While reading Wendy Markham's Bride Needs Groom I discovered one little, insignificant pet peeve that bugs me.
The Italian language consists of 21 letters, the 5 missing letters are J K W X Y. Here's a link to a teaching website that explains in nice simple pictures that J K W X Y are foreign letters and rarely used in Italian.
The hero's last name in this book is "Chickalini" which I guess could have been Americanized when the family came from Italy. For some reason this always bugs me, I'm 4th generation Italian American, the Italian side of my family has been in the States since the 1860s and I knew this. Somewhere along the publishing process someone has to know this, right?
Okay, that's it my pet peeve mini rant of the day.
The book's not bad, so every time I come to "Chickalini" I think someone on Ellis Island screwed up.
3 comments:
That kind of thing is a huge pet peeve for me. Many authors just make up names for their Hispanic characters according to what they think sounds Hispanic, and more often than not, those names just sound weird.
Rosario, I was thinking it was just me, it always throws me when this happens, I shouldn't be surprised when it happens because it occurs more than it should.
Chickalini just sounds dumb - supposedly Italian or not.
Post a Comment