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Makes me wonder whether it has actually survived in English, in that culinary niche, or was just readopted from some other language that immigrated to America i
by usrusr 6y ago
Makes me wonder whether it has actually survived in English, in that culinary niche, or was just readopted from some other language that immigrated to America in parallel and happened to bring a dish with them that was named after the word for the animal in that language.
Kind of similar to how livestock remained Germanic in English when the meat dishes derived from them migrated to French/Latin roots. Ironically triggered by Normans who only switched from a Germanic language to French a few generations earlier (at most). Languages are entirely unlike species, they keep cross-fertilizing whenever they are not physically isolated.
- Izkata 6y agoPersonally, I'm kinda leaning towards a cross between readopted and persisted through trivia (akin to how everyone knows "a group of crows is called a murder" despite not typically being used in normal speech, but more locale-specific than that example): Chicago area, I know I've encountered "laks", I think I've seen "lachs", but I don't recall "lox" at all.
- bodhiandpysics1 6y agoIt reentered english through yiddish, though the word lox was also used by scandinavian immigrants in the upper midwest. Laks is the word in old english, but like many food words only eaten by the upper classes (beef, venison, poultry, pork, sausage) was displaced by the norman salmon.