To wonder why.. (brace yourself)

[BackAgainSlimLady]

Single cucumbers from the supermarket come wrapped in plastic.. but single courgettes don’t?

if you ask me.. courgettes have a slightly more fragile skin that cucumber.. so why the lack of protection?

Erm…

No, it’s ZUCCHINUS

LOL
Neither are wrong. Courgette is the French name, zucchini the Italian.
I’ve never heard anyone call it anything but a courgette and it’s even labelled as that in the supermarket here

Anyway… I’m thinking they protect a cucumber because it’s cut and used where as courgette is cooked killing off germs from being touched

This reminds of the Hollywood producers trying to cast a proposed blockbuster about great composers.

Hugh Grant comes along and makes the point "I'm terribly British, so perhaps you might consider me as Elgar."

Al Pacino says: "Obviously, with my Italian heritage I should play Puccini or Verdi."

Arnie says... "I'll be Bach."

They're courgettes and always has been. It's only yanks that call them zucchini.

No it's just English.

I find the plastic on cucumber vexing because really it's wasteful. You can grow smaller cucumbers. However I love cucumber so much I eat loads in one go, easy eat a whole cucumber in a couple of days. If you grow courgettes they last longer in the fridge than shop bought and less delicate skin but the season is short and they are prolific so you have to eat courgette with everything between July and September.

😂

This thread is hilarious. To sum up for those who can’t be bothered to read it all and keep getting it wrong:-

a) Cucumbers are wrapped in plastic to preserve them.

b) Courgettes are zucchini and aubergines are eggplants in America, Canada and Australia (and maybe elsewhere) but not in New Zealand.

c) @WillIEverBeOk whose outraged post has been quoted a million times is Australian, not American.

d) The correct spelling is “just deserts” and is derived from “deserve”. Nothing to do with puddings or the Sahara. I did not know that although I’m old and consider myself well-educated.

e) “It’s” is the short form of “it is”. “Its” is the possessive and is the exception to the rule.

f) I’m from the West Midlands. My mother was Mom, I’m Mom and my daughter is Mom. We are not American.

g) Bach is pronounced Bahk.

There are definitely people who think it's "damp squid"! The rest of my post was in jest (and was partly in reference to all the people on this thread making incorrect claims about the meaning/spelling of "just deserts" despite several posters explaining the correct meaning) but I can only imagine that the people who think it's "damp squid" think it must be something to do with the sea! 🤦‍♀️

So close, but the point of the Bach thing is that it's not pronounced Bahk! The ch is like the ch in loch, which is not pronounced like lock. It's a "back of the throat" sound, a bit like the start of a French word beginning with "r" (not quite the same but you do the same sort of thing with your tongue to make the sound)

And fellow West Midlander here - I never understand how people in the UK accept that some people in the UK (eg North West) talk about their "mam" but refuse to acknowledge that some people talk about their "mom" as a perfectly legitimate regional variation.

Come to think of it, the "o" in mother is said the same as the "u" in "mum" in many UK accents, so "mom" is a perfectly logical spelling even for those of us who say it as "mum"!

@Deboragh They're courgettes and always has been. It's only yanks that call them zucchini.

If you'd bothered to read even a tiny amount of the thread you'd know that it's also Australians, Canadians, Italians (obviously) and a few other places.

We’re both right, it depends where you come from.

No idea anymore who is joking on this thread and who isn't, but the singular in Italian is zucchino.

They haven't spoken Latin in Italy for hundreds of years but according to Google the Latin is cucurbita 🤓

It came about in the context of how to pronounce loch though and a pp said that if you can pronounce Bach you can pronounce loch. I said not necessarily because lots of people would say it like bahk/bark, but loch is not pronounced lock so the analogy doesn't always work!

This thread just keeps on giving 😂

It's all about the supermarkets not wanting to lose money by having damaged goods that they can't sell.

As a previous poster said, courgettes are usually used in one go. Also the volume of courgettes sold is nowhere near that if cucumbers, so not worth wrapping them.

I think most English people CAN say Loch the Scottish way but don't because they'd sound like a wanker.
It's like English people saying pi-aya instead of pie-ella or choreeetho instead of chorizo.
You can say it but you'll soubd like a nob

I get what you mean about paella etc (special bonus points to people who do it when they can't actually speak any Spanish ) but we'll have to agree to disagree about a British person sounding like a "wanker" for pronouncing a British word correctly. It's fine.

(The person on the other thread that made me think of it though that the ch in loch was pronounced like in arch, BTW, so unless I am missing something about how arch is said in some British accents, I'm not convinced that most people south of the border do know how to pronounce it!).

No it isn't. British people speaking German get the ch sound there correct. It's no different.

This reminds me of when I moved back to the UK having lived in Germany for a couple of years. At that time (early 90s) Ikea was popular in Germany. They pronounce it ee-kay-uh.
I moved back home, and Ikea's started popping up and because I'd learnt of it while I was abroad I'd pronounce it ee-kay-uh rather than eye-kee-uh and sound like a bit of a nob.

ee-kay-uh is correct as I understand.

I also learnt mall in the US when I was very small, before we ever had malls over here. For a long time I'd say mawl instead off mall.

A family friend works in head office at Lidl so I had heard of them before they became big in the UK and have always pronounced it Leedul (they themselves gave up on that pronunciation in the UK when they realised that most people don't pronounce it the German way and that they could make a pun with "liddle"/"little"). I'm set in my ways now and don't care if some people think that makes me sound like a nob! (Ikea call themselves i-kay-uh in their TV ads but everyone here calls it eye-key-uh).

Ah yes....I knew of Lidl (in Germany) many, many years before it came over here (or at least where I live). I think I'd erased the German pronunciation by then.

Agreed. There's no more reason for a British person to not use the correct pronounciation for "loch" than for any other UK name or place name.