{"id":4,"date":"2009-04-03T10:28:04","date_gmt":"2009-04-03T10:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/217.174.241.229:152\/blog\/2009\/03\/30\/when-a-swedes-not-a-swede\/"},"modified":"2009-06-01T15:51:37","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T15:51:37","slug":"when-a-swedes-not-a-swede","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/03\/when-a-swedes-not-a-swede\/","title":{"rendered":"When a Swede’s not a swede"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Swedes\"<\/a>\"swedes\"<\/a>Recently I went to the supermarket with a Swedish friend. In the fresh produce section, she was surprised to find a vegetable called a ‘swede’. I was equally surprised to find she didn’t know it as a swede!<\/p>\n

This led to us pointing out different produce and comparing names. An ‘aubergine’ to me was an ‘eggplant’ to her; ‘courgette’ a ‘zucchini’ (I like both exotic sounding names for this cucumber-esque fruit).<\/p>\n

This duality of names is not limited to vegetables – in English (as, I’m sure, in many other languages), we name a lot of things twice, if not more. ‘Mummy’, ‘Mum’, ‘Mama’, and ‘Ma’ are all common alternatives for one person – your mother (‘Mother’ is also a common, if somewhat more formal term).<\/p>\n

So, how do you decide which term to use? It really depends on who you’re talking to. The main point of language is to be understood, so a person with American English will understand ‘zucchini’ but not ‘courgette’, and vice versa for someone who speaks British English. As for a Swede? Who knows…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I went to the supermarket with a Swedish friend. In the fresh produce section, she was surprised to find a vegetable called a ‘swede’. I was equally surprised to find she didn’t know it as a swede! This led to us pointing out different produce and comparing names. An ‘aubergine’ to me was an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[12,11,10],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uk-vs-us-english","tag-everyday","tag-shopping","tag-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}