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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
The Language of Food
Yes, this is another book. The full title is The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. It’s by Dan Jurafsky and narrated by Steven Menasche.
So, this is something a bit different. Eatomology, as the author suggests. Let’s get started.
There are many chapters in this book dedicated to the movement of dishes and name changes as they go on their world excursions. I’m not going to concentrate on these, because they’re very specific. But they cover things like sikbaaj to fish and chips, fish sauce to ketchup and why turkey might be other countries, too. Many recipes are included in the book, if that’s your thing, but unfortunately many of them are on an accompanying pdf, a link for which didn’t seem to have been uploaded to Spotify. So, Spotify might not be the best place to get this as an audiobook, although I will put a link in the description.
Instead, we’re going to talk a little bit about the more general topics to do with language.
So, entrées. A French word, of course. In the UK we know this as a first course, although, to be honest, most places will just call it a starter, unless you’re going to more of a status restuaurant. Entrée is quite a posh word (which some would probably call stuck up), but more on that in a minute. However, it is a main course in the USA. Was that change arbitrary? Well, not really. It seems that entrées have been at various places in the meal over the centuries, going from first course, to somewhere in the middle, depending on which country you were in, and then back to the beginning, unless you’re in the USA.
Leading on from that, each cuisine, the author says, is like a language. Why? Because each cuisine has different rules. So, in one country, sweet may always be at the end, in another at the beginning. Or there may not be a concept of difference between sweet and savoury in terms of placement. Some cuisines have very defined procedures, probably more for formal meals, that define very definite courses. I find this quite amusing. Never did I think language would be compared to courses in a meal, but I see what the author is getting at. I would add to that that meal times can also be very different in different countries, which is partially due to the weather. For example, in the hotter countries of Europe, people seem to eat much later than we do here.
Right, let’s go back to that ‘posh’ language. The book talks about menus in restaurants and what determines how dishes are described. I’m not going to give specific examples, you’ll have to read the book for that, but there are a number of indicators that will tell you how expensive (or posh) a restaurant is. These days, most expensive places are likely to go heavy on the origins of the food. Mid-range restaurants want to assure you that their food is good quality, so tell you so and the cheapest places will tell you that you can have the dishes done your way. I’m not sure that last one is so true in this country.
This is not something I’ve ever really thought about before, but listening to all the examples, which, admitedly are likely only from American restaurants, although I’m sure it’s largely true in the UK, too, it made a lot of sense. Some examples were given of macaronic language used back in the 1970s. In other words, using French and Italian words to make things sound exotic (like entrée) and it made me wonder, would any other culture do that with English terms in their menus? Like, I don’t know, some type of curry English-style. Or English Yorkshire puddings. Does English food sound exotic? I don’t think that’s the impression that most foreigners have of English food, from what I’ve heard. I think it sounds different, but maybe not enticing enough to those who don’t know what it is.
And, surprise, suprise, these kinds of naming techniques are the same kind of thing that is used to sell us food off the supermarket shelves. This is very evident in the UK. Things are said to be from a named farm, which in a lot of cases doesn’t actually exist, and may not even be in this country, even though the name sounds very wholesome and British. And, of course, we have all the ‘health’ claims, which aren’t really health claims, because they’re just using language to confuse us.
What about reviews of restaurants? On studying this, the author highlights that it seems we use more negative words than positive when reviewing, because we need to be more specific about what is wrong. I think I’ve seen that. I mean, most reviews that say something is good will just say it’s great, unless they’ve been paid to review - beware of long positive reviews! Whereas negative reviews will go into every last detail of what they didn’t like.
But, apparently, as a race, we actually tend towards being positive.
Okay, so those who hang around on social media might not agree about that last point, and this book was written a few years ago. Maybe, the analysis would show something different now, but I think it’s probably still true, it’s just that we don’t notice it. We always see the bad, because the news always gives us the bad, the algorithms always surface the bad, the bad always gets shared. Finding the good can be difficult. Which is a shame.
And what about the words for food, or dishes. The name of something can suggest things to us, depending on what vowels are used, and this isn’t just in English. Words with ‘bigger’ sounding vowels are more enticing and short clipped vowels are less so, or imply something smaller. I’m not using technical terms here, by the way. And, guess what, branding companies know this. So, look out for brand names that use this technique. It’s deliberate! Honestly, can we trust anyone in marketing? Well, I guess we probably already knew that we couldn’t do that.
This is an interesting book, but isn’t so much related to language learning, just something that might be of interest to those with an interest in words. Link in the description for the book on Spotify if you want to give it a go.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, adiós, hwyl and bye for now.
Book Link on Spotify