Sign on the local pizza place:

[conuly]

Se necesita
Pizza man
Con experiencia

(This is from memory. Errors in the Spanish are likely mine, not theirs.)

I don't know if this is codeswitching, or if local Spanish has just borrowed the phrase "pizza man" from English entirely. I'd ask them, but past experience has shown that people don't usually understand what I'm asking or why.

***********************

Trove of Unseen Photos Documents Indigenous Culture in 1920s Alaska

Amid bus driver shortage, Boston students ride party bus with stripper poles and neon lights on field trip (Well, all right then)

Monument honoring abolition of slavery unveiled in Richmond two weeks after Robert E. Lee statue was removed

Yes, the Zebras Are Still Running Loose in Maryland

US police departments clamoring for de-escalation training (They sure need it!)

A gravestone missing for almost 150 years was being used as a marble slab to make fudge (WTF)

American Gentry

The great sperm heist: ‘They were playing with people’s lives’

How a drug-trafficking mayor in Honduras fueled the U.S. migration crisis (I increasingly believe we would not have a crisis if we'd just let people in. Of course, I also feel like we wouldn't have much of a drug crisis either if we'd decriminalize recreational drugs and put our emphasis on addiction treatment and mitigation.)

How Amazon Ring uses domestic violence to market doorbell cameras

Amid attention on Petito case, Native mother seeks justice

Refugees in fear as sentiment turns against them in Turkey

Every season except summer is getting shorter, a sign of trouble for people and the environment

Comments

Every season

[lauradi7dw]

A line in the article would lead one to believe that seasons used to be equal in length. Where? Not anywhere I've lived (admittedly not a wide range). Then I realized that I visualize Spring almost entirely by the flowers that bloom, in what order, rather than recorded temperature.

[james]

Honestly don't we all need a pizza man with experience.

[conuly]

My second question is: do they mean a pizza cook or a pizza delivery person? but that's another question that's not worth asking.

[gominokouhai]

Spanish flatmate says no, the word in Spanish is 'pizzero'. He suggests that they may be Latin American and thus have some US-anglophone influence. I'm guessing that's pretty likely.

[conuly]

Yes, you'll note that I specifically referred to "local Spanish", ie, the Spanish spoken in NYC.

[hamimi_fk]

My ninth grade Spanish teacher kind of apologized to us and explained the Spanish we spoke here in NYC was “street Spanish” and not proper Spaniard Spanish (which is what she was taught to teach us). You could imagine the collective confused faces of a classroom almost entirely made up of kids who either came from a Spanish speaking country (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, or Mexico), were children of parents who came from a Spanish speaking country, or were the grandchildren of grandparents who came from a Spanish speaking country (I was in this category). (I mean I guess she wasn’t wrong but who the hell decided what was “proper” Spanish? And I suppose nowadays, a white woman telling this to Hispanic kids would probably cause her some serious issues... but I know she wasn’t intentionally saying it in a judgmental way, she actually looked embarrassed.)

But back to the notice!

Broken Spanish (or its counterpart, Spanglish) is what a lot of Hispanics who’s main language is Spanish use to talk to English speakers. They used Pizza Man in place of Delivery Man because Rapartidor doesn’t even remotely look or sound like Delivery Man, and visa versa. But Pizza Man would be the go-to phrase for the guy who brought you pizza. (Think Milkman!) Plus, words like ‘necisita’ looks and sounds a lot like ‘necessary’ (though it means ‘need’) and ‘experiencia’ is pretty obviously ‘experience’. Using Pizza Man in a sign with these words helps make it clear they’re looking for a pizza deliverer.

[conuly]

Or, I mean, she could have simply said that Spanish has regional variation and the Spanish she was being paid to teach was from Spain, so unfortunately there were going to be some differences between that and the various Latin American varieties her students were familiar with.

Using Pizza Man in a sign with these words helps make it clear they’re looking for a pizza deliverer.

90% sure it's a pizza delivery guy, but it could be a pizza cook. I haven't asked.

[mount_oregano]

In Texas, I saw a sign on a business saying it was a "Washería" (laundromat).

Spanglish in action!

[adafrog]

Pizza man.

[pauamma]

Does everything that a pizza can?

[conuly]

The only thing I can think of in response to that is something about sausage, and now a. I'm hungry and b. this post has turned into a porno.

[pauamma]

Sorry. Wait, no, the other thing.

[mindstalk]

Ground sausage.

Now it's a horror.

[adafrog]

lol