Another "how do you say" / "what do you call this" poll

[pne]

[Poll #757711]

Comments

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Even though I wrote

I wouldn't call a red pepper "green pepper" without any other qualifiers.

I realize that I consider them all "green peppers", even though some of them aren't green. I wouldn't refer to them all as "green peppers", though, because it would be confusing to whoever I was talking to. But in the grocery store I would think to myself, "ok, I need to find the green pepper section" when I was looking for green, red, orange, yellow, any. Of course, a grocery store that kept the red and green ones separate would break my little mental map of pepperhood.

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

I just call them "peppers". If I'm talking about stuff that comes in granular form, it's "black pepper" or I distinguish them using collective singular vs. collective plural.

"I'm looking for peppers": Green, red, orange, yellow, and often hot peppers. Somewhere in the produce section of a grocery store.

"I'm looking for the pepper": Stuff that comes in a tube, or possibly peppercorns. In the dry staples aisle with salt, sugar, spices that come in packages.

I don't know if people listen well enough to make that distinction were I to say it out loud, though.

[pne.livejournal.com]

What if there's just one?

This was basically prompted by Amy with a couple of pieces of chopped $fruit in front of her, and I wanted to say to her, "Eat your, uh... what are they called in English?"

"Eat your pepper"? "Eat your red pepper/green pepper" (depending on colour; green in this case)? "Eat your bell pepper" (what I ended up with)?

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's sitting right in front of you, I'd just call it a pepper and not worry about the distinction.

"Eat your pepper."

Sort of in the same vein as "eat your sandwich", it really doesn't matter what kind of sandwich it is, provided there isn't more than one to choose from.

Obviously if you're trying to teach language, you might want to be more specific, in which case "bell pepper" or "green pepper" might be more useful.