Hi all, Paulo Tramannoni <p.tram@...> complained about Anglicised spelling of Italian terms thus; <Italian English/American < <staccato stacatto <pizzicato pizzicatto <violoncello cello <sordina sordino <zucchina zucchini < <Ciao, <Paolo < < <Paolo Tramannoni Sorry Paolo, but I would just call the first two mis-spellings. The English usage should have the same spelling as the Italian. Violoncello/cello? Well, a pedant such as myself would always spell it 'cello, with the abbreviation mark showing that the first section of the word has been omitted. I love the total meaning of this word by the way. It translates into English more or less as "little big viol". Sordina/sodino? English just doesn't grok gender in language. Not in any consistent way anyway. Zucchina/zucchini? Got us there. English has its way of making plurals and if an imported word doesn't sound plural (ie end in s) then it can usually be used as singular. In fairness, in my neck of the woods, zucchini is used as singular (incorrect Italian) and as plural (correct Italian). BTW I just used a spell checker and found it agreed with me about <stacatto> and <pizzicatto>. It did not recognise <sordina> or <zucchina> as English words. Please resume the position, Peter --------------------------------------------------------- Cyberdog ---A Product of Apple Computer, Inc. --------------------------------------------------------- Peter Nixon pnixon@... home +61 8 8235 9570 peter.nixon@... work +61 8 8207 9874