You see, this is the type of intelligent discussion I'm talking about. Carmella just educated me on the word.

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Yes, I know how "shit gets mixed up". It's an Italian American word. Eggplant is melanzana. Period. In Sicilian, they will pronounce it with a "j" sound in there, so it comes out as "melangiana", but that's Sicilian dialect. Other regions will say it with a different accent, but people in Naples are not going around saying moulinyan for black. I promise you.

The word is meant to be a racial slur and it's used by Italian Americans ala Tony Soprano, like someone mentioned above.

edit: well I asked my husband just now and he said, the word "mulignana" is used by some Italians as a way to refer to black people. I guess that's where the Italian American word, moulinyan came from. No matter what, though, it's a racial term.