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What a piggy!

During the Italian meal in which my English family met my boyfriend's Italian family for the very first time, there was a lot of sign language going on as neither family could speak the other's language. My sister, wanting to be polite, asked me how to say 'just a little' so that she wouldn't be overfaced with the never ending southern Italian cuisine. I explained to her that 'just a little' is poco in Italian. The trouble is she mispronounced poco adding an 'r', so what she actually said to my boyfriend's father over and over again was: porco, porco every time he offered her some more food. Porco in Italian means 'pig'!

Sent by: Helen

Comments

claudio, napoli 2011-05-26

Dont say porco to an italian! its very offensive!

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Marija 2008-04-08

At dinner some time ago, a German friend, who was the only one present not having fluent Italian, was really trying hard to be more involved in the conversation, and when he accidentally spilled some wine all over the person sitting next to him, he earnestly said: Tu porco! Io puzzo!, intending to say, 'You are dirty, I will clean you up', and ending up saying 'You are a pig! I smell badly.' Putzen is to clean in German, and the porco-sporco confusion is obvious!

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Giulia 2006-04-29

Another word for porco, porca is suino, suina.

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