Imagine this scenario: You have a piping hot bowl of spaghetti bolognese in front of you, and you dig your spoon and fork in to twirl up one lone noodle. But what, exactly, are you supposed to call that singular strand of pasta?
As it turns out, the word for an individual piece of spaghetti is spaghetto.
Our thoughts exactly. If you’re as confused as we are, here’s a quick crash course in Italian language. An i on the end of a word indicates that it’s plural, while an o or an a indicates that it’s singular.
So, gnocco, is the singular for gnocchi, fettucina is the singular for fettucini, and raviolo is the singular for ravioli.
https://twitter.com/caroramsey/status/885714737224232961
So while anyone who speaks Italian is probably looking at their Twitter feed shouting, “Of course it’s spaghetto!”, the internet at large has been overwhelmingly surprised by the news. And spaghetto isn’t the only recent discovery that has pasta and pizza lovers everywhere feeling like they’ve been living a lie.
Since @caroramsey’s initial tweet, Twitter users have been sharing some more Italian language FYIs, like the fact that the e at the end of calzone isn’t silent (so it’s actually pronounced calzon-e), and the o in the middle of risotto is short (“ris-ah-to”). Who knew?
Are you sitting down? Panini is plural. Panino is the singular. Calzone? The "e" is not silent. Gnocchi? Pronounced nyock-ee.
— Geraldine Just Follow TheEverywhereist on Threads (@everywhereist) July 15, 2017
Salami is plural. The singular is salame (short "e" at the end).
— Geraldine Just Follow TheEverywhereist on Threads (@everywhereist) July 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/kionoyokan/status/887457317649874945
If the singular version of spaghetti is spaghetto…is the plural version of Ghetto, Ghetti? pic.twitter.com/zkPEvQYRxd
— Yannick N Yobach 🤠 (@ThatNevilsKid) July 18, 2017
I have been having so much fun learning Italian with things like this. Joe Pesci's last name, for example, means multiple fish.
— Dana Luery Shaw (@thefakedana) July 14, 2017
And this one would actually be pretty sweet:
https://twitter.com/Luvina_things/status/887774164840587264
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