Shrimp(s) and prawns

[Victor]

When it comes to Chinese restaurants, there might be a difference
between those run by Hong Kong expats and those from other parts of
China (and Taiwan). I've seen all three possibilities on menus--all
shrimp, all prawn and some shrimp/some prawn, the latter with a variety
of explanations for the distinction. In one particularly odd case, the
menu *item* referred to shrimp, but the preparation and ingredient
description used "prawns" (as in, "delicately sauteed large prawns").
Another had it in reverse. Yet another Chinese menu had a vocabulary
note describing the difference (although it appeared to have
distinguished mostly between freshwater and saltwater species with no
taxonomic significance). Upscale Japanese restaurants are much more
likely to watch the words more carefully, especially since there may be
fine distinctions between some types of fish for which there may be only
a single English equivalent (I wish I was just making up a
snowclone--for example, different sizes of herring and sardine each have
their own names, instead of commercial grades).

There is an interesting twist in Dutch, apparently (not sure how
linguistically interesting this will be, but, what the hell!). There is
a distinction between "garnalen" and "garnaal", which Google interprets
straight as the split between shrimp and prawns in one direction,
although both pick up "shrimp", going the other way (and the latter gets
a dual translation). I am not sure if it's really that simple, but a
Dutch cooking magazine I picked up last year differentiated between at
least 15 different kinds of shrimp/prawns (by size, color, texture and
taste--and, oh, yeah!, taxonomy), compared to an American market
distinction of... about 6, and most of those by point of origin (not
including differentiation by size, which really is even less useful than
POO--apparently, the Dutch care about their shrimp as much as New York
and California restaurateurs care about oysters).

And, for good measure, one more twist. At open markets and herring
stalls (more common than falafel trucks in urban US), you will also see
deep-fried shrimp-looking objects simply referred to as "gamba". It's
not simply a tribute to some Spanish or Portugese dish. In fact, it's
not even shrimp or prawn, in the strict sense of the word. It's
battered, deep-fried shrimp-shaped surimi-type product--basically ground
and shaped processed pollack. (Did I set a record for most hyphenated
modifiers in a row?)

    VS-)

Joel S. Berson wrote:
> I, raised and still living east of the Hudson, disagree.  I see both
> words on menus, and understand "prawns" as larger.  "Prawn"
> particularly appears on menus of East Asian restaurants.  (They might
> all be "shrimp" in the supermarket bags, regardless of count; I
> haven't examined that aspect closely, preferring to have others cook for me.)
>

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