4 ms·

> If there's no pork cutlet it's not Katsu. The curry is just 'kare'. I used to push back hard on this and get annoyed with it, words have meanings let's use t

> If there's no pork cutlet it's not Katsu. The curry is just 'kare'. I used to push back hard on this and get annoyed with it, words have meanings let's use them correctly! But over time I've changed my opinion. In Japan Katsu may mean something specific, but in the UK it means something different. That's language evolving, and that's a natural process. Pushing back on language changing in normal ways isn't going to achieve anything, it's an uphill battle, and it results in less clear communication because it often involves ignoring who the target audience is and treating them like another audience. By all means correct someone who is using a word incorrectly, but trying to correct a language because it's different to the previous iteration is a lost battle. (No comment on the food reviews though, you're absolutely right that the "real stuff" is far better.)

User23 2y ago
The problem with that is then in a hundred years old books are hard to understand. And in several hundred they’re basically incomprehensible. However for history zero there’s nothing quite like rigid descriptivism!
FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
My problem is just that -- I go to a place; I want a katsu (cutlet) set, and all they have is katsu-don, and I'm like, "I didn't want the rice bowl with the curry sauce; I wanted the schnitzel with the A1 sauce", but people are calling both "katsu". That's my only beef. Or pork, I guess.
- gambiting 2y ago
  Well but that's like going to Poland and asking for schnitzel, if you're used to German schnitzels you're not going the thing you expect. And it's not the people making it who are wrong, it's just that the word means a different thing there.
  - FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
    Nah, I meant the Japanese style katsu. There's "katsu", aka cutlet, and it's basically a Japanese style schnitzel (I use the German word only for humor and to emphasize the cross-cultural nature of this food). It's traditionally served with raw cabbage, maybe pickled vegetables, and usually a thick Japanese sauce that is a distant relative of Worcestershire sauce; it's a lot like A1 steak sauce. And then there's katsu-don, which is same cutlet served atop rice in a bowl (hence the -"don"), now generally with more of a Japanese-curry sauce. But alas the latter dish seems to be outstripping the former in popularity, to the point that one cannot be sure that "katsu" without "-don" is being used to refer to the former!
  - FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
    On second reading, I probably misunderstood you. I think you mean that "katsu" just means something else in the UK. Which -- I guess it does. Drats! Sapir-Whorf has robbed me of a dish.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
I don't even think that this falls into the normal "language evolves" fights, honestly. Katsu can be a word that means one thing in Japanese and another thing in English without any confusion in meaning. One expects that different languages will express things differently, after all. This isn't really in the same ballpark as English-speaking people misusing English words.
jameshart 2y ago
Food does this all the time as it moves between cultures. Look at what in the US today is called a macaroon, a macaron, and some macaroni. Which one of those is closer to the ‘original’ Italian culinary meaning of maccherone?

User23 2y ago

The problem with that is then in a hundred years old books are hard to understand. And in several hundred they’re basically incomprehensible. However for history zero there’s nothing quite like rigid descriptivism!

FooBarBizBazz 2y ago

My problem is just that -- I go to a place; I want a katsu (cutlet) set, and all they have is katsu-don, and I'm like, "I didn't want the rice bowl with the curry sauce; I wanted the schnitzel with the A1 sauce", but people are calling both "katsu". That's my only beef. Or pork, I guess.

gambiting 2y ago
Well but that's like going to Poland and asking for schnitzel, if you're used to German schnitzels you're not going the thing you expect. And it's not the people making it who are wrong, it's just that the word means a different thing there.
- FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
  Nah, I meant the Japanese style katsu. There's "katsu", aka cutlet, and it's basically a Japanese style schnitzel (I use the German word only for humor and to emphasize the cross-cultural nature of this food). It's traditionally served with raw cabbage, maybe pickled vegetables, and usually a thick Japanese sauce that is a distant relative of Worcestershire sauce; it's a lot like A1 steak sauce. And then there's katsu-don, which is same cutlet served atop rice in a bowl (hence the -"don"), now generally with more of a Japanese-curry sauce. But alas the latter dish seems to be outstripping the former in popularity, to the point that one cannot be sure that "katsu" without "-don" is being used to refer to the former!
- FooBarBizBazz 2y ago
  On second reading, I probably misunderstood you. I think you mean that "katsu" just means something else in the UK. Which -- I guess it does. Drats! Sapir-Whorf has robbed me of a dish.

bigstrat2003 2y ago

I don't even think that this falls into the normal "language evolves" fights, honestly. Katsu can be a word that means one thing in Japanese and another thing in English without any confusion in meaning. One expects that different languages will express things differently, after all. This isn't really in the same ballpark as English-speaking people misusing English words.

jameshart 2y ago

Food does this all the time as it moves between cultures. Look at what in the US today is called a macaroon, a macaron, and some macaroni. Which one of those is closer to the ‘original’ Italian culinary meaning of maccherone?