Un petit Printz muffín

[Coffee Break]

Hello everyone. I encountered this expression, "Un petit Printz muffín", but am struggling to understand it. Could you please let me know what it means in the following sentences:

[Clara speaking] “Any Printz Oskár left?” she queried, holding out her right hand.
What on earth did she mean?
[Clara speaking] “Un petit Printz muffín.”
[The protagonist speaking] “Coming up.”
[Clara speaking] “I think there might be another Printz left,” she said.

- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, Third Night

This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. This novel is narrated by the nameless male protagonist. The protagonist meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Two days after the party, Clara came to the protagonist's house at 8 o'clock in the morning and is driving him to her friend, who knows a lot about recorded music. But some driver cut in front of their car, and she gave an insult to the driver, using a ship's name they saw during the drive, "Printz Oskár", as some kind of insult. Afterwards, to gloss over her insult, she is using the word "Printz Oskár" to indicate muffins.

Here, I wonder what the underlined expression means.
I wonder especially why there is an interesting slanted dot on "i", making it "í", and what language that might be, and how it might be pronounced.
I first thought that it was a simple muffin, but then it was "muffín"...

I would very much appreciate your help.

 

[SoothingDave]

Prinz Oskar was a Prussian prince in the time of World War I. Apparently some sort of confection is named for him. That's the best I can guess.

"Un petit" is French for "a little."

 

[Tarheel]

Does Clara know French and German?

 

[probus]

The letter z in German is pronpunced like tz in English. The Swiss town of Zermatt sounds like Tzermatt. So the t that has been inserted into the German word Prinz is superflous.

 

[Coffee Break]

@SoothingDave, @Tarheel and @probus,

Thank you very much for the explanations!

Does Clara know French and German?

Yes, I believe she (and the male protagonist too) knows a little bit of French, Spanish, Italian and German.

So "un petit" means "a little" in French, and "Printz" is the name of the Prussian prince (though "t" is superfluous as a German word)!

But then, I just wonder why it is "muffín" rather than just "muffin"... Would that perhaps be a German word for "muffin"...?

 

[SoothingDave]

My eyes aren't good enough to notice whatever difference is in that letter.

 

[probus]

I don't know quite what to make of this but Amazon's site in Spain is offering a gift set of "toalla pastel le Petit Prince". Le Petit Prince would be a reference to the novel by Saint-Exupery, and I guess a toalla pastel must be a teatowel.

 

[Skrej]

@SoothingDave, @Tarheel and @probus,

But then, I just wonder why it is "muffín" rather than just "muffin"... Would that perhaps be a German word for "muffin"...?

Not German, no. German doesn't use the acute accent mark (the mark above the "I" which looks like a right-leaning apostrophe). The only accent marks used in German are the double dots (called umlauts in German). It's supposed to be French - note her use of 'un petite' (a little/small). I'm not certain, but I think French may also use 'muffin' as a loan word, although there may be alternate French terms as well.

I think German may similarly use 'muffin' as a loan word as well, although the dictionary suggests it originated with from the Low German word 'muffen' ( a certain type of cake) originally anyway.

This is the second or third example you've asked about where Clara is either deliberately being pretentious with her attempts at other languages, or is just affecting the accents for humor. I suspect the latter, but it's hard to say without reading the entire book.

 

[Coffee Break]

@SoothingDave, @probus and @Skrej,

Thank you very much for the explanations.
So the accent is not German! It is attempted to make the word muffin as a French word.

I don't know how that "í" is pronounced in French, but I guess it might be pronounced as "muffaeng" or something like that, as a humorous attempt of Clara to make an English word as a French one.

I sincerely appreciate your help.

 

[jutfrank]

Here's how I read it:

There's a running in-joke with the whole Prince Oskar thing. She's humorously adopting a French accent and combining it with Le Petit Prince (a famous French children's book). The accent on the last syllable of 'muffin' is a way to show she's stressing the word in a French manner.

 

[Coffee Break]

@jutfrank,

Thank you very much for the explanation.
So she is using the joke of Printz Oscar to refer to the muffin, combining it with Le Petit Prince.
And also, she is pronouncing the muffin with a French accent.
I sincerely appreciate your help, for letting me understand.

 

[probus]

... Le Petit Prince (a famous French children's book).

Recently I wondered which was the original and which the translation, so I looked into it. It turns out that St-Exupery wrote and published The Little Prince/Le Petit Prince in both languages simultaneously in the USA in 1943. The first edition published in France came two years later.