从“香菜”说起，聊聊英语学习

1. 香菜

早上晨读结束后我在群里和一位朋友聊起来，我们两个明天就要面基了，我问她想吃点什么，她说“我不挑食的，只要没有香菜就行”。好为人师的我趁机给她上了一课：“香菜”用英语怎么说？

听说吃不吃香菜已经上升到了几大人类矛盾之一，但是我们有没有想过它的英语表达是什么？如何向没有吃过香菜的人介绍为什么人们对它爱恨交加？如果有这个学习意识的话，动动手，两分钟就能找到答案。

Wikipedia上这样介绍：

Coriander (UK /ˌkɒrɪˈændə/; US /ˈkɔːriˌændər/ or /ˌkɔːriˈændər/; Coriandrum sativum), also known as cilantro (/sɪˈlɑːntroʊ/) or Chinese parsley, is an annual herb in the family Apiaceae. All parts of the plant are edible, but the fresh leaves and the dried seeds are the parts most traditionally used in cooking.

这里能看到“香菜”有三个常见表达：coriander, cilantro和Chinese parsley。Chinese parsley这种表达很好理解，但是为什么有coriander和cilantro两种叫法呢？

我们并不需要从植物学的角度去了解，对它大概有个认识即可。

The short answer is: It depends on where you are. They mean the same things in some countries, while others treat them as two completely different components.

原来是地域差异，在英国人们一般称它为coriander，在美国是cilantro，在印度是dhania。

从词源上来看coriander出现在14世纪，从法语/拉丁语/希腊语中演变过来的；cilantro出现在1907年，来自西班牙语。

你看，动动手几分钟的事就涨了点姿势。“一念一世界”，有了个念头就去记一记查一查，可能就会有新的发现呢。

在美国读研的两年中，点餐是一个既头疼又简单的事。头疼的是每次点东西吃还是有很多“叫不出名字的食物"，一些是不知道英文怎么说，一些是中文也不知道是什么。 大多时候都是连指带比划的:“Can I have the yellow one? "或者是 "whatever, just something green”。但是这也不是什么障碍，如同网上的段子一样，在国外点餐会 “this” “that”就够了。

很多东西，例如食物，地理差异加上文化差异会造成相似和不同。有一些东西甚至没有标准的叫法，或者很多人都不知道叫什么。对我们英语非母语的人来说，我认为没有必要特意的去记这些词汇，见一个积累一个就好了。

有些词稍长，有时候还不好读，例如pomegranate(石榴), asparagus(芦笋)。 想要流利的使用这些词的话，最好的方法之一就是去沃尔玛家乐福之类的超市溜达一圈，多“念念有词”，多用几次。

2. 醋

有一次进城去海底捞吃火锅，等位的时候发现书架上有本英文书Oil & Vinegar, 抽出来随手翻一翻。

一分钟不到的时间就可以学到“原来油和醋有这么多种类”。avocado, walnut, hazelnut, sesme, apple cider都是常见的食物，你认识吗，会读吗？

读到toffee这个词的时候，我查了下字典然后分享在群里面：

我看到toffee这个词，我不认识，我想这和coffee只有一字之差，多好玩! 顺手查了下字典原来它就是“太妃糖”。 这个词我能记一辈子，甚至时间地点我都能记 — 因为这个词好玩，因为我是在情境中遇到的它。

同样的思路，如果让你通过电话叫麦当劳肯德基外卖的话，你会怎么说（用英语）？你去吃过这么多次火锅，有没有注意过它的英文？随手查一查就记住了。

看一看麦当劳的官网菜单，就了解了各种说法，例如“麦乐鸡”是McNuggets。

海底捞的官方网站上也有它的菜单，在店里点菜时也有英文翻译。这里我们就学到了abalone（鲍鱼），marinated（腌制的），注意fillet的发音是 [fɪˈleɪ]，herbal在美音中h不发音，念 [ˈɜrb(ə)l]。

3. 火锅

在美国读书的时候我吃个饭都要把菜单拍下来，我想这可是地道的英语啊，我要留着以后去教给别人。有一次圣诞节，和几个朋友去吃“小肥羊”，我为此还读了一篇纽约客上的食评 -- 其实是没有必要的，点餐啊什么的都可以用中文的。

我们来看看这篇食评。

Unless you’ve got a hankering for a Subway sandwich or a Five Guys burger, the Shops at SkyView Center, a mall packed with big-box stores like Target and Best Buy, may seem like the least likely place to eat in Flushing. And yet, around the corner from Chuck E. Cheese and just past Applebee’s, one of the world’s most thrilling culinary experiences awaits, at a place called Little Lamb. To be fair, one man’s Little Lamb is another man’s Applebee’s: the restaurant is part of an Inner Mongolian chain that claims around six hundred locations worldwide, and one of several suspiciously similar places in Flushing that offer the East Asian specialty known as hot pot. But this is the first and only official Little Lamb in New York, and, especially for anyone unfamiliar with hot pot, a meal here is extraordinary.

纽约Flushing, 是一个比China town还中国的一个地方。 Little Lamb是新开的一家火锅店。One man’s Little Lamb is another man’s Applebee’s 套用了One man’s meat is another man’s poison. 众口难调, 各有所爱。

It begins, of course, with a pot, piping hot, perched on an electric burner in the center of each table, and brimming with broth made from beef bone, bone marrow, and chicken. It’s described almost Biblically on the menu: “When boil is ready, we add our mixture of little lamb special sauce. Then it became the ‘God Soup.’ ” The special sauce is customizable: House “Mala” Spicy will set your mouth on fire and turn the liquid a murky red, bobbing with dried chili peppers, numbing peppercorns, garlic cloves, whole nutmeg, and cinnamon bark; a more timid palate would be better off with the House Original, cloudy yellow and swimming with scallions, ginger, and goji berries.

火锅的底汤可以用broth, 枸杞 goji, 胡椒子 peppercorns, 骨髓 bone marrow。瓦尔登湖中就有一句 “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

Once the God Soup is roiling, the diner becomes the chef, tasked first with menu planning, choosing from dozens of raw ingredients, which arrive in bite-size pieces, and then with cooking the haul, by dropping things into the pot and determining when to scoop them out. The first step can be difficult, thanks to curt descriptions and sometimes unappealing translations (Supreme Lamb Shoulder is “Under Cervical Vertebra and it taste soft”). But many items are straightforward—napa cabbage, enoki mushroom, fresh tofu—and taking risks can yield high rewards, as with House Fish Noodle, which turns out to be ribbons of dough sparkling with shards of briny dried fish, and Sun Volume, a platter of lamb slices ringed in fat and appealingly fanned in a circle. The true challenge is in the timing: most meat is cut so thin that it needs only a few seconds in the pot before it’s overcooked, but taro root takes several minutes, and the optimal texture of baby bok choy is a matter of taste.

白菜可以叫napa cabbage, bechu, Pekinensis 青菜/油菜/ bok choy. 而Chinese cabbage可以指两者。

enoki mushroom或许你不认识, 它的另一个名字叫Golden needle mushroom。

The menu offers a handful of excellent things that arrive ready to eat—perfectly flaky scallion pancakes; cumin-rubbed, lusciously fatty lamb ribs “grilled until the tasty come out”—but none are quite as satisfying as what comes out of the pot. Cooking your own food is a good reminder of what hard work it is, just as the enormous backlit photographs of sheep grazing in sunny fields are a good reminder of exactly what you’re eating. 

flaky 这个词很明显来自于 flake, 例如snowflake， 用到食物上面有点 “千层酥的感觉”。cumin是孜然，scallion是葱 -- 何伟在River Town中翻译了学生的作文：“Her fingers are so slender that scallions can’t compare with them.” 你有没有注意到我们中文里会用葱来形容手指很漂亮？

每一个词都是一个情人, 或一见钟情或日久生情，但是前提是你能看见它。食物只是一个例子，任何你看到的想到的都可以成为学习教材，例如汽车品牌“大众”的英文是什么？高速公路的“匝道”英文怎么说？“请抓紧扶手”怎么说？ “下一站是换乘车站，换乘2号线的乘客请做好下车准备”怎么表达？

时刻准备着，有疑问就动动手，这样学习下去，不可能学不好。别再抱怨你的英文教材不够地道（你可以把它改的很地道），不要嫌弃你的英语老师不够有趣 -- 我们可以做我们能做的事情，把英语用起来玩起来，spice it up!