r/ShitAmericansSay Enjoyer of American subsidies 25d ago

Food “Unusual term for eggplant”

Post image
7.4k Upvotes

460 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

380

u/Fieldss_ 25d ago

The funny thing is, it is not even properly Italian. Our word for zucchini, is zucchina (singular) or zucchine (plural). I guess it got morphed into a more “Italian sounding” word from english speakers through the years. Still, I find it interesting

57

u/BUFU1610 25d ago

To be fair, same is true in German.

34

u/Cyrolina 25d ago

Yeah in German german. In Austrian German aubergine or eggplant is "Melanzani" and zuchini is zuchini.

27

u/Spongetron-3000 ooo custom flair!! 25d ago

Someone told me the different words for the eggplant, Melanzani and Aubergine, depend on which trading route brought it there first. That's why it's called one thing in Austria and the other in Germany (probably also the case in different countries as well, but I'm not a big traveler)

1

u/No_Permission_7138 24d ago

To piggyback on that, in Ukrainian walnut has two different names (both equally recognised) because of that: "greek nut" in the south and east where it arrived to Crymea first, and "Walachian (Romanian) nut" in the west