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

[pne]

[Poll #757711]

Comments

[brad.livejournal.com]

əgɪn

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah! Should have thought of that one. Thanks.

[ilia-yasny.livejournal.com]

Болгарский (сладкий) перец - Bulgarian (sweet) pepper

[tungol.livejournal.com]

I think I say "again" in both the ways you list but primarily rhyming with "hen" etc.; it's possible that I'm mistaken and don't actually ever say it rhyming with "rain" etc.

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

I primarily call that a red bell pepper. Or, bell pepper or just pepper.

Mmm, red pepper so crunchy and yummy .. *crave*

[schnurble.livejournal.com]

I call it Paprika, but I'm German, and that's the German word for it...

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

Paprika is capsicum?!? Where have I been? We have it dried in our dry herbs cabinet, but I never realised. Fancy that! :D

Somehow I doubt it tastes as good.

[mendel.livejournal.com]

"again" to rhyme with ran, plan, etc.

That's a red pepper, unless there's some chance of confusion with the kind of hot red peppers you pickle, in which case it's a red bell pepper, or if I'm feeling annoying, a red green pepper.

Mango?

[pne.livejournal.com]

That's a red pepper, unless there's some chance of confusion with the kind of hot red peppers you pickle, in which case it's a red bell pepper, or if I'm feeling annoying, a red green pepper.

What's (for you) the most generic word for that sort of fruit, regardless of whether it's red, green, orange, or yellow? (But not the "hot" kind.) "Bell pepper"? "Green pepper" (regardless of colour)?

Mango?

I was surprised, too.

I got that name from Wikipedia, which says that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_pepper) bell peppers are commonly called [...] mangoes (or mangos) in parts of the US around southern Ohio, Indiana, and northern Kentucky (and should not be confused with the tropical fruit known properly as a mango (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango))..

paprika vs capsicum

[pne.livejournal.com]

Not sure whether it's quite the same variety as the kind you buy whole, but yes, same general fruit.

In German, they're even the same word: "Paprika" can refer to either paprika-the-powder or capsicum-the-fruit. (Though one sometimes sees "Gewürzpaprika" and "Gemüsepaprika" to disambiguate, i.e. "spice paprika" vs "vegetable paprika".)

Re: paprika vs capsicum

[pne.livejournal.com]

A bit like "Gewürzgurke" vs "Gemüsegurke" (spice cucumber vs vegetable cucumber = gherkin vs cucumber).

Re: paprika vs capsicum

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

ohh, now I feel like a gherkin! :D

Re: paprika vs capsicum

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

There ya go! :D

(I only found out the other day that the vegetable americans call yams, are our sweet potatos! Was always confusing when watching American TV and they were going on about yams at thanksgiving)

gherkins

[pne.livejournal.com]

You look like one, too :)

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

I've never heard "Green pepper" in connection with any sort of food that wasn't actually green.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Note on my rhyming answer: My speech is pin/pen merged, so my actual pronunciation is [ə'gɪn] (though this still rhymes with [hɪn], [dɪn], etc.). In a narrower transcription, I'd have a tilde over the stressed vowel, since I do nasalise the [ɪ] at least partly.

[nyssa.livejournal.com]

On further reflection, I should probably have picked "other" for the first question; someone else mentioned the words "pin" and "pen", which I make a point to pronounce differently. The way I pronounce "again" rhymes most closely with "pin", not "pen" (which rhymes with "hen", etc.).

[noidd.livejournal.com]

I do gain and gen interchangably. I would like to say there is some kind of linguistic rule behind it but i'm probably matching whomever I am around.

[mendel.livejournal.com]

What's (for you) the most generic word for that sort of fruit, regardless of whether it's red, green, orange, or yellow? (But not the "hot" kind.) "Bell pepper"? "Green pepper" (regardless of colour)?

That's a good question! Red and green peppers are more different from each other than red, orange, and yellow peppers, so I wouldn't call a red pepper "green pepper" without any other qualifiers.

"Bell pepper" is the most generic word for me that includes them all, but I wouldn't write "bell pepper" on the grocery list; I'd write either "green pepper" or "red pepper", and I wouldn't be surprised if nyxie came home with a different color based on her whims that day. But that's probably because we don't cook with hot peppers.

Now that I think about "mango" a bit more, it reminds me of "pawpaw", which is Asimina sp. in the Ozarks and to a lesser extent the rest of N. America, and papaya (Carica papaya) in the rest of the world.

[mendel.livejournal.com]

You can't say that anymore! But yeah, that's why I said I'd do it if I didn't mind being annoying. But if I said "I need a red pepper", and you thought "Does he mean or ?", then I'd say "a red green-pepper" to clarify it, and since you already knew the possibilities, you'd know which I was talking about.

Context resolves ambiguity in language!

[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'd say "habañero pepper" or "jalapeño pepper" or whatever for the former. ;)

[mendel.livejournal.com]

But it's not a habanero or a jalapeno! I'm not sure what species it is, exactly. (That might be a picture of a jalapeno, actually, but I mean the bigger ones.) It's a "chili pepper", but bell peppers are chili peppers too! It's the sweet pepper that's long and pointy. The yellow ones like it are called "banana peppers".

(And both jalapenos and chili peppers are Capiscuum anuum.!)

Whoa! I just discovered that green peppers are simply immature red (bell) peppers, like green and red tomatoes. Maybe I should call them "green red-peppers" instead.

[nyxie.livejournal.com]

I call them OMG WTF MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE!

:p

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Red OMG WTF MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE, or green OMG WTF MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE?

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

I've gotten to the point where jalapeños are "kinda flavourful" and if I'm actually looking for hot, I need to do the habañero thing.

I dunno what I'll do once that becomes routine. Pour raw capsaicin on my tongue?

[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.

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

I find it surprising that people would pronounce "pin" and "pen" the same, although I guess I shouldn't really be surprised about the way that anyone pronounces anything. :)

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Woops, I meant to edit out "I'm not sure what species it is".

[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)?

[pne.livejournal.com]

I find it surprising that some people distinguish "horse" and "hoarse". Or "weight" and "wait".

I guess I generalise distinctions or lack thereof from my accent to others.

[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.

[nyssa.livejournal.com]

Here in the Southern US, people tend to get a little sloppy with their words. ;) I'm one of those few that manages to care. Generally, people around here pronounce both words like "pin".

[asciident]

Mango?!

[pne.livejournal.com]

Weird, huh?

See this comment further up (http://pne.livejournal.com/557351.html?thread=1978407#t1978407).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

'Cept the South is the last bastion of the wh/w distinction in the USA. There are people down there who can't believe how sloppy folk are who pronounce whale and wail like wail.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You can't spend much time learning about the phonology of American English without running into the pen/pin merger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_the_high_front_vowels#Pin-pen_merger). What I find weirder is the split that comes about from æ-tensing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_short_A#.C3.A6-tensing), but I guess that's just because no one around here speaks like that.

[eridanusus.livejournal.com]

I think I say gain mostly, but if I'm talking really fast I say gen.

[tungol.livejournal.com]

If I had to distinguish those sorts of red peppers, I'd probably use "hot pepper" vs. "sweet pepper". I probably wouldn't call the hot pepper a "red pepper" in the first place, though.

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's a red bell pepper, but after debating with myself for awhile, I decided I say "red pepper" slightly more than "bell pepper."

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

The former is a chile pepper. In New Jersey I would have called it a red chile, but around here red chile (and green chile) are specific things and I don't know enough to tell whether that is really a red chile (which can only be a Hatch chile) or just a chile pepper. ;-)

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Alas, sweet peppers are chile (= chili) peppers! (#t1981991)

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

Not in New Mexico, they ain't. ;-)

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Well, "people use different words" was how this whole discussion began. But if you're going to jump in and start declaring what things are hours after I already talked about the problem with "sweet" vs "chili" (#t1981991), then people might be left wondering what you're trying to get across!

Besides, I already explained that I was trying to illustrate a red banana pepper but probably accidentally illustrated a jalapeno (or a tabasco). Even though red banana peppers are chiles I'm not sure people would think of a red banana when they hear "chile" instead of a much smaller, hotter pepper.

[nyssa.livejournal.com]

Very true, I do pronounce the "wh" in whale, as do many other people I know. :)

[caelum.livejournal.com]

I have never ever heard of a pepper called a mango. I have to admit I find that rather absurd, in a "oh us wacky Americans" kind of way.

[nondescript.livejournal.com]

I also say "red bell pepper".