Hi Peter, ><staccato stacatto ><pizzicato pizzicatto > >Sorry Paolo, but I would just call the first two mis-spellings. The English >usage should have the same spelling as the Italian. They do are mispellings, but so often used that they can be considered common usage. Most competent publishers, like Boosey & Hawkes, Peters or Shirmer, use the classic/correct terminology; other publisher are not so careful. >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". Yes! That's the right translation. >Sordina/sodino? English just doesn't grok gender in language. Not in any >consistent way anyway. No, but the original word is "sordina". If you must use it in Italian, it is not right to use "sordino". It is much better to translate it, and use "mute" or something like it. >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). Not correct. It's a mix of modern and old Italian. Some centuries ago, it was: s. zucchino, pl. zucchini. Now, it should be: s. "zucchina", pl. "zucchine". With regular words like this one, you have the following: male s. -o, pl. -i female s. -a, pl. -e >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. As I told, the mistake has became a common form. I prefer the use of right translated words, rather than wrong foreign words. It is very common, in Italy, to use "barbarized" English words or sentences; this sounds exotic to people who doesn't know any English, awful to people that knows it. Cheers, Paolo Paolo Tramannoni Via M.L.King, 6/A - 62017 Porto Recanati (Mc) - Italy Phone: +39-071-7591268 - 0347-8177569 - Fax: +39-071-7591268 E-Mail: p.tram@... - tramannoni@... http://www.egroups.com/list/professione-musica/