Rachel Laudan

Linguists use the term loan words for terms borrowed from another language.  Would this help clarify the discussion of what are popularly called “fusion cuisines?”   The more I think about this term, the more it seems to me to obscure more than it clarifies.  Cuisines are complex structures with culinary/social/political/aesthetic/economic/religious/health/even environmental goals, rules for achieving [...]

Rolling right along with the series on what culinary historians might learn from linguists, see the background at the end of this post. Languages die out.  The world is littered with dead languages, most of which are unknown to us.  Cuisines die out.  We no longer have the cuisine of Shang China, nor of the [...]

Linguists have analyzed when and how languages expand. Only rarely is it by the natural growth of the original group that speaks the language (the Pacific Island case). More often it is by military or spiritual conquest.  Take the spread of Spanish and Portuguese throughout the world and their transformation into different varieties, Barranquenho, a [...]