Post by Mr. 10th AmendmentOn Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:11:26 -0400, Richard DellaRosa
Post by Richard DellaRosaPost by jay mOn Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:00:03 -0700, Shep Hellerman
Post by Shep HellermanPost by jay mI could'nt find this in a search, hell I can't even spell it. IN the
episode where the failed attempt on Phil goes down, Paulie refers to
the "loo" as "The Peiche a Deux" sp?. I know i've heard the phrase
and so has a friend of mine. Anyone know it's true spelling? Origin?
I (probably incorrectly) just assumed it was a play on the word
"piss"... the Pissadoo, or Pishadoo...Perhaps an Italian word or play
on an Italian word?
Remembering 'p' becomes 'b', 'r' becomes 'd' and the last sound gets
swallowed in NY/NJ pronunciations of Italian words...
piscione - pisser
pisciarsi - to pee yourself
bagno - bathroom
bagnarole - cesspool
pisciarole - pisspool (piss pot)
you wind up with pISHadO, bISHadO, PEEjaDO or BEEjadoo....
we used to say pisciaria (sounds like PISS-A-RIA) I can still feel the
wooden spoon...
The word is based on the Italian word pisciare which means to urinate.
However piscadu is a slang word coined by Italian-Americans. It is
not an Italian word.
I never meant to imply that 'piscadu' was an Italian word and
apologise if that is what came across in my reply.
Post by Richard DellaRosaRecall the episode in season 2 when Paulie is in Naples and he asks a
waiter where the piscadu is and the waiter gives him a blank stare
not understanding what Paulie was saying.
A. Few Italians understand Americans speaking 'Italian'
B. Few Southern Italians speak Italian... they speak Calabrese and the
waiter would probably have had as much difficulty understanding
someone from Venice as Venice Beach.
Have you figured out what the man at the table said which caused Tony
to ask 'What the fuck did he just say'? It ain't in no
Italian-American dictionary.
I don't recall. I'd have to re-watch that episode.
FWIW, prior to unification, there were some 87 dialects spoken in Italy
defined by geographic region. When an official Italian language was
decided upon it was the Roman dialect. However, regional dialects
continued to be spoken even today. When i was a child my grandmother
spoke to me in Sicilian, so that is what I'm mainly familiar with. Most
of the scenes in the Godfather movies had the actors speaking actual
Sicilian instead of Italian.
Also FWIW many Italian-Americans learned Italian phonetically by
listening to relatives. They have a tendency to bastardize many, many
words. You can hear many in the episodes of the Sopranos. Carmela
particularly had a penchant for leaving off the final syllable of words.
She pronounced manicoti as manigote for example. Many non-Italians
wonder what gabbagool is and I've seen web sites define it as "food."
Actually it is capicola -- a particular lunchmeat. The gang on the
Sopranos referred to African-Americans as moulanyans or moolies. The
actual word is melanzane = eggplant -- because the immigrants from Italy
from the early 1900s thought they looked like the skin of the eggplant.
The late comedian Nipsy Russell used to comment in his act that he loved
Italians -- "they call us eggplants!"