chard

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:20 AM -0700 7/11/07, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote (inter alia):
>in my various households (from childhood on), curly endive was a
>plain and homely green, often blanched in boiling water or served
>with a boiled dressing (dandelion greens were treated the same way);
>"endive" in this sense was always pronounced [Endajv].  Belgian/
>French endive, on the other hand, was a more exotic vegetable, for a
>long time available only in specialty food stores or through the
>tedious blanching-in-the-garden process; "endive" in this sense was
>almost always pronounced [andiv], or with a more accurate attempt at
>a genuine french pronunciation.  so, for my various families, the two
>pronunciations were used to distinguish the two different plants
>(well, my french mother-in-law mostly just pronounced food names in
>french across the board), and i was annoyed by people who used
>[Endajv] for both; i'd have to ask, "do you mean curly endive or
>Belgian endive?"
>
It also correlates directly with price--curly endive, with
penultimate stress, a.k.a. chicory, goes for $0.79 to $1.49/lb.
(usually the same price as escarole), while Belgian endive, with
optional final stress and nasalized vowel, will fetch upwards of
$2.99/lb.  Following my mother's usage, I usually pronounce the
latter as ['Endajv] myself, but then it's always prefixed by
"Belgian", and since I usually call the former chicory, no pernicious
ambiguity is likely to arise.

The price difference for [a~'div] vs. ['Endajv], for those who
maintain those pronunciations, nicely parallels the one others have
described for [vaz] vs. [vejs].

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org