@j*oono wrote:
You adapt pretty quickly. When you're a kid and you walk into a shop or corner store deli and ask for a three cent lolly and they give you a freddo frog instead of an ice cream then you learn the lingo.
I suppose the term deli came from migrants (just guessing). At the time I came there was also a large Italian immigration and some would set up shops selling small goods and continental items. Now a deli is just a small convenience store. (I think I'm talking Americanese).
Yeah, I'd adapt. It's funny how an accent will sneak up on a person and stick, without them realizing it. It happened to me after only being down south a few months.
We have delis here, but they're really sandwich shops. Short for Delicatessen. Growing up they were mostly German delis and I just assumed it was a German word. German are the best! Always clean and the food was always fresh.
Now they are owned by Spanish and aren't really delis, but more like Bodegas. They'll sell you spoiled meat without blinking. There is only one German deli nearby....10 miles, lol. I live within a mile of everything but.
I checked wiki...now I'm even more confused. I'm sticking with....Germans brought delis here, and the word. : )
Delicatessen is a German loanword that first appeared in English in 1889; it is the plural form of Delikatesse. In German, it was originally a French loanword, dรฉlicatesse, meaning "delicious things (to eat)". The root word is the Latin adjective delicatus, meaning "giving pleasure, delightful, pleasing".
The modern German version is spelled Delikatessen, which may have helped support the alternative popular etymology that the -essenpart of the word derives from the German verb essen (English: to eat), or the noun das Essen (English: the food). This would imply that the word is a compound of the German words delikat (English: delicate; nominative case) and Essen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicatessen
