Italian Vocabulary in the News

The New Yorker has a long-form fiction piece this week about a Piemontese family and their maid. There are several Italian words and phrases sprinkled throughout La Ragazza, including references to Corriere dei Piccoli, the children’s weekly, and an explanation for this slang term:

"Each maid is invariably referred to not by name but as either la colf—short for collaboratrice familiare, or family helper—or la ragazza, the girl."