64 Arts

54 | The Almost Universal Language of Food

64 Arts

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Every industry has its own functional language. Sure, it might technically be English that the doctor, laywer, or programmer is speaking but for all intents and purposes it’s Greek to you! Whether you’re working with or needing work from someone in a different field, being able to understand some of the references they’re using, the jargon and buzzwords alike, will make it easier to accomplish whatever task is before you.

If you’re lucky, you’ll go long stretches without needing to understand medical or legal-speak, if ever! And even though computers are everywhere, there’s a good chance that your average individual isn’t going to need to hire a computer programmer (though IT services might be called for). There is one realm with it’s own vocabulary that almost everyone encounters ever day: the kitchen!

We all have to eat, and as more and more people are becoming aware of the effect food has on our daily lives combined with the continuous “feed” of cooking shows available for viewing, understanding food-speak provides a definite benefit. Here are a few words (by no means an exhaustive list) and the way they’re used in the kitchen.

Aromatic: as an adjective it refers to how something smells, but in cooking aromatics include herbs, spices, and some vegetables (like the trinity of onion, celery, and bell pepper in Cajun cuisine) added to a dish to enhance the flavor and the aroma.

Cream: obviously the high-fat dairy product, but creaming is the first step to many cakes and cookies and entails mixing the butter or shortening with the sugar until it’s light and fluffy.

Dressing and Stuffing: A frequent debate around the holidays, they are essentially the same thing the name is determined by where it’s cooked! Dressing is cooked in a pan and then scooped out to “dress-up” or embellish the main dish while stuffing is, of course, stuffed inside the main dish (usually poultry of some sort, though you could conceivably have a stuffed crown of lamb or some such).

Filet and Fillet: the first (with one L) refers to a boneless tenderloin of beef while the second (with two Ls) refers to fish and may be boneless or not! They’re both pronounced the same and it also refers to the actual cutting of the portion.

Mince: as a verb it means to chop up very fine, into tiny pieces, but in England mince is approximately what we’d call ground beef (or other protein–usually beef though, from what I can tell).

Portion: sure, it’s the amount of food in a serving but it also the verb to divide a meal or item into individual portions. Like portioning a whole chicken into it’s 8 pieces or a pork loin into 2-3 oz cutlets, that sort of thing (and it’s also known as fabrication, which makes it sound something made in metal-shop).

Scale: as well as the tool used for weighing, to scale a recipe is to adjust it up or down to change the number of servings.

Temper: when dealing with eggs in sauces or creams that you have to be careful not to curdle, you temper the eggs by adding a bit of the hot mixture into the eggs to warm them up a bit before adding the tempered eggs back into the main, hot mixture. Meanwhile, in Indian cooking, tempering involves heating whole or ground spices in oil to bring out their best flavor before adding to the rest of the dish. And then there’s a way of treating chocolate meant for high-end processes that involves precise temperature controls to produce a certain texture and finish to the chocolate.

Of course, not all miscommunications in the kitchen are a matter of word usage. Aside from Metric measurements (admittedly far more accurate) and US Customary and the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius and back again, I ran into the peculiarities of British Imperial measurements when I first started participating in the Indian Cooking Challenge. They use may of the same terms but their cup is 2 oz bigger than ours, and their teaspoons half as big again. You can see the chart I transcribed in When a Cup Is Not a Cup.

A friend of mine is an ESOL volunteer and has invited me to help go over food terms and US recipes with some of her students. After all, everyone has to eat and learning about a culture’s food preferences can act as a bridge for all sorts of other successful encounters. I’m looking forward to it and curious to see if they stump me with any of their questions!

47, 54 | I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

64 Arts

This post is part of our ongoing exploration of The 64 Arts.

via imgur

via imgur

Aside from being one of my favorite lines from The Princess Bride, it’s also a perfect lead-in to our next language art:

47 Speaking Regional Languages

and we’re going to combine it with an Art further down the list (the randomness of the list is totally at odds with my linear left-brain!)

54 Knowledge of the dictionary
Giving the Sanskrit equivalent of local dialects and popular jargon

Sure, we don’t have a lot of use for Sanskrit around these parts, but idioms, jargon, and slang are very useful to know. In fact, when it comes to non-English speakers learning our language, it’s not the vocabulary or even the somewhat subjective grammar that poses the biggest challenge, it’s the way we use those words in curious ways, sometimes opposite from their formal definition, that makes all the difference. Something a friend of mine, volunteering with a local ESOL group, has discovered first hand (more on that in another post).

To continue on the geeky train of thought that began this post, a great example is the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode: “Darmok.” In it, the captain is on a diplomatic mission that goes more than a little awry (par for the course) when there’s a definite language barrier. It’s not that their Universal Translator (oh, how nice would that be?!) was broken, it was just that the foreign nation spoke in metaphors referencing their history and myths. And since a group sitting around a conference table doing the puppy head-tilt wouldn’t make for good television, there was the threat of death from an outside force if the two leaders couldn’t learn to communicate.

So, in addition to the basic phrases we came up with last week for our BYOP (build-your-own phrasebook), it never hurts to look up some common phrases in the country you’re going to be visiting.

To use my someday-dream of going to Italy, I see (via PimsleurApproach.com) that “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” is as common there as it is here, but something like ‘once a pope is dead, there will be another one’  probably owes a lot to the fact that Vatican City is within its country’s borders, and ‘he who sleeps, doesn’t catch fish’ alludes to the miles and miles of coastline, and is similar to our ‘early bird catches the worm.’

Idioms related to pop culture might be the hardest to catch–our football is their soccer, pop stars and celebrities vary from country to country, that sort of thing. But doing a little cultural delve is certainly worth it, right up there with touring plans and hotel reservations!

46 | Build Your Own Phrasebook

64 Arts

This post is part of our ongoing exploration of The 64 Arts.

While it’d be great to be fluent in as many languages as possible, the reality is we either don’t make the time to do so or might not even have the luxury of learning much at all if an impromptu trip comes up. Whether you’re still learning or in a hurry, compiling your own phrasebook will be more beneficial than trying to flip through a larger one you can pick up in the bookstore or download to your smartphone.

Not only will it be a customized cheat-sheet, writing or typing it out will help it stick in your memory better.

Greetings and Politeness:

  • Hello
  • Goodbye
  • Excuse Me
  • Please
  • Thank You
  • Ma’am
  • Sir

It’s worth looking up if there are formal and informal versions of any of the above–you don’t want to go acting too chummy with the wrong person and cause an international incident! Same goes for the male/female versions in some languages.

Food and Shelter:

  • Hotel
  • House
  • Restaurant
  • Bathroom
  • Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner
  • Sandwich
  • Soup
  • Eggs
  • Beer
  • Wine
  • Soda
  • Dessert

Obviously specific names of places and dishes will be part of your itinerary and you’ll have those close at hand, but if you find yourself stuck those words should at least get you through a rough patch.

Good to Know:

  • Police
  • Hospital
  • Fire
  • Help
  • Doctor/Nurse
  • Pharmacy
  • Medicine
  • Currency

While not strictly a language issue, it also wouldn’t hurt to take note of the current exchange rate between your home currency and your destination. Keeping that in mind (or maybe having an app handy) could prevent you making a costly mistake at the market. Tipping practices and other customs–while, again, not specifically language-related–are good things to scout out before you go.

We live in a global world. Travel can’t just be about our own wants and desires, we have to take our destination in mind. In scouting and other outdoorsy groups it’s often said to leave the space how you found it, if not better. By being able to communicate well and observe local customs with grace, you may just leave those you encounter with a better impression of your country than they had before. At the very least, let’s not make it worse, shall we?!

Anything else you can think of that my short lists above don’t cover but need to? And even though this is meant for foreign languages, remember that not all English-speaking countries use the language the same way. Good thing we’ll be moving onto slang shortly!

46 | No Passport Required

64 Arts

This post is part of our ongoing exploration of the 64 Arts; specifically Art #46: Foreign Language.

Hands down, one of the best ways to learn a foreign language is through an immersion program. In this sort of sink or swim environment you have no choice but to develop your ear and at least a rudimentary grasp of the vocabulary and grammar or starve in the process! Of course, for those of us lacking the funds for an extended stay abroad, creating our own immersion program can be a bit more involved, but not impossible by any means.

Start with some basic language education–either your rusty High School French or a program like Duolingo–just so you’re not starting from square one. Then, start incorporating media in that language into your entertainment routine:

  • Forgein movies without subtitles (or at least not English subtitles*). Television shows that you’re already familiar with are also a good option–the point is to start equating dialogue with vocabulary.
  • Read books in your chosen learning language. I had a copy of Goethe’s Faust back in middle school that had the German on one page and the English translation on the facing page–I didn’t learn German but I did pick up a few tidbits. Foreign-language magazines can be found in larger bookstores as well as online and might also give you some practical practice
  • Set your default language on your computer or browser to your immersion language: obviously this wouldn’t be a good idea for your work computer, but at-home browsing could give you some interesting opportunities.
  • Ask a fluent friend to speak only in their native tongue with you. Another blog I follow–The Swiss Life–is written by an American ex-pat in Switzerland and she and her husband only speak German at home during the week (if I’m remembering correctly) to improve her comfort level with the language.

I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting–perhaps radio? There are certainly podcasts available in many languages and many Internet radio stations from different countries or even enclaves throughout the US that cater to non-English speakers. I suppose even songs and their liner notes/lyrics could help, too! Basically, the more input the better, whatever you’re most comfortable with and can arrange ready access to.

*Making the assumption, of course, that my readers are primarily English speakers, based upon the browsing data.

46 | To Be a Cunning Linguist

64 Arts

This post is part of our ongoing exploration of the 64 Arts. 

Oh, come on, it had to be said!

Learning a language is not just about training your tongue, or the translator in your brain, it’s also about training your ears to pick up on different sound combinations. That’s probably why a lot of language programs focus on the spoken bits than the written, at least at first.

Deciding that now is as good a time as any to learn a (spoken) language, and not necessarily wanting to invest in a Berlitz or Rosetta Stone-level product, went poking around the ‘Net to see what sort of free programs were available. First came up Fluent In 3 Months (which I’d heard of before) but it seems to be more of a strategy than an actual language course, and I was looking for something a bit more direct. (And the fact that Benny of fi3m looks alarmingly like my first husband didn’t help at all!)

Next on the list was Duolingo–a 100% free language learning site, offering a dozen languages, and incorporates gamification in the form of XP, in-site currency, and leveling up. I do believe that’s right up my alley!

So far I’ve only covered the first two basics sessions and the beginning phrases. I’m still stumbling over verb conjugations (the bane of my existence, I swear!), but I could probably get my point across at a newsstand or apple cart with the 36 words they say I’ve learned. I’m not exactly warming up my passport, yet, but I have hope.

I chose to learn Italian on this go-round. Todd thought it was because it was closest to Latin–think again. While, yes, all of the Romance languages have their common roots in Latin, it’s not nearly enough to make it a skate-job, even if I remembered more than I do! We’ve got a fairly sizable Hispanic population in Florida–the farther south you go you almost have to be bilingual (so I’ve been told) to get a decent job with Cuba and Puerto Rico so nearby, so Spanish is probably the most common language option in local high schools. I used to want to learn French when I was a kid and tried to teach myself from this old record set of Mom’s with these pretty blue and white-striped books, but I couldn’t stick with it.

No, it has more to do with where I eventually hope to travel. England and Ireland are tying for the top of my list, but some form of English is spoken commonly there–I could get by. Italy is next and I have a feeling I’d need to know the language more there. Plus, Italian always sounds so melodic and beautiful compared to, say, French which seems to require a permanent sneer, or German which is just so guttural! Of course, if I opted to learn Danish I could practice with a local friend, but I think my next language after Italian will be Japanese. Not only would I like to be able to watch the little anime I do watch without relying quite so heavily on subtitles, I’ve heard they have much simpler verb conjugations and you aren’t going to accidentally call someone something very not nice if you don’t use the right inflection. (I was in an ESOL-heavy home room part of middle school and we undertook trading languages. My partner was Vietnamese and I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that there were routinely 8 different meaning to a 2-letter word depending on your tone!)

Audience participation time: How many languages do you speak and is there one you’d like to learn?

And if you decide to sign up on Duolingo, look me up!