Man, I missed something. Isn't bisque a creamy, thickened "soup" made with crab, lobster, etc.? Is the point someone said it without it being made with crustaceans? Because that's what I get out of this post.

Radishes. I made ordinary radish sandwiches year before last and I cannot tell you how much the Americans raved while the Europeans were like? what the heck? Funny to me. It was a French speaking friend who'd suggested them for the simple party. I assumed it was received like someone from the US being offered an ordinary PBJ.

IC, I hear your pain. I have some non-French bugaboos, which I've mentioned before. Top on the list is "hummus", which is Arabic for chickpea. Every time I hear some chef talking about edamame hummus, using the word to mean puree (not a chickpea dish with edamame added), my skin crawls. It would be different, perhaps, if "hummus" weren't a commonly used word, in the U.S., used to describe dishes that have whole chickpeas in them. By teaching people less familiar with Middle Eastern food that it means puree, these idiots are setting them up for disappointment. One of my favorite vegetable stews is the Lebanese eggplant hummus with pomegranate. If you order that and are expecting a puree, you'll be sorely disappointed. There are large pieces of eggplant, strings of onion, large tomato pieces and whole chickpeas, and the pomegranate is in the sauce.

Raddishes are in, but I wouldn't pay to eat one bare. :) There were large, stem to root, raw raddish slices on the salad on my first encounter with a slice of tree trunk used as a serving plate, recently, but it was a cold vegetable salad, so while odd, it wasn't inappropriate. The "dish" was weirder. :)

Blue Hills radishes are different. They are organically grown by the restaurant (operated by David Rockefeller) right next to the restaurant.

Well How about $1,000 per person for uncooked fish?

Masa sushi in NYC, $600 minimum per person. If you have drinks, tax + gratuities will set you back a cool $1,000 each.

dcarch

Okay, they're organic and homegrown. How are they different from the organic raddishes I might grow? Or get at the farmers' market? Or Whole Foods?

I'm pretty sure I could eat a whole meal of $600 sushi without going numb. Unless they cheat, the fish must be very fresh, practically still quivering, so I wouldn't have an allergic reaction. Artistically perfect food is wasted on my however. I can appreciate the art, and I can appreciate "appetizing", as you know, DC, but I can look at beautiful art, and eat family style plating and be just as happy as if I'm eating the art. I wouldn't pay that much for it. It's just not appealing enough to want to bother. I love fine dining restaurants, when they're good, but I'm not interested in paying more than the going rater for exclusivity or entertainment value. Just as I don't care about eating the art, I don't care about eating money. :) OTOH, the uncooked fish you cite isn't unprepared. What do they do to the raddish that puts it in the same league as $1000 sushi?

I think French terms may have evolved into different meanings in English speaking countries, and certainly terms are different in England than U.S. In my work, bisque refers to unglazed ceramics. I agree, however, that languages are becoming less precise but doubt that anything can be done to stop that trend. It is difficult to say at which stage any meaning should become stagnant. English became standardized with Shakespeare, French possibly with Moliere (not sure about that one - just guessing), Italian with Dante, German with the Grimm Brothers, but before those times the languages were very fluid. I like standardized languages because they are easier to learn and understand but difficult to control.

My Italian teacher ordered a pizza in Texas with pepperoni, expecting to get one with peppers on it, and was shocked when it arrived with American salami.

If you want a stable language, try Iceland. Their schooling in their native language revolves around the 13th Century sagas. The society wants the kids to be able to read them easily, so they continue to speak a language that is basically Old Norse. The French have the Académie Française trying to guard the language, while the society at large wants to be cool, and use borrow words and neologisms like the rest of the world. (The Icelandic kids learn English and other European languages which they can sound cool in.) But, Lars, there has never been a time when English wasn't fluid. There have been times when there have been more or less sticklers for "correct" writing and language, which in itself led to marvelous oddities of ungrammatical hyper-correction. For the speakers of English, however, outside of school and the correspondence of secretaries, the language has always been fluid and welcoming of words from everywhere and admiration for new ways of saying things. It is, essentially and technically, a creole language. That is, something that rose out of a pot of a bunch of different languages dumped in a pot and stirred together.

And knowing all that, it still bugs me when people use "hummus" to denote puree. I know it's useless but one can know that and still have a pet peeve. Like it bugs Lars to have something which is basically doctored up ketchup called "chili" sauce, though there are no chili's in it. Come to think of it, we had another of these French discussions over the American designation of "au jus" as a kind of sauce rather than "with the juice".

Considering that bisque, which is a French word, originally meant a game soup, perhaps it's restrictive to say it can't be further evolved. Every English dictionary I've looked at says it can also be a vegetable soup, so that use can't be new. Bisque in pottery, which Lars was referring to, comes from "biscuit" or "biscuitware". Since "biscuit" means twice baked, it makes sense since the first firing is of the drying/hardening of the bisque, and the second one is for the glaze. So...the dictionaries aren't sure of the origin of bisque (the soup). Do you think it might be that those game soups used the picked carcasses, so were also called twice cooked?

IC, I totally get why you're put out about bisque, and au jus for that matter, but English doesn't care. Is the cool girl hot? Maybe not? Is the hot girl cool? Probably, because people just assume that hotness is cool, so unless she says something to really spoil it, she can be cool just by looking hot. :)

Bisque means twice cooked. So it's apt for the soup and the pottery! Yes, you're right, Plllog. Up until something like 1659 it was a game or seafood soup.

But, Plllog, English does care. It's a rich language that allows us to play on words like your hot, cool girl!- instinctively in which order to place adjectives so we know if you're talking about an opinion or a fact....most people don't know anything about the order of adjectives, but they understand it.

The English language is influenced by many nations. It was not fixed in glue by Shakespeare! It is richly contributed to by you lot, the Australians, the Indians, the West Indians......It has been evolving for ever. I speak and teach English English. But, the Brits are very good at identifying and understanding English spoken all over the world. I have to warn French people when they're going to travel to your side of the differences. (The word pants is a good example) And we won't mention the grammar used your side....... LOL

In the same way, when people mis-use French, I know it. Someone here, not so very long ago, wrote about a rue (street) when they meant roux. They would have been better off writing about adding flour to melted butter! A sauce CANNOT be called au jus. At a limit, you can have A jus. But, I find it silly. Say sauce! Say cooking liquid.

Understandable. We're a mixed lot. Grandmother American Indian, EasternShore, married my Scottish Grandfather. Other, Holmes, English...married Pop-pop, Polish, but was adopted by a German family in New Orleans...ended up in western Tennessee, then moved to the DelMarVa peninsula for work...

Now in Newfoundland with an entirely different set of traditions....even have their own dictionary.

Already been mention about the origins of Bisque.

Bisque recipes through time

[1651]
"Squab Bisque
Get squab, after they have been cleaned and trussed up--which you do by making a hole in the bottom of their belly with a knife and sticking their legs into it. Blanch them--that is, put them into a pot with boiling water or bouillon from the pot with your best bouillon. Be very careful not to let it darket. Dry your bread and simmer it in the dove bouillon; then set it out after it is well seasoned with salt, pepper and cloves. Garnish it with the doves, and with cockscombs, veal sweetbreads, mushrooms, mutton stock, then pistachios. Serve. Garnish the firm of the platter with slices of lemon."
---La Varenne's Cookery: The French Cook, The French Pastry Cook, The French Confectioner, modern translation and commentary by Terence Scully [Prospect Books:Devon] 2006 (p. 134-135)
[NOTE: "The modern bisque is a thick soup made from pureed shellfish. In La Varenne's day poultry and game birds could be prepared in a bisque, that being merely a dish of boiled fowl on sops...Escoffier wrote that they 'are not very highly esteemed by gourmets, and that is more particularly to be regretted, since when the birds are of excellent quality, they are worthy of the best tables." (p. 134)]http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodsoups.html

Misuse of terminology applied to cooking rarely bothers me. Just a little. I just know what is intended. I would not order bisque in most restaurants. Often is leftovers, like meat stews, called all sorts of things. The classic American Diner with 10thousands things on the menu might have 'bisque'..."thats-what-it-says-on-the-can", : )

I do like reading the histories. Now having moose, cod, salt and fresh, crab delivered, i was looking up and refreshing my memory of recipes last night. Personally my own recipes are not traditional. A blend of EasternShore US and local. A bit of the south tossed in and what local produce the hardware store has. (carrot celery onion potato).

Modern tradition uses onion soup mix in stew.

"Dehydrated Onions, Salt, Corn Starch, Sugar, Yeast Extract, Colour, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Monosodium Glutamate, Corn Syrup Solids, Disodium Guanylate, Disodium Inosinate, Sulphites.

Not a chance or necessary.

Cod Cakes

Minutal marinum: pisces in caccabum, adicies liquamen, oleum, uinum, cocturam. porros capitatos, coriandrum minutatim concides, isiciola de pisce minuta facies et pulpas piscis cocti concerpis, urticas marinas bene lotas mittes. haec omnia cum cocta fuerint, teres piper, ligusticum, origanum, fricabis. liquamen suffundes, ius de suo sibi, exinanies in caccabum. cum ferbuerit, tractam confringes. obligas. cum ferbuerit, agitas. piper aspargis et inferes. [Place the fish in a saucepan, add broth, oil, and wine. Also finely chop leek heads and coriander. Form it into small cakes, adding capers and well-cleaned sea nettles. These fish cakes cook in a liquor of pepper, lovage, and crushed oregano, diluted with broth and the above fish liquor. Skim well, bind, stir over the cakes, sprinkle with pepper and serve.] – Apicius, 4th Century

I grew up in Louisiana, where the French language was seasoned heavily with words from other cultures, and the local culture borrows French terms for items not necessarily the same as the Comedie Francaise would recognize. For instance, one of the great achievements of Cajun cooking is Crawfish Bisque; very spicy, very rich. I travelled to France and had a dish with the same name at La Tour d'Argent; wow, what a disappointment. Creamy, rich, but not nearly what I was expecting. Bo-ring.

The most monumental disappointment, though, was when I looked at a menu and thought I saw something I recognized. Andouille is a tasty, spicy Cajun sausage. I saw andouillette on a menu and ordered it, thinking it must be little Andouille sausages. Well, I found out that andouillette is a sausage stuffed with ground-up pork intestines (chitterlings, chitlins, whatever you call them). Man, that was the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted in my life. ( I think the linguistic term for such confusion is a false cognate. Whatever, they were positively vile.)

We still understand Shakespeare today, who lived over 400 years ago, but we do not understand Chaucer (very easily), who lived 220 years before Shakespeare. Even Edmund Spenser, who was just before Shakespeare (by only a few years) can be a bit difficult to understand, and seems quite a bit more removed from modern English than Shakespeare.

The commonly accepted definition of "bisque vs chowder" is currently: "Bisques
and chowders are simply two types of thick soup; bisque is generally smooth
while chowder is chunky".

Lobster bisque is my DH's favorite soup. We have never had it come with lobster chunks in it at any time within our 40 yrs of dining out. The lobster meat is pureed into it, with cream and cognac (and preferably a drizzling of black truffle oil, LOL). Now, lobster chowder - lots of chopped lobster meat, the more, the better!

==========

Ummm, I'm not so sure about the statement "....at a whole meal of $600 sushi...Unless they cheat, the fish must be very fresh, practically still quivering."

There is no 'cheating' involved, but the most popular fishes used for sashimi by EVERYONE are frozen. It is merely a question of the level of quality, both of the fish itself and how it was handled. Fish, like anything else living, begins to degrade within minutes of death. It must be commercially flash-frozen (which also takes care of any potential worm cysts) to be shipped, even for short distances.

=======

I can heartily recommend the 1986 PBS mini-series documentary called "The Story of English". It goes on a little too long, but they refer to English as a "polyglot language", for the same reasons as the professional translation company Morningside Translations does:

http://www.morningtrans.com/blog/english-polyglot-language

If you're polyglot, don't you speak several languages?

Notwithstanding, there are grammatical rules that govern the english language. I understand that you had a president that decided to simplify spelling which is why you spell flavour, flavor etc.

Was it Sir Winston Churchill who said that we were 2 nations divided by a common language? I think that the differences between US English and English are becoming greater. I sometimes find myself reading books by American authors and I'm not always sure that I've really understood the text at all!

Vive la difference, as they say here!

Yes, IC, that is what polyglot means. On the linked page, it is used to mean that English, itself, speaks many languages because there are so many words that started out as borrow words from diverse languages. This is separate from the concept of English as a Creole, which is basically a stew of language that develops when several distinct language groups are all well represented together, and bits and pieces of all come together to form a new language.

There really aren't different grammatical rules between English and American. There are spelling, punctuation and style differences, but the grammar is the same.

It was Noah Webster, who was an educator and lexicographer. Part of his purpose in reforming the way spelling was taught was political. He wanted to present the American language as it was used by the (educated, middle class) people, and not the way the British aristocracy had codified it. They orthography of modern English (the spelling systems) has been called a grand tour of the history of the language. The spelling differences cited come from the times when French monks were trying to write down the common vernacular as they heard it, and came up with spellings that were meant to differentiate the actual sounds from the French. Standardization of spelling didn't occur until well after the invention of moveable type. It still isn't set in stone, as the variations found in advertizing, tech and pop culture reveal. What is a trademark today may well be an accepted word in a hundred years. Like "aspirin".

From watching American films etc, it appears to be acceptable to mis-use the present perfect after "just" - We often hear "I just did" when it should have been "I've just done" or would "of" when it should have been would "have" etc. Some terms you use like "gotten" come from old English and have evolved out of modern English as spoken by us- what we call the Queen's english LOL I mind very much when I hear bad grammar. The standards in England are going down and appalling English is becoming more and more acceptable. Shame.

Some things are funny like you calling trousers pants. There is soom for some funny misunderstandings!

There are lots of differences. Of course language evolves and words enter and leave the dictionary every year. Local dialet is a rich part of language and is to be celebrated as are accents and local terms. Terms of endearment can be interesting. The north east of England, a loved woman is "hen". It's the same here - my husband calls me "ma poule " - I've become used to being called an old boiling fowl!!! A woman from Devon is a Dumpling - and it's something to be proud of!

Lars, I think you over-estimate the capacity of many school children. Sadly, Shakespeare isn't taught in school any more in Britain. If you asked the average 14 year old to understand a passage of text, they probably wouldn't have a clue as to the meaing of many of the words.

I think that would 'of' is just 'have' being mumbled; it's still not acceptable English, but ever since Marlon Brando made mumbling cool, it's what we have to live with. As Henry Higgins noted, 'Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak.' He also noted:

One common language I'm afraid we'll never get.
Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.
Why, in America, they haven't used it for years!

Except that I've seen the "of" written so in some cases, it probably is a mumble but not always.

I was talking to an American lady who also teaches English and she was telling me about the sad state of dumbing down of grammar. Also, she told me that the word "doh" is now in the dictionary. DOH!

Doh is in the Oxford English Dictionary (American version).

In GB English we interchange to have and to have got - no difference at all in use or meaning. I'm 56, went to a posh private school and have never heard ot that one!

None of us follows the rules all the time or we wouldn't be human. I'm not expecting anyone to. Just pointing out that there is some atrocious grammar out there!

No arguments on the atrocious grammar--on both sides of the Atlantic, and likely also the antipodes, Indian subcontinent, etc. From the linguistics point of view, there's a difference between the bad grammar that comes from inattentiveness and poor education, that which comes from those who know better but goof up (performance errors) and that which is a herald of language change. It is "correct" if the language as spoken by a large cross section of speakers say so, and "bad" if the same large cross section says so.

You probably went to a more progressive school than my school friend. :) As I said, forbidding "got" is a crazy teacher invented rule, not a real part of the language.

There was once a contest to see how many prepositions someone could pile onto the end of a sentence. Some of them are allowed to be verb particles, rather than heads of prepositional phrases. According to Quoteinvestigator.com, the quip often attributed to Churchill was first published just as a joke in The Strand in 1942: When a memorandum passed round a certain Government department, one
young pedant scribbled a postscript drawing attention to the fact that
the sentence ended with a preposition, which caused the original writer
to circulate another memorandum complaining that the anonymous
postscript was “offensive impertinence, up with which I will not put.” So, the contest was trying to better that. "Put up" is a verb construction, with a different meaning than the simple verb put and the preposition up, as in Harry put up the shades, but left the curtain rods for later when he'd have a helper.

The winner was the query of a cranky little girl, who did not want to go to sleep, of her father, who'd brought her favorite story upstairs in hopes that reading it would please her and make her nod off. "What did you bring that book I don't want to be read to out of up for?

My wife recently got this tee.

" Lars, I think you over-estimate the capacity of many school children. Sadly, Shakespeare isn't taught in school any more in Britain. If you asked the average 14 year old to understand a passage of text, they probably wouldn't have a clue as to the meaing of many of the words."

Sad statement Islay. My son just finished Romeo and Juliet (2nd year of 4 years of high school). So I guess it's still studied in my one city, and one state of the US. I speak for no one else.

And I didn't know bisque originated as a game dish. All I could find was seafood. Times change!

I think some of it is fashion. We started with Romeo and Juliet in fifth grade through The Scottish Play in tenth, and my senior English seminar in high school was a year long Shakespeare survey which included the sonnets, the histories (learned a lot about the Plantagenets and the process of flattering sitting kings), the ancients, and the comedies. Nowadays, the literature of subcultures is more stylish. Enough of it is truly excellent and deserving of being taught in schools that I can't repine. There still is some Shakespeare being taught here. Not so long ago, "strumpet" was a Shakespeare-inspired epithet heard around campus. We'll know the times have changed back when they go to hurling "caddis-garter puke-stocking" at each other. Of course, my schooling prepared me well to enjoy The Hollow Crown. Very highest quality filmed Shakespeare.

We read one work per school year here. Same one city, same one state. Maybe we just treasure his works?

Well, times have changed if school children do not read Shakespeare. Here, in tiny little backwoods-country-bumpkin-farmer-country, White Cloud, the 6th grade takes a yearly trip to Canada for the Shakespeare festival. I will admit that Ashley and her best friend took great liberties acting out "Romeo and Juliet" in different ways, including a horror movie genre, a twist making the villain the hero, and pretending they could speak Japanese, with English subtitles. Still, they saw it acted on stage and read it, and appeared to understand.

As for grammar and the property usage of various terms, it doesn't really bother me, although I was an English major in college. I have a couple of pet peeves, one of them being "them ones" and "those ones". I consistently lectured my girls that it was "them" and "those", and "ones" was superfluous and incorrect. They just smiled, I think they did it on purpose. The other is something like Islay's "rue" instead of "roux". I've seen "wallah" instead of "voila" and "peaked" instead of "piqued". I think that it's just too easy to look up the correct spelling now with Google so I try to make sure I'm spelling correctly before I post, although I'm sure I'm not always successful.

To keep this on track, I did have lobster bisque at a local restaurant a few months ago. It wasn't especially good but it was creamy and had a nice mouth feel.

A quick check with my "Larousse Gastronomique Encyclopedia" says the original term "bisque" was used to describe a highly spiced dish of boiled meat or game (pigeons or quails) garnished with crayfish or cheese croutes, and was not until the 17th century that crayfiish became the principal ingredient.

Annie

Another example of the difference in grammar use - Please excuse me, Dcarch, it's from your post - not a criticism, just an interesting point :

"Last year I have made....."

In GB English, that would have to be "last year, I made....." because last year is finished, so use the preterit.

Sleevendog - it's hors d'oeuvre!!!

No, wait - you did it on purpose!

: ) And must be said with a PetterSellers tone and accent...'our derves'

IC, your example is the same in American grammar. Composing a post is different from writing a paper. Sometimes the sentence changes before its finished and the tense changes. It probably started "Last year I made", then was rethought to put it in the perfect so that the aspect would be interior rather than completed, but the "In" or "During" the sentence should then have started with never got put in place because the poster kept on going to get the thought down, instead of fixing it up. Or there might be an accent (imperfect assimilation of the language) involved. People everywhere make all kinds of mistakes in casual speech, even when they have full mastery of the language.

I had a job teaching post-doctoral students, one on one, for awhile. One was a German engineer who had the hardest time understanding perfect tenses until I make aspect drawings for him. This is not the way one would teach a run of the mill advanced learners class. It's way too abstract. I could see the lightbulb go on, however, and all the pieces fall in place for this mathematically inclined guy who really did speak English decently but wanted to speak it well. (The lightbulb reference is an entrenched metaphor in American, referring to the depiction of a lightbulb going on over the head of a character in a comic strip, or in the old "Ford has a better idea" TV ads, indicating the moment when someone "gets it" and understands the concept being discussed, or has an innovative idea. I decided that the two metaphors went together because it was the illumination of him getting it that allowed for seeing of the pieces falling into place.)

I don't think 'hors d'oeuvre' is even used anymore. A housewife thing maybe in the 60's in the US. I do not see any french on any menu now in NYC. Probably the arrogance of the French, so it is chosen, a choice, to not use any mis-use of any food term that might offend. Or be used inappropriately. Or sarcastically not chosen on purpose. We use it a a joke, with a flair of fun.

Film and TV are written for the characters. With all the flaws of speech. Sopranos is a fine example of crafted characters speaking their language. No need to be english proper. We speaks how we do and says how we wants.

I cooks my way and shares the way i do.

Sure it is! Maybe not in New York. Here, it's usually when caterers talk about passed hors doeurve trays. Sometimes they'll say "tidbits" or other less specific words, especially when it's regarding buffet service, but when they want to make a differentiation between hors d'oeuvre and canapes, for instance, they use it. I use it too, when I make them. :)

Canapes can be hors d'oeuvres.

Yep. The way you might see it phrased on a menu is "canapes and other hors d'oeurve". It would sound weird to say "canapes and other nibbles". ;) Then the caterer will tell one waiter to take the canapes and the other to take a tray of hors d'oeurve. Not precise speech, but communicative.

Of course, I do have a horse in this race: I like all the fiddly little morsels. I buy the best quality meats and poultry, and am a good enough cook that having someone else prepare a hunk of meat isn't much of a treat for me. The soups, sauces, hors d'oeurve and appetizers are where the real artistry is. (And pastries, but I'm not big on sweets and would rather have fruit.) I'm thrilled with a plate of hors d'oeurve.

Ah, I have used the term hors d'oeuvres many times and I wasn't even born in the 1960's. LOL

I have no problem with terminology from other languages. If I don't know what it means, I'll just ask. I look at it as a way to expand my worldly knowledge.

I actually just wrote the word tortiere in another thread. I was too lazy to turn the accent feature on my keyboard though. LOL

You spelled it correctly and you know what it is so there's no problem there. :)

Plllog, can you tell me what, for you, is the difference beween canapés and hors d'oeuvres?

Canapés (I borrowed your accent--I didn't have to remember numbers when we had HTML), as far as I know, are a subset of hors d'oeuvre--most, if not all, canapés are hors d'oeurve, whereas many hors d'oeurve are not canapés. Or, perhaps, there are some that aren't, so it's an intersection. As I said above, when I hear others use it, like for a large cocktail party (yet another 50's/60's thing that is still in play, though nowadays it's more about the hour and food choices (i.e., hors d'oeurve) than drinks), they separate out the canapés from the other hors d'oeuvre. This isn't a definition of hors d'oeuvre thing, but a usage thing. Under these circumstances, they don't say "nibbles" or "tidbits".

BTW, I was taught that the plural was the same as the singular (no final "s"). Is that not so? Is the final "s" a British thing? Do they use it in France?

Speaking of hors d'oeurve altogether, did you catch the rumaki renaissance? It's over now, but they had a sparkling day in the sun. So too, crab rangoon. They were even selling crab rangoon in the frozen section at Trader Joe's!

Islay Corbel Actually I spelled it incorrectly there is a "u" in there. Oops so much for 13 years of French. Haha

As eating styles become more informal, the words seem to overlap. Canapés were supposed to be passed around while waiting for dinner, finger food that can be consumed in 1 or 2 bites, while hors d'oeuvres are supposed to be served once seated at the table, but they all seem to fall under appetizers which now are often served before dinner as well as at the table, though appetizers are supposed to be like entrees (another french term) only smaller. Then, for another french term, is the amuse bouche...a single tasty tidbit.

There are many terms from french that have come to english taking on its own life...chief of which is a la mode...in france, that won't get you a dollop of ice cream on top of your pie.

But when it comes to english grammar, do not watch Judge Judy if mangled english grates on you. I have heard some of the worst language on that show...for the most part, she has given up correcting people.

AD, I'm sure your point in posting this video was nothing relating to my reaction to it, but I feel very strongly about it. My comments to follow are aimed at the people who made the video, not you. Yes, it's true, there are dialectical differences between standard American English and some subcultures. I noticed these were African Americans who were being lampooned. Judge Judy speaking in a schoolmarmy way to those appearing on her show, trying to correct them to standard language, as opposed to their dialects, is one thing, but Comixbear putting the clips together to make fun of people expressing themselves the way everyone in their culture does is somewhere between nasty and racist. And ask pronounced "aks" is a standard variation that dates back hundreds of years in England. "Ask" won around the time they standardized spelling. It's not the only fossil of Old England that can be found regionally in the U.S.

You did give me a hint as to what IC has been asking about the differentiation. Canapé (which originally meant bed), in my vernacular, is a kind of layered tidbit, akin to an open faced sandwich. Traditionally they were made on bread, though they're often made on crackers now, or slices of potato or other vegetable. Often there is a spread or piped soft ingredient, which helps hold on other topping(s).

Hors d'oeurve, as I've always known it, can be passed, served with small plates on a buffet, or presented at table. They are 1-2 bites, and can be just about anything. Recently trendy ones include lamb lollipops (thinly sliced rib lamb chops just the bone's width wide, and trimmed down to just the eye), any meat on a skewer or even caprese salad on a skewer, risotto arancini, shots of soup or gelee, and cups carved out of vegetables with some kind of paste inside. Ten years ago, Chinese spoons were popular for serving things with broths and sauces, but they're very awkward to eat and aren't seen so much. There were also a lot of dim sum and satays (whence the popularity of skewers). In the 1990's it was all about stuffed endive spears and caviar, which were '60's reboots along with martinis. The '80's were all over the map, but I saw a lot of mini quiches and pinwheel sandwiches. Before that were all the '50's/'60's stars, many of them slightly Asian or questionably French: Rumaki (bacon wrapped around marinated chicken livers wrapped around a water chestnut on a toothpick), crab rangoon (crab and cream cheese filling fried in a wonton wrapper), and stuffed choux paste puffs (savory) or cheese puffs, were iconic. It was also the era of the cheese ball and pigs in a blanket (mini hotdogs wrapped in dough and baked), however.

I agree that when one says "appetizer" or "starter", it's meant to be served at the table, before the entree (American meaning) or main. American meals often don't have a separate appetizer or fish course, and start with soup and/or salad.

Interesting. Yes, canapés here are usually something small on bread. Hors d'oeuvres (yes, with an S because we're talking about several individual items, not "work") are nowadays, usually called amuses bouche. Here, there are a lot of "verrines", little glass dishes with something small and gorgeous to eat. They're very nice tto prepare and serve.

Here's an interesting article in the Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language

I did find the video a little sad in places. People can't help how they talk - I can't LOL We're all a product of our geography and upbringing.

I will go and stick my head in a bucket where the spelling of haricotS vertS is conerned

People can't help how they talk...

But the point is that they can. That's one reason they teach english in school...or at least they're supposed to teach it.

plllog, in the video, people highlighted were not of a specific race or gender. If you watched the show, you would see that Judge Judy is a very fair and balanced, equal opportunity abuser, and the language is mangled by people of all races, genders, ages and from all over the country.

I never understood how people could confuse the difference between borrow and loan. I cringe every time I hear someone say, "I seen him." I know "ax" for "ask" comes to us from the times of Chaucer, but it still grates on me. "Let me ax my mother..." always makes me think of Lizzie Borden.

I'm well aware that there are a myriad of ways in which I slaughter the language as well...one GF always picked on me because I said "idear" instead of "idea". And yes, a lot has to do with our exposure to language as we grew up including regionalisms and dialects. (It's not a matter of y'uns and y'alls and all y'alls.) I grew up hearing "me and her went". Took awhile to fix that one...abuse from my former boss helped for whom German was his native language. But just because Mom always said "alblum" and Dad always said "sangwiches" doesn't mean I have to.

Annie Deighnaugh Yes but you likely had more educational opportunities than your own parents and in many cases some people still do not have access to proper education or the verbal dialect is very strong in certain areas.

My mother can't pronounce the word cinnamon, she pronounces Chicago as Chicargo and calls both Sears and Zehrs; Zeers. While I don't do any of the above list, I'm sure I have enough of my own verbal flaws. A lot of the time it's a geographical thing. My mom is from the Maritimes and almost every relative I know says "anyways" and "yous guys".

English speaking people from all over the world pronounce words very differently.

>>I have no idea how much people were paying to eat a bare radish, though!>>

I won't shock you by telling how much one of our restaurants charges for a meal in which one course is a single "compressed" strawberry in a plate! Talk about food fads that I never saw coming, didn't like when I encountered it, and still think is dumb!

I love dining out and we spend a lot of $$$$ doing it, but sometimes the more extreme fads really push my buttons the wrong way. I've come to terms with a small amount of foaming, just a bit with gels, barely can stand the "smoking in a Mason jar" thing; but I will never understand how macerating fruit became glorified into "compressing". Sheesh......!

On my book shelve I have "Barron's 1001 Pitfalls in French". Interesting book.

dcarch

I found a copy for less than 2 Euros so I've ordered it.

Speaking of accents - I have been told that I have a terrible American accent when I try to speak French, and so generally I no longer try. A young woman from Paris who was in my Spanish class at City College in San Francisco told me this, but partly because she wanted to practice Spanish with me on the streetcar (we lived close to each other and rode back together from class), but I wanted her to help me with my French, as I was also taking French conversation at the same time. So I practiced Spanish with her, and when I went to Mexico that winter, everyone thought I was from France and asked me if I preferred to speak French. So while I spoke French with a terrible American accent, I evidently picked up a French accent from my friend in Spanish class. However, I also did not dress like a typical American tourist at that time, since my main work was fashion design back then.

I cannot watch Judge Judy, but I do watch Judge Marilyn Milian, and I rarely see her try to correct someone's English, but once I saw her try to get a woman to say "converse" instead of "conversate" - it was a futile effort.

I think that Americans who are multilingual generally speak better English than ones who are not, possibly because they have become more aware of grammar rules. Many Americans have not learned the proper use of reflexive pronouns, which are more common in other languages and have very specific meanings in them, especially in German, but also in Spanish. I do not hear people making the same errors in Spanish with regard to reflexive pronouns, but these people will make errors in English that they would never make in Spanish. The best students in my Italian class were German, as they seemed the most interested in precision.

I think that once a culinary term migrates into English from French, its connection to French becomes muddled and may eventually morph into something very different. It also appears that many people think French terms sound fancier or more sophisticated, but crudités variées still just means raw vegetables, with a sauce. My boss will always use Haricots Verts to describe green beans, no matter how they are prepared.

Certain languages require practice and experience developing the tongue and mouth muscles in order to pronounce the sounds correctly. French uses very different muscles than English, and I think this is why I have trouble pronouncing French correctly. Russian is very palatalized and is spoken mostly in the front of the mouth - that was easy for me, but I have had some trouble with gutteral sounds, particularly the French "R"s.

Lars, it's also a brain thing. Very very few people ever lose an accent entirely when they learn a second language after puberty. Before age 10, the brain is very elastic. After puberty it is not. Sometimes, if someone speaks the language very well indeed, the accent is more a slightly different sound that makes you wonder where they're from, rather than if they're native speakers, but no matter how well they usually do, the accent usually comes out during times of stress or strong emotion.

I've taken a couple of basic French courses with lab study, but that was really only enough to be able to read fairly well (I am proficient in Spanish, and have studied Latin). I was in a small bakery/cafe in a small town in France, when I was in college. A place where people didn't as a rule speak English. I did my best to be respectful and make my order in French, and I must have done better at it than I would have guessed because the counter lady asked me a question with words I'd never heard before and looked at me like I was crazy when I apologized, in French, that I didn't really speak French and didn't understand. I'm guessing maybe my accent was more Mexican than French. :)

In my experience, people who learn English as a second language in school in Europe, speak English very well, and many other foreign speakers who have high level or academic jobs might have stronger accents or be a bit slower composing their sentences, but also have a good command of the language. In general, the competency of speakers, whether native or second language, is determined by their social milieu (what they hear) and schooling, and isn't pegged to whether they're monolingual or multilingual. Unfortunately, people who grow up bilingual in the U.S. often don't get good schooling in either of their languages, and don't score highly on assessments in either.