{"id":340,"date":"2018-05-23T12:18:58","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T12:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=340"},"modified":"2018-05-23T12:24:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T12:24:01","slug":"tongue-twisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2018\/05\/23\/tongue-twisters\/","title":{"rendered":"Tongue twisters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I offer links to three international recipes: from Germany we have Kabeljau mit gebratener Blutwurst, Rosenkohl und Lakritzsauce <\/a><\/em>(‘cod with\u00a0pan-fried blood sausage, brussels sprouts and licorice sauce’), from France\u00a0Cabillaud \u00e0 la nage de r\u00e9glisse<\/em><\/a> (‘cod in licorice sauce’), and from Spain we have Lomo de bacalao en salsa de regaliz con juliana de judias verdes<\/em><\/a> (‘filet of cod in licorice sauce with\u00a0\u00a0julienned green beans’).<\/p>\n

We will report later on the Morph cook-off challenge, once we scare up some participants and tasters. In the meanwhile, take note of what all these recipes have in common: cod and licorice. While I can\u2019t for the life of me fathom why anyone would think to combine them on a plate, they do share something in common. Not culinarily, but linguistically. Let\u2019s look at the words for these two ingredients as written in the recipes. They\u2019re each vaguely similar across all three languages, but in a way which is hard to put your finger on. The word for \u2018cod\u2019 in all three languages has a [k<\/strong>] (or [c<\/strong>] \u2013 they\u2019re pronounced the same) and a [b<\/strong>], but the order switches German and French on the one hand, and Spanish on the other. Similarly with \u2018licorice\u2019, where the place of [l<\/strong>] and [r<\/strong>] switch between German on the one hand and French and Spanish on the other:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\u2018cod\u2019<\/td>\n\u2018licorice\u2019<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
German<\/td>\nKabeljau<\/td>\nLakritz<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
French<\/td>\ncabillaud<\/td>\nr\u00e9glisse<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Spanish<\/td>\nbacalao<\/td>\nregaliz<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

All neatly lined up here for comparison:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\u2018cod\u2019<\/td>\n\u2018licorice\u2019<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
German<\/td>\nk<\/td>\nb<\/td>\nl<\/td>\nr<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
French<\/td>\nc<\/td>\nb<\/td>\nr<\/td>\nl<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Spanish<\/td>\nb<\/td>\nc<\/td>\nr<\/td>\nl<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This looks like an example of metathesis, where two sounds in a word swap places, as in English comfort<\/em> versus comfortable<\/em>, where the [t<\/strong>] and [r<\/strong>] switch places in pronunciation if not spelling (for those of us who pronounce the [r<\/strong>] at all, that is).<\/p>\n

Metathesis as a gastronomic selling point may need a bit of refinement, but it does make for some curious word histories. The case of \u2018licorice\u2019 is fairly clear. It started out as Greek glykyrrh\u012bza<\/em> \u2018sweet root\u2019 and was borrowed into Latin as liquiritia<\/em>, where it is believed that the first part got slightly mangled because people thought it had something to do with liquor (an example of folk etymology). The Latin word was borrowed into Old High German as lakerize<\/em> or lekerize<\/em>, which is where the Modern German word comes from. Meanwhile, in Old French, Latin\u2019s daughter language, the word ended up as licorece<\/em>, which then made its way into English. It was after this that French made the switch to ricolece<\/em>, swapping [l<\/strong>] and [r<\/strong>], whose first part again got mangled to r\u00e9glisse<\/em> through another bout of folk etymology, because people thought it had something to do with r\u00e8gle<\/em> \u2018ruler\u2019 (since licorice will have been sold in the form of ruler-like bars).<\/p>\n

The word \u2018cod\u2019 remains something of a mystery. The German and French word were both borrowed from Dutch, first attested (in Latin sources) as cabellauwus<\/em>, represented in contemporary Dutch as kabeljauw<\/em>. Spanish bacalao<\/em> is not attested before 1500, and it is generally agreed that the spread of this word was due to Basque fishermen. But whether kabeljauw<\/em> morphed into bacalao<\/em> or vice versa, nobody knows. Equally, it could all be coincidence, and the resemblance between the two words is just chance, a point of view that gains some mild support from the fact that bacalao<\/em>\u00a0and its ilk refer to a salted fish, whereas kabeljauw<\/em> and its cousins refer to the fresh fish. This is how Dutch ends up with two words, kabeljauw<\/em> and bakkeljauw<\/em>: the first being its native word, the second borrowed from Portuguese bacalhau<\/em>\u00a0in the former Dutch colony of Suriname and transported to the Netherlands with Surinamese immigrants, used to refer to a salted and dried fish (not necessarily cod). I have yet to see both on a menu, let along combined in a single dish, but the search has only started.<\/p>\n

(Sources:\u00a0Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands<\/a>,\u00a0Etymologisches W\u00f6rterbuch des Deutschen<\/a>, Dictionnaire \u00e9lectronique de l’Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I offer links to three international recipes: from Germany we have Kabeljau mit gebratener Blutwurst, Rosenkohl und Lakritzsauce (‘cod with\u00a0pan-fried blood sausage, brussels sprouts and licorice sauce’), from France\u00a0Cabillaud \u00e0 la nage de r\u00e9glisse (‘cod in licorice sauce’), and from Spain we have Lomo de bacalao en salsa de regaliz con juliana de judias verdes (‘filet of cod in licorice sauce with\u00a0\u00a0julienned green beans’). We will report later on the Morph cook-off challenge, once we scare up some participants…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,35,8,39,19,10,36,38,37,34],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basque","category-dutch","category-english-languages","category-folk-etymology","category-french-languages","category-german","category-greek","category-metathesis","category-portuguese","category-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":359,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}