Beerenkunde

[muckefuck]

Apfelbeeren chokeberries
Blaubeeren blueberries
Boysenbeeren boysenberries
Brombeeren blackberries
Elsbeeren serviceberry
Erdbeeren strawberries
Heidelbeeren bilberries
Himbeeren raspberries
Holunderbeeren elderberries
Rote/Schwarze Johannisbeeren red/blackcurrants
Kapstachelbeeren[*] groundcherry
Kermesbeeren pokeberries
Klabusterbeeren dingleberries
Krähenbeeren crowberries
Kranbeeren = Moosbeeren
Kratzbeeren dewberries
Kronsbeeren = Preiselbeeren
Maulbeeren mulberries
Moltebeeren cloudberries
Moosbeeren cranberries
Prachthimbeeren salmonberry
Preiselbeeren lingonberry
Scheinbeeren wintergreen berries
Stachelbeeren gooseberry
Stechpalmenbeeren holly berries
Wachholderbeeren juniper berries

[*] also called Judenkirschen "Jew cherries".

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

Klabusterbeeren dingleberries

Heh.

And wow, half of those I haven't heard of. And some of them I know by different names.

Heidelbeeren bilberries

Those are "Blaubeeren" in German and "blueberries" in English, for me. "Heidelbeeren" and "Bickbeeren" are passive vocabulary. Not sure whether I've heard "bilberries" before. (And "Bickbeeren" is one of those theoretical words that I know from lists of [regional?] synonyms but that I've never actually come across in real life.)

Holunderbeeren elderberries

That made me think of the elderflower syrup that often comes out at our family gatherings, and "Doesn't that say 'Flieder' on it?".

A quick trip to Wikipedia later, and apparently Sambucus is not just "Holunder" but also (in North Germany) "Flieder" and (in Altbayern and Austria) "Holler".

Which, incidentally, explains the first part of the line from the children's song: "Sitzen unterm Hollerbusch, machen alle 'Husch, husch, husch'". Never really thought about what a "Hollerbusch" might be, before.

Kranbeeren = Moosbeeren
Moosbeeren cranberries

I can't recall having heard either of those German words(*); perhaps the berries were, traditionally, not that popular or common.

Nowadays, you see them in quite a variety of things, but in my experience, they're always "Cranberries".

(*) (I've probably read them on the odd time that I wondered what cranberries are "really" called in German, but promptly forgotten.)

Moltebeeren cloudberries

Aka lakka (though not in German).

The first time I heard of them was on a game designed to get people familiar with Euro coins (so sometime around 2000–2001, I suppose), where they mentioned the cloudberries on some Finnish euro coins.

I've also seen cloudberry jam at IKEA; fairly pricy (apparently because fruit have to be picked by hand and, IIRC, the stuff only grows wild), and supposedly a delicacy. Having bought a jar of the stuff, all I can say on the latter count is that it must be an acquired taste.

Preiselbeeren lingonberry

For some reason, I've always been tempted to translate "Preiselbeeren" with "cranberries". I'll have to remember "lingonberry".

(Perhaps Preiselbeeren and cranberries fulfil similar cultural roles? What do people in the US eat with baked camembert, for example, or with venison?)

Stachelbeeren gooseberry

Incidentally, how do you pronounce the English word?

Dictionary.com has one source claiming only /u/ in the first syllable and another source claiming only /ʊ/. (FWIW, it's /ˈɡʊzb(ə)rɪ/ for me.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

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 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".)

[pne.livejournal.com]

IMD, the first element of gooseberry is pronounced exactly like goose.

What about the second element of berry names? Do you also reduce it and/or stress the final syllable, or is it pretty close to the word "berry" in isolation?

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

The thing that got me was reading an English translation of something with "Linden(bäume)" in German and seeing "lime trees".

I had to look that one up before I believed that "lime" applies not only to citrus fruits but also to Tilia.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That usage of "lime" confused me for a long time. Sources I read when I was younger talked about "lime trees" being a major component in the forests of Northern Europe, and that just seemed to so very counterintuitive. (It's an odd development--lind > line > lime--linden is a recent loan from German.) Many of the lindens around here are actually "basswoods" (T. americana).

"Berry" isn't reduced for us; it has a full vowel and secondary stress. The only reduction I can think of in any of these words is /'rasp/ > /'raz/ in raspberry.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Lapponia is a Finnish outfit that makes a cloudberry liqueur called "Lakka." They also make Lingonberry and I think Blueberry. None are available in the States, except on mail order from Europe (with insane shipping & handling fees). I picked up a bottle of Lakka while I was in London at Gerry's in Soho. The Whiskey Exchange at London Bridge also carries it.

I haven't tried this bottle yet, but I had a taste of cloudberry liqueur years ago which I still remember (a friend brought it back from Finland). But if you don't care for the cloudberry preserves from IKEA, then you probably won't like the liqueur.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Interesting; growing up in England I knew lingonberries and blueberries. Flieder or fledersap is how Ikea's elderflower cordial is sold. And definitely gooseberry, just as if you were saying the two words sequentially in a sentence. But scone is with a short o, to rhyme with Hebron, and absolutely never with a long o like telephone, which would be as weird as having it rhyme with spoon and anyway marks the speaker as a habitual criminal.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

This is probably influenced by the fact that the Swedish name is flädersaft. Apparently the North German usage is older, since lilacs are a relatively recent introduction to Germany.