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This is apparently an English word that has completely bypassed the English, because I've never heard the word 'lox' for 'smoked salmon' in my life. Did this so
by thom 7y ago
This is apparently an English word that has completely bypassed the English, because I've never heard the word 'lox' for 'smoked salmon' in my life. Did this somehow go from mainland Europe straight to America?
- mc32 7y agoGravlax? Although a slightly different kind of lox.
- Sharlin 7y agoThat’s a loan from Swedish though.
- Sharlin 7y ago(Edit: although the words are cognates, naturally.)
- wowtip 7y agoIn Swedish: Lax = Salmon Grava = preparing raw salmon (or other fish/meat) by keeping it in a mixture of salt, sugar and spices. Salt and sugar keeps the fish from spoling, lactic acid bacteria preserves the fish. Back in the days this was done by digging a hole in the ground, cover the fish with spruce/fresh leaves and salt. Then lleaving it lying there for a couple of days. This also gives the origin of the word "grava" which in this context would bean "bury".
- Sharlin 7y ago> This also gives the origin of the word "grava" which in this context would bean "bury". And is cognate to English "grave" as in a burial place! Other cognates are Middle English (and modern Dutch) "graven", and German "graben", both meaning "to dig". Ultimately deriving from Proto-Germanic *grabaną. "Groove" is also related. Interestingly the adjective sense of "grave" in English (as in "serious") is of unrelated Romance origin (cf. "gravid", "gravity", "gravitas").
- unixbeard1337 7y agoVia Yiddish, I believe.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- brlewis 7y agoEnglish has evolved more in England than in New England the past few hundred years. From what I've heard New England accents are closer to what English accents used to be than modern English accents are. Perhaps lox fell out of use in England but not here.
- asveikau 7y agoI have heard similar claims, but I think I wouldn't look to New England for that. Example: Most English accents today don't pronounce an R if a vowel doesn't follow it ("non rhotic"). This is also true in accents of New York, New England, and parts of the US southeast. However, a few hundred years ago English accents were all rhotic, like the majority of the US. I had heard somewhere that the non-rhotacism was actually adopted in the northeast and affluent south after it became popular in England and also after colonization by people who would have pronounced all the Rs. That is to say some well to do US accents kept up with changes occurring in places like London.
- jrumbut 7y agoThe R dropping accent in New England is limited to a surprisingly small group of people. Same with New York I believe. Outside of some parts of Boston we pick up those Rs our friends drop and put them to use.
- ErikAugust 7y agoI grew up a few miles from Boston. No one had a Boston accent, save for people who moved from certain areas.
- TravHatesMe 7y agoFor me that is slightly disappointing, I find that there is some real character in that accent. From my (outsider's) perspective it is something classic to east coast American cities. An accent that brings forth unapologetic honesty and "bustin' your balls" kind of humour.
- thrower123 7y agoThe only places that call it lox are places that have considerable Jewish populations, even in the US. I never heard smoked salmon called lox until I lived next door to a Hillel house in college.
- empath75 7y agoIt’s pretty common in any city on the east coast of the us.
- not2b 7y agoThe call it that in Germany as well, though they spell it differently: lachs.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y agoLax in Swedish. Pronunciation in all three languages is pretty similar though.
- Fnoord 7y agoLachs is salmon, not to be confused with seelachs which is just (Atlantic) cod. Don't confuse the two in a restaurant. I made that mistake once. Couldn't believe the price either until we got our dish. Needless to say, mistakes were made...
- lloydde 7y ago> only places that call it lox Counter-example: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
- peatmoss 7y agoThis thread surprises me. I grew up in Montana, non-jewish, without a particularly large nearby jewish population, and yet I’m sure I learned the word lox as a youngster.
- slg 7y agoIt came to English via Yiddish and therefore via the Jewish people. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot more Yiddish words in American English than British English considering the size of the Jewish populations in both countries, the timelines for their immigration, and the roles they have traditionally taken in society.
- falcor84 7y agoIt took me quite a few rereadings before it finally clicked that you're probably not implying that there are more words in American English originating from Yiddish than those coming from British English words.
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- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- MagicPropmaker 7y agoHere in Israel, where I spend about half my time split between Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley, it's called not by the Hebrew term for "smoked salmon" but by the Yiddish word "לאָקס" (spelled as לוקס in Hebrew) I was born in Brooklyn, to a Yiddish speaking family. Occasionally I use a Yiddish word in Israel and I'm met by a blank stare. 60% of the Jewish population here came from countries like Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, etc, where nobody knew Yiddish.
- jjtheblunt 7y agoOxford Dictionary of English cites it as North American, via immigrants' Yiddish.
- yellowapple 7y agoYeah, it's a loanword, and thus about as much an English word as "quesadilla" or "kebab".
- empath75 7y agoEnglish is almost nothing but loan words.
- Endy 7y agoWasn't it said that English isn't a language, but a bunch of midget dialects in an overcoat who trap nice languages in alleys, beat them, and rifle their pockets for loose grammar?
- umanwizard 7y agoActually the presence of non-Anglo-Saxon vocabulary in English is not because of English “stealing” anything, but because England was colonized and ruled by non-English-speaking people for centuries. I.e. saying English stole from French is a bit like saying Hindi, Irish, or Navajo stole from English. Gets the power relations completely backwards.
- empath75 7y agoThat applies to basically French and Norse loan words from the Middle English period. It doesn’t apply to the large number of Latin and Greek loanwords or anything more recent.
- umanwizard 7y agoWell, Latin was the lingua franca in Europe for a very, very long time. So it's a bit like how languages all over the world now have English loanwords. Still not because of English "stealing" anything. You could make a case for the validity of this quip for more recent loanwords, but there are relatively few of those compared to French, Norse, and Latin.
- hak8or 7y agoDo you never get bagels for lunch or breakfast? Bagals and lox is extremely common where I am for breakfast.
- gambiting 7y agoYes we do. But I've never ever heard anyone refer to a salmon and bagel refereed to as lox. My only association was with Gravlax, but I've never heard of lox.
- beatgammit 7y agoI've never heard the term, then again I've only ever purchased bagels from grocery stores and bakeries. We have an Einstein Bagle shop fairly close by, but I've only ever had them when someone brings them to the office. I've heard of lachsfisch (sp?) in German for salmon, and I think the Swedish term is similar, so if I ever heard the term, I probably attributed it to German. I've certainly had a lot of smoked salmon spread and smoked salmon by itself, I've just don't recall ever hearing it referred to in English as anything other than "smoked salmon". So yeah, I recognize that word as German or Swedish, not English.
- rat87 7y agoIf you look at Einstein Bagles menu they have Nova Lox and Schmear (yiddish for smear/spread which is usually cream cheese or flavored cream cheese)on the menu. I'd say both terms(lox(originally pronounced lacks) and shmear) are sufficiently commercialized that they are common at any bagel place even outside of cities with large Jewish populations. At least in the US, maybe not in the UK. Also note that most lox isn't actually lox. Traditional Jewish Lox is brined salmon belly. These days lox usually refers to any smoked salmon, especially less salty types then traditional lox
- klipt 7y agoWiktionary says "lox" comes via Yiddish: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lox#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lox#Etymology_1 However the closely related "lax", used in some English dialects and in Scotland, also means salmon and comes, via Old English, from the same root: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lax#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lax#Etymology_1 So maybe ask your Scottish friends?
- amarant 7y agoThat's surprising! I know the Scottish dialects has a lot of Scandinavian influences, (ex they say "barn" to mean children) Lax is Swedish for salmon, so I would've expected a similar root for that word! Some quick googling suggests the Swedish variant has roots in the Germanic and Baltic languages, which are not directly related to Yiddish afaik. Funny how languages are so similar sometimes, seemingly by chance!
- daleharvey 7y agolol "bairn" A Barn is still a farm building in Scotland
- jacobush 7y agoYeah, but ignoring spelling and instead listening to how it's pronounced - it's the same. My Swedish grandmother pronounced it pretty much exactly to how Scottish sounds to me.
- noir_lord 7y agoNot just Scotland, Part of north England I'm from "Bairn" is very widely used (but we had a massive Viking presence that still shows up in place names and such).
- simonh 7y agoMy mother's family are from Durham and my grandmother called us 'the bairns'. Also pigs were swine and when we were ill we were 'out of fettle'. I've no trace of it in my own speech now, but still love the sound of it. I once went to Norway and it seemed to me like they were speaking German with a Geordie accent.
- solidsnack9000 7y agoMaybe the article is playing things up a little, by suggesting there is an unbroken line of descent from English "lox" all the way back to Khurgan "lox". Clearly English lost and then regained the word.
- Mordisquitos 7y agoThe only time I heard the word "lox" was when I was a kid and had the James Bond film You Only Live Twice on VHS. This is the one where Blofeld is launching rockets from Japan to destroy Soviet and American spacecraft, with the hope of them blaming each other and triggering a war. For some reason, one of the scenes that stuck in my mind was when the head of the Japanese intelligence services (Tanaka?) and Bond are reviewing the receipts that the latter managed to steal from the company they suspect is acting as a front for Spectre. Tanaka is reading out a perfectly innocent list of items and comes across a huge order for "lox", and asks Bond what that means. At first he just defeatedly dismisses as an American word for smoked salmon, but then has a brainwave and says something like "But... it can also be a shorthand for Liquid Oxygen, which is needed to power rockets!".