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