Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 December 31

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December 31

Potato/Tomato

I recently had a thought - why do the words Potato and Tomato have such similar names? Searching around I found some mentions of Spanish which I assume is why they are similar to a degree. But what does the -ato suffix mean? I looked around but all of the definitions and meanings of the suffix didn't seem to relate much to potatoes or tomatoes.

And finally, which word came first, Tomato or Potato? and whichever came first, did it influence the naming or the other? thanks! 86.138.142.155 (talk) 01:28, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary lists unrelated origins:

Tomato: E17. ORIGIN French, Spanish, or Portuguese tomate from Nahuatl tomatl.
Potato: M16. ORIGIN Spanish patata var. of batata.

Potato came first (mid 16th century), tomato later (early 16th). Mitch Ames (talk) 01:37, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec)According to my old Webster's, "potato(e)" is from Spanish "patata", which was originally the name of the sweet potato, further derived from the Taino "batata". Meanwhile, "tomato" is from Spanish "tomate", which is from the Nahuatl "tomatl". Those are both ancient crops, so it would be hard to say which actually came first. Interestingly, potatoes and tomatoes are both in the nightshade family. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

And despite the old song, potato is only pronounced with a long "a", whereas tomato can be either a long "a" (preferred) or an "ah". Curiously, both Spanish words would have an "ah". Another Spanish word for potato is "la papa". Not to be confused with "el Papa" (the Pope) and "papá" (Dad). It's a fine line. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:47, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Patate is also used in French for potato, although the more common term is pomme de terre (lit. "apple of the earth"). Whenever I heard people use patate it was always with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek chuckle, so it may be a bit slangy. Not sure if it comes from another Romance language. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I must say, that immediately upon reading you question, I questioned the accuracy of your assertion that they have similar names at all. Do firecracker and baker have similar names because they end in -ker? DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 06:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

And forgot to mention, in response to Rjanag, that potato in Hebrew is tapood, a contraction of tapooach adamah (apple of the ground). DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 06:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Which part is which? Is the "adamah" the "of the ground" part? And does it have any connection with Adam? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I just looked it up, and the answer to my question is, "That's a big 10-4!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:14, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

One assumes that's a calque from the French. --Sean 15:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

@ Baseball Bugs: What do you mean by "preferred" in relation to saying tomato with a long "a"? That's not the way I say it, and I may as well tell you now, I won't be changing. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 06:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

"Preferred" as per Webster, which would be American English. Americans typically say "tah-MAY-toe" unless they're trying to be funny, effecting an upper-class pronunciation "tah-MAH-toe". Or "tah-MAY-ter" if they're trying to sound like hicks (as in the tow truck "Mater"[1] in Cars). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

That song has perpetuated the idea that there are only two widespread pronunciations of tomato: "to-MAY-to" in the U.S. and "to-MAH-to" in the U.K. But isn't it the case that Canadians say neither of those, but rather to-MAT-o (IPA /təˈmætoʊ/)? +Angr 10:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't do IPA, but I'm guessing you mean "MAT" to rhyme with the "mat" in "doormat"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:10, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. +Angr 13:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Where are? In Ontario, we say toe-MAY-toe (or tah-MAY-toe). I only ever hear the short a when someone is affecting an accent or funny voice. Matt Deres (talk) 15:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it's a generational thing? I seem to remember a woman from Canada (British Columbia I think, though I could be mistaken) complaining that her children used the "American" to-MAY-to pronunciation instead of her own to-MAT-o pronunciation, which she blamed on TV. +Angr 23:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It's worth pointing out that in "hillbilly" English, these items are called taters and maters, so it's not unreasonable to wonder if they're related terms. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:18, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It's also worth pointing out that lots of folks besides hillbillies employ that peculiar dropping of the first syllable in some words (called Apheresis (linguistics)), one of which is "gator" for alligator - pronounced to rhyme with mater and tater, but with no apparent connection to those fruits. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:29, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

We seem to have most of the makings of a limerick here. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 12:55, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The challenge would be working the word apheresis into it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

A linguistically-challenged young 'gator

Met a nice girl, decided to mate'r

But his rampant aph'resis

Was combined with di'resis

So she told him "Go suck on a tater!"

Best I could do on short notice. Matt Deres (talk) 15:41, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. You roped that one in. Hence the term "Poet Lariat". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

"Di'resis" leaves us to wonder whether the 'gator had to pee or followed the New Yorker manual of style. Either way, things stayed platonic. --Sean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.182.94.172 (talk) 01:47, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Injecting some confusion, I'll note that they're both in the nightshade family. --Sean 15:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Best prepared stir-fried with a mixture of fugu fish, acorns, and mushrooms of unknown origin, then gently spread on a salad of rhubarb leaves. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:04, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

In case the original questioner is confused, the simple answer to his or her question is that it is a coincidence that tomato and potato both end in -ato in English. The two words are unrelated, and there is no -ato suffix. While both words came to English through Spanish, they do not have the same -ato ending in Spanish, and each originally comes from a different, unrelated Amerindian (Native American) language. Marco polo (talk) 15:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The OED records only a single example of 'tomato' before 1750 (1604, in the spelling 'tomate'), but several examples from 1753 on. This very much suggests that the word effectively entered English only in the eighteenth century. This might account for why in British usage it retains the exotic pronunciation [-a-], whereas 'potato' entered English in the 16th century before the great vowel shift was complete, so its vowel underwent the shift to [-ɛɪ-] with native words. This doesn't explain why American usage has assimilated 'tomato' to a native English pattern, though. --ColinFine (talk) 17:32, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! 86.138.142.155 (talk) 16:57, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Translate/Identify German text?

Can anybody give a translation (easy) or source (hard?) for the German text at Talk:Huie's Sermon? Respond here or there- thanks. (I don't know if it's a quotation of some well-known source, or was made up for the film.) Staecker (talk) 02:13, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

That would be Wenn der Mensch etwas mit der Sonne zu schaffen hätte, wäre sie heute nicht aufgegangen, ja? I'll see if I can do a word-for-word and see if anyone who actually knows German gets to it first. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:22, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

No can do. :( ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

"If mankind were to make something out of the sun, they wouldn't be able to get up in the morning (lit. today)." Tevildo (talk) 02:37, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Aha, so "aufgegangen" means to "get up". What are they getting at with this expression? Sorry, I failed English lit. because I wasn't good with metaphors. :( ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:40, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone..." :) If we were to manufacture something using the sun (doubtless, something for the general good of humanity), we would lose the pleasure of getting up in the morning (and just have to live under permanent fluorescent light, if we survived at all). Tevildo (talk) 02:48, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

"Manufacture something using the sun..." Like cutting it up and selling little bottles of it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:54, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

(e/c*3) Can "mit jm./etw. zu schaffen haben" not also be used as an idiom to mean "to have a problem with so./sth."? I admit it doesn't fit as well with the context. (Bugs: Perhaps it's referring to using the Sun in such a manner that it is no longer available to heat the Earth. Xenon54 / talk / 03:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Not one that I've heard, although I wouldn't describe myself as "fluent" by any means. "mit etw. nichts zu schaffen haben" is (literally) "have nothing to do with" (as in "I don't want anything to do with that"), but - if a good German speaker says otherwise, I'm in no position to argue. Tevildo (talk) 03:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

That was my assumption, from Tevildo's explanation. It's often human nature to take something good and screw it up. Like if someone decided to put a venetian blind on the sun. Or closer to reality, when the dim bulbs of Minneapolis took the minor natural wonder St. Anthony Falls and tunneled under it, and caused it to collapse. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Wäre is singular, not plural, so sie refers to the sun, and etwas mit X zu schaffen haben is an idiom meaning "have something to do with", so: "If mankind had anything to do with the sun, it wouldn't have risen today". (And "to get up (in the morning)" isn't aufgehen but aufstehen.) +Angr 09:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to all- I guess nobody recognizes the quote's origin? (If indeed it comes from anywhere other than the film.) Staecker (talk) 01:24, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I've not been able to find it anywhere. Considering the accurate translation ("If mankind had anything to do with the sun, it wouldn't have risen this morning"), I'm not surprised - that probably wouldn't make it into any dictionary of quotations. I think my translation was much _better_, even if it may not have been _right_. :) Apologies to anyone misled. Tevildo (talk) 00:11, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The only mention I found online had a slightly different word order ("Wenn der Mensch mit der Sonne etwas zu schaffen hätte, wäre sie heute nicht aufgegangen"). The "proverb" is introduced with "as my Granny always said...". Personally, I don't recall ever having heard it (not that that means a lot) and I found no other source apart from Scrapothekerin's grandmother. ---Sluzzelin talk 14:04, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The Barefoot Contessa

I was watching the movie earlier today, and there's a scene where Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart) goes over to Maria Vargas' (Ava Gardner) house in an attempt to talk her into doing a screen test (this all takes place in Spain). Meanwhile, Maria and her brother argue with their mother in Spanish, and I'm interested in having that dialogue translated. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 03:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there a transcript of it anywhere? If you can find the Spanish, I'm sure someone here can give it a shot. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:34, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Kinda hard to find a transcript of a copyrighted film, don't you think? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 06:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there are a lot of "scripts" of copyrighted movies floating around the Internet (but mostly for films that are somewhat prominent in the pop-culture of the last 15 years or so). AnonMoos (talk) 09:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

That's what I had in mind. Alternatively, maybe closed-captioning with Spanish selected as the language? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:48, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Here are Spanish subtitles for the film (it's just a zip file containing the transcript as text files). The scene in question begins at 00:16:04,160 if any Spanish speakers would like to give it a shot. --Sean 15:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Since the entire transcript is Spanish, and since I haven't seen the film, you need to also tell us what the endpoint is. I'm assuming this is the starting point?

Sabe lo que es un test de imagen? [Do you know what a screen test is?]

Si [Yes]

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:47, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Cinderella

Notice in a dictionary the word "cinderella" can mean: a person or thing of merit, undeservedly neglected or forced into a wretched or obscure existence. Can you give me a couple of sentence examples? Would the word then be capalized? When was the word first used in English? --Doug Coldwell ^talk 13:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It's a metaphor based on the fairy tale (now linked in the heading) and has been around for awhile. Bill Murray used it in Caddyshack when talking to himself while playing golf, but I think it was applied to the 1969 New York Mets, as well as a number of other teams, although that may be retrofitting to some extent. And although it's a bit inaccurate to put it this way, a Cinderella team is always subject to the question, "Will it turn back into a pumpkin at midnight?" as with Cinderella's carriage (not Cinderella herself). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

My copy of Dickson's Baseball Dictionary, one of the earlier editions, has a citation from a newspaper in 1986, in reference to a high school game; but I'm fairly certain it predates that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The term might be more recent than I'm remembering. The 1970 Baseball Guide refers to teams like the 1914 Braves, the 1951 Giants and the 1969 Mets as "Miracle" teams. "Cinderella" is nowhere in the team's season writeup. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

You for some reason forgot to mention another unexpectedly successful team. But even the obvious fanboys who wrote that article didn't say "Cinderella". I'd have trouble imagining Yaz in glass slippers. PhGustaf (talk) 16:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

(Blush) Yes. They were known as "The Impossible Dream" team. Unfortunately, they woke up after a Cardinal nightmare. >:( ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's a clip of Murray in the 1980 film Caddyshack: [2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:17, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Another example of usage is Cinderella stamp, a term that has been around since at least the 1950s, (judging by the article on Cinderella Stamp Club). ---Sluzzelin talk 14:55, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

In German, the term "ein Aschenbrödeldasein führen/fristen" ("to lead a Cinderella existence") is quite common. Not being a native speaker, I can't judge how common the term "Cinderella existence" is in English, but it gets a number of hits on google books. ---Sluzzelin talk 15:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

[3], check the bottom of the page. Richard Avery (talk) 16:55, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The OED's first citing is possibly literal, but its second, from 1877, is "Others..declare that it [sc. Shoulder of Mutton] is the Cinderella of meat - a beauty misunderstood and fit for princes." --ColinFine (talk) 17:40, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Wow, this is great stuff! Thanks all for these examples.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 21:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

How could you all forget the movie Cinderella Man. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 12:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC) Martin.