The correct pronunciation of chitterlings

The correct pronunciation of chitterlings

I am a big mixture of cultures, and I don’t really claim just one, so I see myself as a good stew of world spices. I grew up in a town with mainly people of color in my schools, so I was exposed to various cultures within and without my home. Many times, especially after seeing my parents, my friends had questions, both understandable and bizarre. Like these:
Are you mixed?
What is your father?
What is your mother?
Where you born in this country?
Where are you from?
Did you grow up confused?

These questions I definitely understood. Here is one that made no sense to me:

What do you eat for dinner?

I would never think to ask someone something like that. That just seems like such an inconsequential thing in terms of who I am. Then again, I guess as well that food is a cultural marker and a piece of identity.

We were all picky eaters growing up, so my mom often cooked more than one kind of vegetable, or picked up something from a restaurant for one or more us. Some people said that she was spoiling us, but hey, if I don’t eat peas, I don’t eat peas. If the smell of lima beans makes me sick, placing a plate of them in front of me is not going to make me eat them any more quickly. Why waste it on me when there are starving kids in other countries that would love to eat that food? (I don’t know about you, but I was starving, and someone gave me lima beans or peas to eat, I probably would still starve. Let’s be real. Hunger doesn’t create delirium until after a while.)

Anyway, one day I went to the local bodega, and I noticed something the produce section called chitterlings. I asked the owner what that was and he told me that he didn’t know himself and that he had ordered it for someone that had requested. When I got home, I asked my mother the same question. She smiled and asked me if I had ever heard someone say “chit-lins”. I said yes, in school. She told me that this is the way that most people pronounce chitterlings as such. Chitterlings are the intestines of hogs. It smells like crap, for the obvious reason, from what I am told, since I have never had them nor am I rushing to try them. My mother told me that in harder times, folks had to use every part of every animal to try to stretch out their dollar. This was especially true before the slaves were freed, when they really had to take what they could to survive.
I am more of an Italian and Latin food kind of guy, but I always thought this story was kind of endearing, if not for the fact that I must have asked this question 3 years ago.

I love being a melting pot.