Tomayto or Tomahto?

Why do Americans say tomayto and English speakers say tomaato? What is the rule in this case?

This simple question led me on a fascinating journey. When I did a Google search for “tomayto, tomahto,” I got 211,000 hits, most of them having nothing to do with pronunciation.

Because of the song, tomayto, tomahto has come to be used as an expression meaning “unimportant difference.”

The tomato originated in South America. The Spaniards first brought tomato seeds to Europe in the 1540s. The seeds produced a yellow tomato. Because of the color, an Italian botanist called it pomo d’oro, “golden apple.”

The tomato was also known as “love apple” and was used principally as a decorative plant. Because the tomato belongs to the nightshade family, many people refused to take a chance by eating the fruit. The leaves are poisonous. An organic pesticide can be prepared from them, but as everyone knows by now, the fruit is edible.

The word tomato comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl. The Aztecs called itxitomatl, “plump thing with a navel.” Its botanical name is Lycopersicon esculentum, “wolf peach.” Peach because it is round and wolf because the French botanist who coined the Latin name wished to convey its poisonous, and therefore dangerous, nature.

So what about the English pronunciation?

When the first tomatoes were grown in England in the 1590’s, Shakespeare (1564-1616 ) was a young man. The Great Vowel Shift, which began in 1450, was in full swing.

An example of a word whose pronunciation changed between Chaucer’s time (1343-1400 and ours is abate. In Chaucer’s time it was pronounced with a broad a. In Shakespeare’s time it was pronounced with a short a. In modern English it is pronounced with a long a.

Chaucer would have belonged to the “tomahto” school–if there had been any tomatoes in England for him to talk about. Shakespeare would have fallen in the middle with “tomaeto” (short a as in cat and half).

At some time in the eighteenth century, speakers in southern England began pronouncing formerly short a words like half, calf, laugh, after, path, aunt, andcan’t with the broad a of father.

At first the broad a pronunciations were considered “substandard,” but they eventually made their way into the standard speech of the upper classes. Not everyone found them acceptable.

Writing as late as 1921, H. L. Mencken mentions an English contemporary who felt that the “tomahto” pronunciation was “pedantic” and not to be preferred to “the good English tomato, rhyming with potato.”

Nowadays “tomahto” is considered British pronunciation and “tomayto” American, but many Americans pronounce tomato {and aunt ) with a broad a.

Either pronunciation is considered standard. The only “rule” is to go with the pronunciation you prefer. Either is easily understood by other English speakers.

Lyrics to “tomayto, tomahto song

Hey You!

Puleen Patel wonders about the appropriateness of hey as a greeting:

I see most people online and offline address each other more and more by saying “Hey David” and so on. Is this correct? Is this a new thing? I always remembered addressing (and being addressed) as “Hi David” or “Hi Puleen”.

When I was in school, many years ago, my English teachers objected to bothhi and hey as rude utterances. However, both have been in the language for a very long time.

Most dictionaries define hey as “an exclamation to attract attention.” Ditto forhi.

Hey is often used as a nonsense word in song lyrics, as in the chorus of Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson. There’s a Jennifer Love Hewitt song called Hey Everybody.

Earlier still, Shakespeare used hey in the refrain of a song in Much Ado About Nothing:

. . . be you blithe and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey nonny, nonny.

Hey and hi can’t claim to have an etymology like a “real” word. Both seem to derive from the sound of a grunt, like Roman eho, Greek eia, and German hei.

The OED notes that used as “a word of greeting,” hi is chiefly North American. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the first recorded use (1862) ofhi as a greeting was to the speech of a Kansas Indian.

This use of hi by an Indian brings to mind the “how!” so often heard in old cowboy movies. Again, the OEtyD:

how: Native American greeting, Siouxan (cf. Dakota hao, Omaha hau); first recorded 1817 in Eng, but noted early 17c. by Fr. missionary Jean de Brebeuf among Hurons as an expression of approval (1636).

As to which to use as an informal greeting, it’s a personal choice. I read a comment by someone who prefers hey to hi because “it sounds more casual.” To some speakers, however, hi sounds friendly, but hey sounds rude.

I wonder what my English teachers would have said to the notion that anything could be more casual than hi.

Motherland or Fatherland?

Carol Bakker has a question:

is there a “rule” for using motherland and fatherland?  Do northern countries tend to use fatherland more?

The Wikipedia article onfatherland lists close to 50 languages/countries that employ a term that’s the equivalent of “fatherland.” Location, north or south, doesn’t seem to have much to do with it.

It’s not surprising that fatherland would be the term for one’s native country in any language that has any historical association with the Romans; the Latin word for “fatherland” is patria.

In the OED the expression Mother country has an earlier documentation date than fatherland, but fatherland precedes motherland:

1587 Mother country: a country in relation to its colonies.

1595 Mother country: one’s native land

1623 fatherland: country of one’s birth

1711 motherland: a country as producer of anything; one’s native country

In the 1930s the expression “the Fatherland” was widely used to refer to Germany. For many English speakers the association remains. When the United States adopted the term “Homeland Security” after the attack on the World Trade Center, the expression bothered me no end. “Homeland” made me think “fatherland” and that made me think of Nazis. “Homeland security” no longer raises hackles, but the word fatherland still holds negative connotations for me.

A country closely associated with the word motherland is Russia. In fairy tales, and in Russian literature before 1917, one often encounters the expression “Mother Russia.” After the Revolution, the Soviets preferred the expression Rossiya-Matushka, which I’m told translates as “Mother Motherland.”

WARNING: Read the readers’ comments before repeating any of the remarks about Russia. Actual Russian speakers disagree. –Maeve

As to a “rule” for the use of fatherland vs motherland, I think the choice would depend upon the connotation sought by the author in a particular context. Fatherland suggests government and order. Motherland connotes birth and nurturing.

The Line is for the Toe

The Washington Times recently printed an editorial about H1N1 flu calling the disease “tow-the-line flu”. The use of the phrase “tow the line” is a common mistake; what the paper should have written was “toe the line”. To “toe the line” means to conform to some rule or standard, to fall into line. Politicians, for example, often have to toe their party lines.

People may imagine that the spelling “tow the line” is correct as it perhaps derives from some nautical activity. Ropes are often called lines aboard ship and a tow-line is just a line used to tow something on the water. But the phrase is probably nothing to do with ropes. In fact, the exact source is unclear but the phrase is generally taken to derive from the idea of lining up for a sporting activity, i.e. to place your toe on the line for the start of a race. By doing so you are following the rules set out for the activity.

There are other theories as to the origins of the phrase. It may derive from boxing, with early prize-fighters having to stand with one foot on a scratched line on the ground to fight. Others have claimed that it derives from the British House of Commons, where lines are marked on the ground to prevent more adversarial debates from getting out of hand.

Whatever the true origin of the phrase, the spelling should be “toe” and not “tow”.