ext_21044 ([identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] muckefuck 2011-01-10 03:32 pm (UTC)

IMD, the first element of gooseberry is pronounced exactly like goose. /ˈɡʊzb(ə)rɪ/ sounds teddibly teddibly Brittish to me.

When my friends asked me how to say "cranberry" in German, I naturally suggested Preiselbeere. And when [livejournal.com profile] tyrannio looked it up and found "Moosbeere", it was just as unfamiliar to me as it was to you. ("Lingonberry", incidentally, is a North American term--you can thank all our Midwestern Scandihoovians. The word you want, Mr Posh-and-Proper, is "cowberry". Personally, I think "foxberry" is a much more attractive term, but alas I was not asked to determine the British usage.)

I first had cloudberries in Germany (although under which name I can't recall--I had to look up "Moltebeeren") and loved them. One of my friends says he has a line on a Finnish cloudberry liqueur, which sounds all kinds of awesome.

"Flieder" to me is lilac. It sounds very strange to talk of eating "Fliederbeeren".

We don't talk of "bilberries" around here, since they're a European species. We have "blueberries" and "huckleberries", with a very vague distinction between the two. (For some Americans, virtually any Vaccinium picked in the wild is a "huckleberry".)

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