Showing posts with label Italian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italian. Show all posts

the big list of vegetables

If you're a regular reader, you'll know that I feel shame when I do a post that's mostly just listing "they say this, we say that". There are plenty of sites around that do that kind of straight word-for-word listing. But I get enough requests for vegetable names that I'm just going to try to get it over with right now. Where there are links, that's because I've already written about some of these at greater length elsewhere. I've also already written about veg/veggie and various herbs (and the pronunciation thereof). So please click on those links to discuss those issues in greater detail.

And now, the list (which has no particular order):

BrEAmE
aubergineeggplant
courgettezucchini
rocket (sometimes roquette)arugula
mange toutsnow peas/sugar peas
spring oniongreen onion/scallion
swederutabaga
beetroot (treated as a mass noun)beet (count noun)
sweetcorncorn
chicoryBelgian endive
pepper (sweet pepper if it's not green; one occasionally hears the AusE capsicum)(bell) pepper



chick-peachickpea/garbanzo bean
haricot beannavy bean
broad beanfava bean
runner beanstring bean
cos lettuceromaine lettuce

In addition, some names for groups of vegetables are different. BrE pulses = AmE legumes (though, technically, legume is a broader category). In AmE I'd refer to cruciferous vegetables, meaning broccoli and cauliflower collectively, but in BrE I hear Brassica, the Latin name of the family (which includes cabbage and Brussels sprouts).

Squash are another matter. One easily finds acorn and butternut squash (and courgettes/zucchini) in both countries, but otherwise the varieties of squash tend to be different. Marrows will be known to fans of Wallace and Grommit, but the term is not much used in the US. It refers to "any of various kinds of squash or gourd which are chiefly the fruits of varieties of Cucurbita pepo, eaten as a vegetable; esp. one of the larger round or cylindrical kinds with green, white, or striped skins and greenish-white or (occas.) yellowish pulpy flesh" (OED June 2008 draft rev.), so courgettes/zucchinis are technically small marrows. In the UK I've never seen what we call summer squash* (aka yellow squash--is this a regional difference? Not sure) or spaghetti squash (which was something of a fad in the US in the 1970s, I think, but I haven't seen it lately). The OED lists pattypan (squash) as 'chiefly N. Amer.', but I've only seen it for sale in the UK and South Africa. Pumpkin is generally only used of the orange-rinded variety (for making jack o'lanterns) in AmE, but in BrE the term applies more generally to gourd-y squashes with orange flesh. (Jack-o-lantern pumpkins have become more available in the UK as Halloween celebrations have become more popular.)

The British talk about more kinds of shelled peas (garden peas, petits-pois [for younger, sweeter peas]) than Americans do. (Click on the link for the mushy variety.)

As can be seen in the examples presented here, BrE tends to be more influenced by French and AmE shows some Italian influence, which is not surprising since Britain has a lot of contact with France and its cuisine, and popular cuisine in the US has been greatly affected by Italian (and other) immigrants. Those who read Menu Italian may not recogni{s/z}e arugula for Italian rucola, but arugula was the dialectal version of the word that immigrated to America. (Just as rutabaga is not the general Swedish word for that kind of turnip, but a dialectal term for it. Click on the link above for more on that.)

I await the first comment that points out a completely obvious one that I've left off the list!

*Summer squash for me has two meanings. Either the general term that refers to any thin-skinned squash, or the specific one that refers to yellow squash that are picked at the same time as courgettes/zucchini.
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furor(e)

Better Half and I made it past the protesters to see Jerry Springer: The Opera tonight. While it's about an American institution, the opera was written and first performed in London. So, I have to admit looking out for places where their American English fell through, but it was prettyf-ckinggood. (One must use the 'f' word in describing anything to do with this show. Not to do so would be disrespectful.) The two things I noticed were reference to a Skoda car --which is very unlikely to be the car of an American hillbilly, though it is a famously cheap car here-- and the British spelling of programme in some text that scrolled by on the set. (Note that BrE does use the spelling program to refer to computer programs, though.)

As we left, BH (who had seen it before WITHOUT ME) said, "Now you see what all the furore was about when it was on television." Furore/furor are often treated in lists of British/American spelling differences, but this hides the fact that the two words are pronounced differently, the BrE version with an 'ay' sound at the end. (Wikipedia says that the e-spelling is also found in the US, but I think Wikipedia is just weird on this point.)

The OED and some purists claim that furor and furore have different meanings--with the former meaning 'mania' and the latter 'a craze' or 'an uproar'. But the 'mania' meaning is not in active use, so there's not much point in making the distinction. Furor came into the language from Latin, and furore much later from Italian, but the first recorded instance of furor with the 'craze' meaning comes 86 years before the first citation of furore. The various meanings are so relatable that it's little surprise that in some parts the word has been both Anglici{s/z}ed in pronunciation and merged in spelling.
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AmE = American English
BrE = British English
OED = Oxford English Dictionary (online)