Ceci n'est pas un blog

1) a more peaceful and cooperative nature, or

2) enough technology to become an actual threat.

Cosmology professor (via mathprofessorquotes)

And yet the more I learn about it, the more I cry.

– Impracticaldemon

Negligee

1918-1921

United States

My friends who speak British English are always making fun of me for the coriander/cilantro thing, but maybe y’all could redirect your attention to getting my supermarket to sort it out? 

Japan usually calls cilantro パクチー pakuchii, which comes from Thai, but some places sell it by its Chinese name 香菜 xiāngcài, which is pronounced シャンツァイ shantsuai in Japanese.

If you want to buy cilantro at my local Inageya supermarket, you have a choice between the following two herbs: 香菜（シャンツァイ） Xiāngcài (Shantsuai)  香菜（パクチー）　　Xiāngcài (Pakuchii)

Both are ¥198, but Shantsuai gives you nearly twice as much for your money. Longer stems, which I know some people don’t like, but still very much the same thing. It makes me -a little- insane.

This is very interesting, I didn’t know they called it coriander in the UK. I’d recently discovered that English ‘cilantro’ was just Norwegian ‘koriander’. (Sometimes you can go a long time recognizing and knowing the name of some plant/animal/fish in another language and just not realize what it actually is. And then you are surprised it was something mundane all along.)

Also difficult to remember is that ‘corn’ is ‘mais’, since ‘korn’ = ‘grain’.

Also Norwegian ‘paprika’ is ‘bell pepper’ and only powdered bell pepper is paprika to you? But we still use the word chilipepper. And then you think that the inclusion of the word ‘pepper’ must mean ‘bell pepper’ something spicy. Super confusing.

I think those too are words that is divided in different languages using different etymological versions. Others are pineapple/ananas and orange/appelsin. Orange has a bunch of ones too..

And sometimes the meaning just shifts and creates false friends and that’s just frustrating:

Beef is storfekjøtt, and steak is biff. That took me a while to realize.

And ‘fløte’ is ‘cream’, but ‘krem’ is ‘whipped cream’. I still keep messing that one up.

Ball Gown & Cape

Jacques Fath

c.1948