of Italian capriccio, is already found in the 1936 Dictionary of International Words. Citing a resolution of the Lithuanian Language Commission, A. Pakerys (1991: 5) also objected to the form kapričo. 15 The form maskarponė (< Italian mascarpone) is already prescribed as standard (Girčienė, Liutkevičienė 2008: 117). However, in certain respects maskarponas would be more accurate (cf. the arguments concerning kalconas in footnote 9). 16 The two-word spelling of the name (tirami su), still given in Italian dictionaries, is now essentially obsolete. S. M. LANZA. Dėl trijų skolinių iš italų kulinarijos 313 keep it in the refrigerator for 4 hours; for dessert, she prefers sweet tiramisu; when are you coming with tiramisu? In spoken language, I have heard it pronounced in Lithuanian as [tira’misu], but there is no linguistic basis for supporting this stress pattern, regardless of the position of the stress in the original. Moreover, final stress is characteristic of borrowings ending in –u, cf.: interviù, kakadù, meniù, reviù, tabù, etc. In Lithuanian, there is no suitable equivalent for the borrowing tiramisu. The word tiramisu denotes a distinctive cultural reality of another country and, as a borrowing, is widely used in other languages of the world17, while its phonetic and morphological structure does not conflict with the norms of Lithuanian grammar. Like other Lithuanian borrowings with stressed final –ù, it is indeclinable (cf. DLKG4 2006: 82), its gender is masculine (cf. DLKG4 2006: 64), and its stress is fixed. CONCLUSIONS When the need arises to name a new reality in Lithuanian, its name in the language of origin may be replaced with a native equivalent or adopted as a borrowing adapted to the phonetic and morphological system of Lithuanian. Traditional dishes from other countries are foreign to Lithuanians, as are their names to the Lithuanian language, so it does not seem appropriate to propose native words to name them. All the more so since they spread in usage as borrowings, and when usage does not conflict with the language’s internal rules, it should be supported. Borrowings should preferably be adapted phonetically in light of the pronunciation of the language from which they come and given morphological form, avoiding variation in forms. On the basis of these principles, the following three forms of Italian dish names are recommended for use: kalčònė (second-stress class, feminine), karpàčio (indeclinable, masculine), and tiramìsù (indeclinable, masculine). 17You can easily verify this by visiting the “Wikipedia” entry page for tiramisu online. 314 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 82 LITERATŪRA Andreoli R. 1877: Vocabolario napoletano-italiano, Torino. Crystal D. 2001: Language and the Internet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DELI 1999 tt.: Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli. DLKG4 2006: Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika. Red. V. Ambrazas, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas. Girčienė J., Liutkevičienė D. 2008: Sūrių pavadinimų vartosena ir norma. – Kalbos kultūra 80, 110–122. GR 1973 tt.: Le Grand Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert. Grzega J. 2003: Borrowing as a Word-finding process in cognitive historical onomasiology. – Onomasiology Online 4, 23–32. OED 1974 tt.: The Oxford English dictionary, Oxford: OUP. Pakerys A. 1991: Tarptautinių žodžių kirčiavimas, Kaunas: Šviesa. Pupkis A. 2005: Kalbos kultūros studijos, Vilnius: Gimtasis žodis. Šiupienienė A. 2005: Į pagalbą valgiaraščių tvarkytojams, Vilnius: Ciklonas. TŽŽ 1985: Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas, Vilnius: Vyriausioji enciklopedijų redakcija. TŽŽ 2001: Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas, Vilnius: Alma littera. Vaicekauskienė L. 2007: Naujieji lietuvių kalbos svetimžodžiai, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. VV TŽŽ 2003: V. Vaitkevičiūtė. Tarptautinių žodžių žodynas (elektroninis leidimas). Zingarelli N. 198310: Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli. Gauta 2009 12 14 ON THREE BORROWINGS FROM ITALIAN CUISINE Summary The paper discusses three Italian borrowings which have recently become very popular in Lithuania; they refer to the dishes calzone, carpaccio and tiramisù. On the basis of onomasiologic research and the criteria adopted for standardising borrowings, each of the above borrowings is analysed from several points of view: language history, semantics, morphological structure, usage and relation with the Lithuanian language system. When adapting the borrowing, it should be decided which is better: a morphologically and phonetically adapted (to Lithuanian) unit or a Lithuanian lexical unit. S. M. LANZA. Dėl trijų skolinių iš italų kulinarijos 315 It is generally held that to refer to foreign realia, the adapted variant is more suitable than the native equivalent. Moreover, the words like calzone, carpaccio and tiramisu usually spread in language like borrowings, and the users take efforts to grammatically adapt them (however, a large variety of forms has been noticed). When the actual usage does not violate the rules of the language system, it should be supported. After the analysis of each of the three words, the following forms have been suggested for use: kalcòne (2nd accentuation pattern, feminine gender), karpãčio (uninflected, masculine gender) and tiramisù (uninflected, masculine gender). STEFANO M. LANZA Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas K. Donelaičio g. 58, LT-44248 Kaunas [email protected] 316 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 82