Cucumbers/Pickles

Steve Kl. stevekl at GMAIL.COM
Fri Sep 11 19:07:20 UTC 2009


David's melon email reminds me:
When I was home in Michigan last week, my mom came in from having been at a
farmers' market, and had me help her unload the car. She instructed me "Put
the pickles in the breezeway."

There was a big bag of cucumbers.

I let a few minutes pass and then I said, what did you call these? She said
"Pickles. I mean cucumbers. We always called them pickles."

(I later asked her if the *okurek/okurky* in Czech refered to just cucumbers
or to cucumbers and pickles, and she said she thought it referred to both.)

(She was raised in a Czech-speaking household in southern Saginaw County,
Michigan.) So score another notch for the 'pickle' crowd....

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



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