Daddy has a fly

Read this in Dutch – Read this in Italian

“Look mommy, my brother has a beard”, my daughter said. We were eating yoghurt and her brother had yoghurt all over his face. She wanted to know who else we knew with beards, so I told her that she has one grandfather with a beard, and one with a moustache. I asked her whether she knew that goats have a goatee. She nodded and added: “and daddy has a fly!”

Obviously my husband doesn’t go around with a fly on his face. He has a ‘soul patch’. In Italian, this is called ‘mosca’. The word ‘mosca‘ has several meanings in Italian. It can mean ‘soul patch’ but it can also mean ‘fly’ or ‘annoying person’.

Normally, I repeat in other words what my daughter says, in order to help her understand how she should say certain things. In this case, I would have said: “yes, daddy has a [put the Dutch word for ‘mosca’ here].”

Unfortunately, I had no idea, so I just continued the conversation in Italian.

Of course I looked it up later. Apparently, there is no real Dutch word for it. We use a gallicism for it, namely ‘mouche‘. And guess what that means…

Correct. Fly.

I suppose my daughter wasn’t all wrong then.