Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> > We just call them
> peas, because if you say beans in the South, our first thought is green
> beans

When we get down close to where we live, it's amusing that we need lexicons 
and glossaries to kow what each other are saying.

As in Bev's more southernly clime, here if you say "We're having beans" it 
mean green breans, and that's what they are called.  The term 'snap bean' is 
heard and used but it is as foreign to our ears as calling them 'haricots". 
  

Dry shell beans are called "soup beans" and the most common type is what we 
call "October beans" but are called dove beans and cranberry beans 
elsewhere.  It's a very large bean that looks like a double sized pinto but 
it is a 
bush bean and very easy to grow.

Here if you just say "bread" it means cornbread.  The bleached white wheat 
bread in the stores is "light bread".  A comment on something's impermanence 
is "That won't last until the bread gets done" refers to the very short 
time it takes to make cornbread.

Lots and lots of those things.

By the bye, in referring to green beans as 'haricots', is anyone here a fan 
of Zydeco music?   The music got its name because it was viewed as the 
music of the very poor.  Anyone playing it was said to be so poor, that "the 
beans are without salt" meaing they coundn't even afford salt to put in the 
beans.  In French that would be "Les haricots sont pas sale".  In creole 
French 
the "L" volatilizes and the reverse French "r" sounds to the anlgo ear as 
if it were a "d" so the phrase sounds like "Zydeco sont pas sale"


James