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To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. The more rel
by AmericanChopper 6y ago
To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about.
The more relevant criticism of the word boils down to the facts that it doesn’t really mean anything to Indians, and that it’s meaning is so poorly defined that it barely means anything at all. The word can be used to refer to pretty much any Indian food, which is simply a poor categorization, and that use would wind up a lot of Indian people. The other use case is pretty much anything that has a spiced gravy. But a ragu uses spiced gravy as much as a butter chicken does, and most people wouldn’t call a ragu a curry. So it must be a spiced gravey with Asian ingredients, but a Japanese curry has more ingredients in common with a ragu than it does a saag paneer, also a lamb tagine dish uses a spiced gravy with Asian ingredients, and people wouldn’t call that a curry either.
Basically it’s a word that has no definition that would describe all of its different use cases.
- DanBC 6y ago> To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. A group of British outsiders who were in India because of the British Empire?
- AmericanChopper 6y agoThere’s absolutely nothing uniquely colonial about coming up with words to describe things that are new to you. It’s simply a result of one culture coming into contact with another. To say using language to describe new things is colonial is frankly ridiculous.
- pinkfoot 6y agoYes, but its a whole new vein of offence to be mined.
- bregma 6y agoBut it brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the sturm und drang of everyday life for the hoi polloi.
- DanBC 6y agoYou're trying to say that colonisers, living in the colony, corrupting and simplifying the local language because it's too hard for them to bother learning, is somehow not colonial. > To say using language to describe new things is colonial is frankly ridiculous. They took a wide range of food, with very different characteristics, representing huge geographical and cultural spread, and reduced all of that to an anglicised word "curry".
- C1sc0cat 6y agoAs some one said about English "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary" There are a lot of words borrowed from India still in use to this day squaddie for example being derived from 'swaddy' a type on Indian soldier
- brownbat 6y agoHmm, what makes for a meaningful broad food category word? Dumplings range from pierogies to xiaolongbao, sandwiches include monte cristos and cheesesteaks and fluffernutters, soup includes vichyssoise and miso and samgyetang. Why do those words work, if they do? Stepping sideways a bit... in New Delhi, menu names shift in a subtle way with the prominence of vegetarianism. In the UK or US, you might order a dish like "chicken with seasonal vegetables." In Delhi it's often reversed, they'll specify the exact meatless dish, Malai Kofta or Palak Paneer, but just say the side dish is "non-veg" without specifying whatever meat. That slight shift in emphasis really underscores the endless variety of things you can eat beyond meat, it makes plain how the generic Western conception of a meal through classic French courses can be incredibly narrow. However we ultimately come down on "curry," emphasizing meatless dishes seems like an example of food language that probably should have been heavily exported and hungrily adopted by the rest of the world. Even if you're not a vegetarian, treating meatless dishes as first-class citizens seems to add enormous diversity to any cuisine, and a ton more satisfaction in the eating.