Rome Note: The Language Police

Back in the 80s, Roman shops used to sell--and, more amazingly, Roman consumers used to buy--a dreadful concoction of merchurecrome, shoe polish and sawdust that they passed off as instant coffee. As I recall, it was a Danish brand; the name was "Hag." The fun part of "Hag" (there weren't many fun parts to Hag) was that it was a word that no Roman waiter could prononce: It begins with an aspirate and ends with a consonant, two sounds a good Roman simply cannot get his glottis around. "You want a-guh?" was about the best they could do.

I thought of ag-huh last week when I picked up a few more tidbits for the language police:

• Well, I would too: the tour guide said "back then, the wine was 800 percent alcohol, so naturally they cut it with water."

• Tight union: the sign on the ticket office said "admission free to union members aged 18-24." On closer scrutiny, it appeared that the Italian text offered free admission to 18-24-year-olds who are citizens of the European Union. Well, I guess it is a kind of union membership.

• Here's a grimmer one from the footnotes to my copy of Elsa Morante's History: A Novel about life amid the devastation of World War II. Italian for "miss" as in "single woman" is "signora," with an "i." Evidently American GIs (confusing it with Spanish?) would regularly mispronounce it as "segnora," with an "e." (I bet I do the same thing myself). Apparently after a whole, "segnora" became a general synonym for "prostitute." Wonder if it still is.

Oh, and finally, from a Lufthansa flight attendant landing at Frankfort airport: "Please remain schtupid until the seat belt light is turned off." No problem there, big guy.

Fn: Come to think of it, I think I saw one forlorn little display of "Hag" last week in a forlorn corner of a Rome country grocery (!) store. From its position, I gather it wasn't selling well. Maybe it had been there since the 80s.