1. Or What: We like to offer options when asking you a question to make answering easier. You can often hear parents offer this choice to their kids when asking them to clean their rooms, "Are you gonna clean up that shit or what?" And you thought all NY'ers were hard-assed. Sometimes a wife will scream out to her husband at dinnertime, "Are you gonna get up off your fat ass and come to the table, or what?!?" Offering him an alternative to sitting down for dinner, she is known for her vast amount of consideration.
2. Food Shopping: Not to be confused with going to the mall or buying stamps or cat food, we like to be as specific as possible when announcing our upcoming destination. Heading to Safeway, for you NorCal folks, would be called "going food shopping" because, after all, that IS what you are doing there, why not just say it. Save the sugar coating for someone else, we like to keep it real.
3. What am I, some kind of asshole? Now, when we get into a disagreement or are recounting one for a friend, we find it crucial to pose questions about our opinions, way of handling things, or just to validate our "rightness" about a topic. However, for those of you raised outside of my borough, know this...it is a rhetorical question, please do NOT answer it.
4. Johnny Pump: Any child who lived through a humid as fuck NY summer played with a Johnny Pump. In other words, the fire hydrant was turned on and we splashed around in the water to cool off. This may sound like something out of a 50's R&B tune describing the children of the ghetto, but to us, it was a fun way to incorporate playing with friends and enduring the suffocating humidity. Many boys would be seen frolicking in the water wearing wife-beaters.
5. Wife-beater: Not to be confused with a piece of shit who lays his hands on his wife in an abusive manner, this is a fashion worn by many little Queens Italian boys and older Italian teenagers and some unfortunate Guido dumb shits in their 20's. Oh hell, who am I kidding, some of the old men wear them, too. In place of a regular colored, crew neck, short-sleeved t-shirt, this undershirt was worn as an actual shirt. Sometimes under a track jacket, but in the summer, that was all she wrote. The rest of the country calls them tank tops or undershirts, but tank tops are what girls wear, and undershirts are worn under a dress shirt. How do you NOT know this?
6. Slice or Pie: Nothing to do with a baked item made by your grandma filled with fruit, this refers to pizza. Specifically, a plain cheese Napolitan pizza. Of course, you could also be referring to a Sicilian pizza, but you'd clarify when ordering it. Back in Queens, when you called ahead to order Friday night's dinner during Lent, you could ask for a pie and maybe a white slice. And they'd fucking understand you! Here, God help you if you don't say the word pizza...and don't hold your breath looking for a normal pizzeria offering slices. We didn't have to emphasize NO CHEDDAR, either, because that is a crime against nature and wouldn't have been an option, anyway.
7. Tchotchkes: Most of us were well-versed in enough Yiddish to get by when necessary, and it also allowed us to have a much more colorful vocabulary. Tchotchkes is just another word for knick-knacks and most Queens Italians had these in grotesque amounts covering most surfaces in the hopes of looking decorative. It really only looked like an ass load of clutter, but don't tell anyone.
8. The Avenue: Pronounced AV-EN-OO, not AV-EN-YOU, this refers to only one street to people from Maspeth or Elmhurst, Queens. Grand Avenue was the place to walk, go food shopping, grab a cuppa joe, or meet up with friends. Other cities had their own Avenue, and residents knew exactly what you were talking about, no clarification needed. An example of this usage, "I'm going up The Avenue to go food shopping, you need anything while I'm there, or what?"
9. Ma: We all had/have one. We don't have Moms, Mommas, Mothers, or Mommies. Unless of course you are talking to a family member ABOUT her, then she is Mommy. The echo of the name Ma could be heard in every household which held children. The inflection with which it was said depended on the situation, but the name stayed the same. As important as the name was being able to pepper it throughout the conversation sufficiently lest you forget to whom you were speaking. Such as, "Ma, did you buy the capicolla at Iavarone, Ma? Ma, did you hear me, Ma? Ma, Aunt Dolly called, Ma, she wants you to call her back right away, Ma." That was the abridged version.
10. The City or The Island: You MUST learn these two locations! Everyone who lives in Queens knows them and will recognize you as an outsider should you call them anything else. The City is Manhattan. When you go into The City, you are going to Manhattan, no other city, nowhere else. Saying Manhattan is like screaming, "Come shove me and give me the wrong directions to the Empire State Building because as you can see, oh so clearly, I am NOT from here!" Similarly, The Island, is Long Island, which is pronounced LAWN-GUY-LAND. This happens to be where people from Queens eventually move when they want to get out of the ghetto and feel all suburban and upper class. That being somewhat related to your learning experience in content.
These are just SOME of the words or phrases you'll need to know when communicating with one of us. Not wanting to overload your inexperienced brain with too much information at once, I'll split this into more than one entry so you'll have time to commit the above to memory. Try not to use any of these in a sentence when speaking to me or one of my fellow Queens natives, or you will make us shoot coffee out of our noses, and force us to ask you if you are some kind of asshole, or what? This is just to help YOU to understand US, not become one of us. As if you actually could. Are you friggin kidding me right now???
To be continued...Queens/Italian English, a lesson in Linguistics, part 2
and again...Queens/Italian English: Lesson #3, The Final Chapter
To further explain: Italians are Better Than Everyone
How many of you went to Catholic school, too? Some Nuns Are Better Than None...RIGHT!!!
Did you experience this? Surviving Catholic School in the 70s and 80s
And Catholic high school? NY Catholic High School in the 80s
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