I often read anglophones saying "chinese cuisine", "french cuisine", etc.
Instead of the english form "cooking".
Why, is it a snobish attitude ? Is it seems better food if the french word is used instead of the english one ?
etymologically there is no difference of meaning, "cuisine" just means "cooking". Is there a difference in the anglophone use ?
Shouga
I asked someone else about this, just to verify, and he says that 'cuisine' is more commonly used when talking about French food. So saying 'French cuisine' is common, and also, talking about other European foods, such as 'English cuisine', 'Spanish cuisine' etc., is also common; 'Chinese cuisine' or 'Russian cuisine' is not so common. People tend to say 'Chinese food' rather than 'Chinese cuisine'. I don't think it's snobbish; cooking is just not so common as a noun. 'Cooking' is just more personal, in a way; 'I enjoy my friend's cooking', or 'My mum's cooking is the best' for example. You wouldn't say 'I enjoy Spanish cooking' or 'I enjoy Chinese cooking'; you'd say either cuisine or food.
Pauline
But maybe in english the word kitchen is sometimes used ? In french it has this significance also. In german people say Küche, and this is kitchen - in dutch it is the same : keuken.
Shouga
Pauline wrote:
But maybe in english the word kitchen is sometimes used ? In french it has this significance also. In german people say Küche, and this is kitchen - in dutch it is the same : keuken.
We don't use the word kitchen for that purpose 'French kitchen', 'Spanish kitchen', 'Chinese kitchen'...that would literally mean a kitchen in France/Spain/China, or a kitchen which looks like a French/Spanish/Chinese kitchen. We would not use the phrase 'French kitchen' to talk about the cuisine of the French.
Deborah
In the US, at least, using "cuisine" rather than "cooking" is an attempt to add a touch of class. And here, you often do see "Chinese/Japanese/Indian/Thai, etc. cuisine" on restaurant signs. However, in conversation, we usually say "cooking" or just "food", even for French cooking.
Deborah
I forgot about California cuisine -- we always call it California cuisine.
Oh, and what Shouga said about using "kitchen" goes for the US as well -- I assume for all anglophone countries.
greg in noord-frankrijk
Shouga wrote:
(...) 'English cuisine' (...)
???
Shouga
Deborah wrote:
In the US, at least, using "cuisine" rather than "cooking" is an attempt to add a touch of class. And here, you often do see "Chinese/Japanese/Indian/Thai, etc. cuisine" on restaurant signs. However, in conversation, we usually say "cooking" or just "food", even for French cooking.
Oh yeah, I forgot about restaurant signs. We get that too.
Shouga
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
Shouga wrote:
(...) 'English cuisine' (...)
???
I'm sure it exists...
greg in noord-frankrijk
Do you remember ?
Icke
Shouga wrote:
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
Shouga wrote:
(...) 'English cuisine' (...)
???
I'm sure it exists...
Yes, of course, it does! It is just...well, different...but similar to the German cuisine! LOL
Deborah
Shouga wrote:
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
Shouga wrote:
(...) 'English cuisine' (...)
???
I'm sure it exists...
Chicken tikka masala's English, right?
Benjamin [inactive]
Icke wrote:
Yes, of course, it does! It is just...well, different...but similar to the German cuisine! LOL
Yep... sausages, mashed potatoes, cabbage... it's all the same rather generic Northern European sort of stuff, lol. Actually, I don't understand why Greg has continuously disparaged so-called 'traditional' English food, whilst completely failing to mention that 'traditional' German food is almost the same. And actually, I really wonder what Greg's image of 'English food' is, if he really thinks it's that bad. But then maybe I shouldn't be surprised, because Greg hates England even more than I do (LOL), yet seems to think that Germany is the most wonderful place in the world after France.
Deborah wrote:
Chicken tikka masala's English, right?
It's essentially British, yes. Though there is some debate as to where it was actually invented — various restaurants in London, Birmingham, Glasgow and other places claim to have invented it.
Shouga
We also invented the Banoffee pie.
Loic
I had Shepherd's Pie before. I am not sure if the cooking was authentic, but I liked it.
What does an average English household have for meals, really? You can't be having pizza or Indian food everyday.
For that matter, is there also such a thing as Californian cuisine or is it just a fusion of many cooking styles?
Maybe I am a chauvanist, but I am perfectly contented to eat Chinese food throughout my whole life without touching a grain from a foreign culture. I suppose the French and the Italians can also say the same for their own food.
Benjamin [inactive]
loic wrote:
What does an average English household have for meals, really? You can't be having pizza or Indian food everyday.
A lot of people do, actually.
Basically, my parents are vegetarians (although my mum eats fish), and they tend to eat stir-fried 'Mediterranean vegetables', or vegetable lasagna, or vegetable curry, often with rice, couscous or pasta. My mum and I often have prawn curry or seafood paella, whilst I will sometimes have chicken curry with rice, or chicken/duck with rice, sometimes as a casserole, or sometimes sausage with rice, usually with boiled vegetables. And as much as I am ashamed to admit this, we usually have fish and chips every Friday.
I can't speak for anyone else, although I've always viewed my family's eating habits as fairly normal. We have the kind of quasi-universal breakfast (i.e. cereal), and we generally take packed lunches to school/work, which consists of sandwiches, bread rolls or baguettes with tuna, chicken, cheese, salad, some weird Mediterranean thing with olives etc.
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I am perfectly contented to eat Chinese food throughout my whole life
So would I be, if I didn't have irritable bowel syndrome. Oops, too much information...
Loic
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So would I be, if I didn't have irritable bowel syndrome. Oops, too much information...
Not to worry. I was a former medico and nothing fazes me! How about a prescription of boiled vegetables -Pak Choy, or Bok Choy to the americans, would be the best - and a bowl of brown rice for lunch? If you have to go to school, carry it in a tiffin!
Remember to add some light soya sauce onto the rice. That'd be simple, wholesome and really tasty.
Shouga
loic wrote:
What does an average English household have for meals, really? You can't be having pizza or Indian food everyday.
As Benjamin has already said, many people do eat takeaways every day. However, I never eat Indian food, and I dislike pizza.
My mother tends to make meals involving a combination of vegetables, mashed/roasted/fried potatoes, sausages (both meat and vegetarian), Yorkshire puddings, etcetera. We often have stir-fried vegetables with rice and/or noodles, soups, chips, salads, new potatoes, bacon/other meat...
Although I never eat lunch at school, most of my friends eat fruit, crisps, sandwiches, yoghurts or cereal bars. However, there are also many other people in my school who go to the 'chippy' every lunchtime, and buy disgusting snacks such as 'Deep-fried Mars Bars', and drink litres of sugar-laden beverages...
The most common breakfasts are cereal and toast. Having a full 'English breakfast' is very uncommon on a day-to-day basis, and is probably most common in B-and-Bs.
Porthos
Wow, Benjamin, there's something we have in common. I too have IBS. But what I eat doesn't affect it, so lucky me!
greg in noord-frankrijk
Benjamin wrote:
Actually, I don't understand why Greg has continuously disparaged so-called 'traditional' English food, whilst completely failing to mention that 'traditional' German food is almost the same.
Rassure-toi ! I don't even know what English food is — except fish & chips... So I could not relate it to anything German.
Benjamin [inactive]
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
I don't even know what English food is
If that's the case, why do you have to be so condescending? You probably don't know what Belorussian food is either, although I somehow doubt that you'd be so quick to dismiss it if there were people from Belarus on this forum talking about food. I hate to say this, Greg, but I'm afraid my tolerance for your attitude is wearing thin — I'm fed up of feeling as though I have to hate the place where I live, but the high-horsed comments you make on a regular basis only make it worse.
Quote:
— except fish & chips...
Which is essentially based on something brought over by Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal in the 17th and 18th centuries anyway.
greg in noord-frankrijk
Benjamin wrote:
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
I don't even know what English food is
If that's the case, why do you have to be so condescending? You probably don't know what Belorussian food is either, although I somehow doubt that you'd be so quick to dismiss it if there were people from Belarus on this forum talking about food. I hate to say this, Greg, but I'm afraid my tolerance for your attitude is wearing thin — I'm fed up of feeling as though I have to hate the place where I live, but the high-horsed comments you make on a regular basis only make it worse.
Mon cher ami,
Pour quelqu'un qui se pique de curiosité à l'égard des cultures étrangères et se targue de pousser l'étude des langues jusqu'à en reproduire les moindres signes de ponctuation, je trouve que tu manques singulièrement d'information. Si je n'ai pas évoqué la cuisine biélorusse, c'est que non seulement je ne sais pas ce que c'est, mais qu'en outre les arts culinaires de ce pays ne font partie de l'imaginaire collectif de l'Hexagone, auquel la "cuisine anglaise" appartient puisque ce concept est supposé être, en quelque sorte mais non par hasard, l'exact symétrique de la "cusine française". Certes il s'agit de ce qu'on appelle couramment un cliché. Mais c'est un cliché qui chez nous fait partie des sports nationaux, au même titre que gruger le fisc ou râler du matin au soir. Quant à la tolérance, c'est comme la dérision et le second degré : ça se cultive. Et si tu trouves ces remarques idiotes ou déplacées, tu peux aussi ne pas les lire.
Benjamin wrote:
Quote:
— except fish & chips...
Which is essentially based on something brought over by Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal in the 17th and 18th centuries anyway.
Oui !
Benjamin [inactive]
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
Si je n'ai pas évoqué la cuisine biélorusse, c'est que non seulement je ne sais pas ce que c'est, mais qu'en outre les arts culinaires de ce pays ne font partie de l'imaginaire collectif de l'Hexagone, auquel la "cuisine anglaise" appartient puisque ce concept est supposé être, en quelque sorte mais non par hasard, l'exact symétrique de la "cusine française". Certes il s'agit de ce qu'on appelle couramment un cliché. Mais c'est un cliché qui chez nous fait partie des sports nationaux, au même titre que gruger le fisc ou râler du matin au soir.
But surely you are more educated than that, since you often appear to know English better than I do (seriously, I have to use a dictionary almost every time you post in *English*). You should not have to resort to petty stereotypes and clichés, deliberately intended to disparage something which you yourself admit to knowing nothing about. Yes, do say 'a lot of people in France tend to think this about...' — that's fine. But the way you present it is often as though you yourself are actually convinced by these stereotypes and want to insult people intentionally and make them feel inferior to you and/or to France. This is the way I have always interpreted it, at least.
If you love clichés so much, there are a lot of very obvious ones about the Germans which you could mention. But for some reason, you never do. And by the way, as far as I'm concerned, if you denigrate 'traditional British food', you are also denigrating 'traditional German food', because it's almost the same. That is why I still do not understand why you do not present an equally negative attitude towards the traditional food of Germany.
I used to hate the United States, mainly because of the negative stereotypes which are publicised in Europe all the time. But I've managed to come around to the idea that most Americans are actually nice people — certainly no worse than Europeans on the whole. In fact, I'd actually say that I now have positive attitude towards Americans in general.
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Quant à la tolérance, c'est comme la dérision et le second degré : ça se cultive. Et si tu trouves ces remarques idiotes ou déplacées, tu peux aussi ne pas les lire.
I'm afraid that I tend not to be quite so tolerant of intolerance —typical Unitarian attitude, I suppose. For the whole of December, the entire main central square in Birmingham — the second largest city in the UK — has been dominated by a massive Christmas market from Germany, with stalls run by Germans, selling German food, beer and gifts, and has been extremely popular. It would absolutely not be appropriate for someone to walk into the middle of all that with a megaphone and start spouting anti-German views — they would have to be arrested.
Loic
I do not claim to speak on behalf of Greg, but maybe what he was doing was to provoke you into a spirited defence of your native cooking. However, I noticed that you've agreed with him at one juncture of the inferiority of the traditional English breakfast.
As much as we are proud of our own native cuisines, we would also ideally want people of other nations to take similar pride of their own cooking. I know that I sometimes adopt a deliberately provocative posture in order to solicit a certain kind of reaction. But it's good to see you coming back for a fight now that your back is pushed against the wall!
But no hard feelings, mate. This is Christmas and if anyone has offended any sensibilities here, this is the season for forgiveness.
greg in noord-frankrijk
loic is right : it's Christmas time, but...
...I'm afraid I know even less about unitarians than la cuisine anglaise, Benjamin — which must certainly be a pity. En revanche, je goûte d'autant moins les petites leçons de morale que le thème servi se réduit à une querelle pichrocoline ressassée en boucle. D'autre part je crois avoir bien saisi le parallélisme que tu t'évertues à tracer entre les cuisines allemande et anglaise, mais il est inutile de repasser ce plat refroidi car, comme j'ai déjà tenté de te le faire comprendre, ce n'est pas le côté technique de la "cuisine anglaise" qui m'intéresse mais plutôt sa valeur symbolique — et en ce sens le parallèle finit en eau de boudin. Itou pour la cuisine biélorusse ou la gastronomie nord-coréenne — je préfère prévenir, on ne sait jamais... Si tes admonestations moralisatrices sont aussi assommantes qu'un manifeste de ligue de vertu, je tiens toutefois à saluer ton imagination débridée : le coup du marché de Noël de Birmingham est un joyau. Enfin, pour ce qui est de l'éducation, sache qu'il en faut une pour s'ériger en juge. Et une autre encore pour bien juger. Et encore une pour se juger.
Benjamin [inactive]
loic wrote:
I do not claim to speak on behalf of Greg, but maybe what he was doing was to provoke you into a spirited defence of your native cooking. However, I noticed that you've agreed with him at one juncture of the inferiority of the traditional English breakfast.
As far as I'm concerned, it's fine for me to say that (even if part of the reason why I do it is because I think it will make people from elsewhere happy — it demonstrates that I don't believe that the place in which I live is superior to anywhere else). But if people from elsewhere do that, then I see it as xenophobia. It's like how it's fine for people of Afro-Caribbean heritage to make racist jokes about themselves, but it wouldn't be fine for me to be racist towards them. Perhaps I'm just overly obsessed with political correctness — something I value very highly, it must be said, but it's essentially how I've been 'taught' to be (i.e. at school and at home) for as long as I can remember.
greg in noord-frankrijk
Benjamin wrote:
As far as I'm concerned, it's fine for me to say that (even if part of the reason why I do it is because I think it will make people from elsewhere happy — it demonstrates that I don't believe that the place in which I live is superior to anywhere else).
En aucun cas. À moins d'être partisan de l'abolition du droit de critiquer. Ou de vouloir faire de l'exercice de la critique un monopole réservé, ce qui reviendrait pratiquement à l'abolir. Dans ces conditions, se prévaloir de sa propre critique et ainsi se donner bonne conscience (prétendue absence de jugement de valeur, par exemple), tandis que celle d'autrui ne serait pas admissible, confine au sophisme. Condamner par avance les détracteurs à la posture du louangeur (ou au silence) et penser que ceux-ci se satisferont des bons mots auxquels leur procureurs voudront bien consentir, ça dépasse le vice de raisonnement.
Benjamin wrote:
But if people from elsewhere do that, then I see it as xenophobia.
C'est logique. Si la critique ne doit être exercée que par ceux qui pensent, à tort ou à raison, que les effets de celle-ci pourraient leur porter quelque atteinte, alors tout détracteur non titulaire du permis de critiquer est automatiquement un dénigreur.
Benjamin wrote:
It's like how it's fine for people of Afro-Caribbean heritage to make racist jokes about themselves, but it wouldn't be fine for me to be racist towards them.
Comparaison n'est pas raison. Une blague raciste ne perd pas sa caractéristique intrinsèque dès lors que le narrateur change de couleur de peau. Ce qui change c'est qu'elle est intériorisée par ceux qu'elle vise à dégrader. Intériorisée ne veut pas dire acceptée : sa valeur peut être recyclée.
Benjamin wrote:
Perhaps I'm just overly obsessed with political correctness — something I value very highly, it must be said, but it's essentially how I've been 'taught' to be (i.e. at school and at home) for as long as I can remember.
Benjamin, c'est quoi le politiquement correct ? Une façon de voir la vie en rose ? Une utopie de surface ? Un filtre des apparences ?
Benjamin [inactive]
Greg, I might be wrong, but you seem to have written that in a very formal and complex language style, so please forgive me if I seem to have missed your point in some cases.
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
En aucun cas. À moins d'être partisan de l'abolition du droit de critiquer. Ou de vouloir faire de l'exercice de la critique un monopole réservé, ce qui reviendrait pratiquement à l'abolir. Dans ces conditions, se prévaloir de sa propre critique et ainsi se donner bonne conscience (prétendue absence de jugement de valeur, par exemple), tandis que celle d'autrui ne serait pas admissible, confine au sophisme. Condamner par avance les détracteurs à la posture du louangeur (ou au silence) et penser que ceux-ci se satisferont des bons mots auxquels leur procureurs voudront bien consentir, ça dépasse le vice de raisonnement.
I have nothing against making an informed criticism of something. However, this is not what you have done here. Not only have you disparaged the traditional cooking styles of one country, as far as I'm concerned you have by extension also denigrated 'traditional' British, Irish, German and Dutch food (and anywhere else with a similar style) — even though you know nothing about it. That's the cooking capabilities of 163 million people whom you are dismissing at an absolute minimum, not to mention former colonies where food styles may be similar. For me, that is tantamount to claiming that all Germans are Nazis, or making any other negative blanket generalisation with no rational basis.
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Comparaison n'est pas raison. Une blague raciste ne perd pas sa caractéristique intrinsèque dès lors que le narrateur change de couleur de peau. Ce qui change c'est qu'elle est intériorisée par ceux qu'elle vise à dégrader. Intériorisée ne veut pas dire acceptée : sa valeur peut être recyclée.
I'm applying this more to real life situations, rather than to what it may technically mean in a strictly philosophical sense. The other day at school, one of my friends of Indian descent described himself as a 'barbecued English person'. I actually thought it was quite funny, and it was fine because he made that joke about himself. But it would have been very different if I had said that about him — he might have been happy about it, but if he'd been offended by it then I could easily have been suspended from school.
Quote:
Benjamin, c'est quoi le politiquement correct ? Une façon de voir la vie en rose ? Une utopie de surface ? Un filtre des apparences ?
I see political correctness as trying to avoid offending people when it is not absolutely necessary. For example, I would not describe the government of the United States as having 'autism' (as you have repeatedly) as it is extremely offensive to autistic people. I also associate it strongly with the following attitude to life: if you leave me alone, I will leave you alone.
André in Zuid-Afrika
Gentlemen, you may continue this conversation at leisure by PM.
Thank you.
greg in noord-frankrijk
André in Zuid-Afrika wrote:
Gentlemen, you may continue this conversation at leisure by PM.
Thank you.
André, please forgive this *last* public reply to Benjamin. I'll keep it short.
Benjamin : je crois qu'en effet nous ne nous comprenons pas. Et je ne suis pas certain que l'incompréhension soit uniquement d'ordre linguistique. En tout cas tes arguments gagneraient à être déclinés sur un mode un peu moins affectif.
'French kitchen', 'Spanish kitchen', 'Chinese kitchen'...that would literally mean a kitchen in France/Spain/China, or a kitchen which 
