By Angelo J. Verzoni

Mangia! Mangia!” my grandfather would say, at the dinner table, as he pointed to me and my brother and our plates, overflowing with spaghetti sauce. “Eat! Eat!” — what a sweet command to receive. As a child, this was just about the only exposure I had to my ancestral tongue. It wasn’t until years later, during my freshman year of college, that I would take two semesters of Italian.

Perhaps it was my roots kicking in. Perhaps it was the fact I had already taken four years of Spanish in high school, and the two languages are very similar. Whatever the reason, I found Italian quite easy to pick up on, and I scored As in both courses. Unfortunately, much of what I learned is gone now, almost five years later.

But what I do remember lives on in subtle ways”“ a tiny cringe at a bakery, a clenched fist at a sandwich shop, a sigh at a dinner menu. This is because just as it irks me to see improper grammar at the grocery store”“ it’s “10 items or fewer,” not “10 items or less””“ seeing improper grammar elsewhere, even in a foreign language, irritates me, too. And when it comes to Italian cuisine, Americans are chock-full of it.

First, a brief Italian lesson. Unlike in English, where an “s” typically signifies the plural form of a noun, in Italian, the plural form of a noun is signified by either an “i” or an “e.” (Masculine nouns ending in “a,” as well as all nouns ending in “e” or “o,” are pluralized with an “i,” while feminine nouns ending in “a” are pluralized with an “e.” ) For example, the masculine noun giornale, or newspaper, becomes giornali, or newspapers; the feminine noun matita, or pencil, becomes matite, or pencils. Do you see where I’m going with this? Unless you speak Italian, probably not.

So, let me paint a picture for you. Imagine you’ve just walked into a bakery. The floury perfume of freshly prepared sweets punches your nostrils, and your eyes scan the glass-faced showcases until you spot them”“ crispy, golden and cream-filled, lined up side by side, like dietary suicide pills. Ah, you’ve picked your poison. But if you say, “I’ll have one cannoli, please,” you’ve just committed an Italian word crime, as “Weird Al” Yankovic might put it.

Remembering our little lesson, what did you do wrong? You ordered a single quantity of a plural noun; since cannoli ends in “i,” it’s a plural noun. In other words, what you said would be like going up to a bartender and saying, “I’ll have one beers, please.”

So, how do you correct the error? Well, the singular form of the word is cannolo. Therefore, “I’ll have one cannolo” would be the correct way to order. Likewise, if you’re ordering more than one, cannoli is the correct word to use, not cannolis.

Moving on, let’s say your cannolo-derived sugar high wanes, and a few hours later, you find yourself craving something more substantial. If you’re thinking, “Boy, a panini would hit the spot right about now,” you haven’t learned your lesson. This case is the same as the cannolo-cannoli one. It’s panino when you’re referring to just one grilled sandwich, and panini when you’re referring to more than one. Perhaps the most grievous gaffe I’ve ever witnessed was when a sandwich shop, in a sorry attempt at being grammatically accurate, listed paninos on its menu.

If you’d like to top off that panino with a biscotto”“ or perhaps two or three biscotti”“ congratulations, you’re catching on.

The butchering of Italian nouns isn’t the only thing Americans are routinely guilty of. My professor found one of our other common mistakes particularly amusing. Scampi means shrimp, she would tell our class, so when you say, “I’ll have the shrimp scampi,” you’re literally saying, “I’ll have the shrimp shrimp.” Say you’d like to have your shrimp scampi while “dining alfresco”, and you’ve dug yourself a hole twice as deep.

Although English dictionaries define alfresco as taking place “in the open air,” the Italian term, which, correctly, is two words and translates to “cool,” has a slang meaning in its country of origin. The Italian slang dictionary “Talk Dirty Italian” defines al fresco as “in jail”; it’s similar to the American slang use of the word cooler to refer to a jail cell. So, unless you’d like to eat your shrimp shrimp behind bars, I’d recommend avoiding the phrase.

In the end, I’m not going to tell you to go one way or the other: to be a stickler for tradition or to adhere to the American standard. As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, so I guess you could say, as well, when in America, do as the Americans do. I hate to, but I have to admit it: Unless you’re speaking entirely in Italian to an Italian person, ordering a cannolo or a panino in an American establishment would probably warrant some strange looks. Even I don’t order a panino. So, my advice to you is to just realize, as I do, what you’re saying isn’t technically correct.

Hopefully, you’ll actually find yourself in Rome one day, where, by all means, you should order the right way. Just don’t forget the rule your mother taught you, as it has no borders: Always say per favore.