VeGenesis
10-24-2009, 07:25 PM
This may sound like a small thing to many of you, but it has turned into a growing problem for us.
This morning I asked my wife, "what did you cook for breakfast?"
Last night she commented that she was "almost through cooking dinner."
It is not a problem between us, before raw food we would "cook" a tomato sandwich or "cook" a garden salad or even "cook" a banana split! Obviously we did not apply heat to these!
We first noticed this with our kids. They are at that age when start testing their parents. They remind us that "we do not cook!"
If that weren't enough, we are teaching other people to cook raw food - oops, I did it again! Well, that was actually a mistake, but it is a real good example of exactly the kind of problem we are facing.
It finally came to a head with the innocent question of "How can I make cooked food good?" Read that "good" as "raw!"
I read somewhere that because of computers that average American cannot understand most of the hundreds of thousands of words in the English language anymore, but only has a vocabulary of the 50,000 words in most computer spell checkers. If that is the case, the average Filipino who doesn't leave the Philippines likely speaks English with just 1/10th of what a spell checker has! Or likely less! Often English words in the Philippines have a single meaning (instead of the many that an American may use).
I am looking for a replacement for the word cook!
Here are some considerations on how things do not translate well.
Raw Food - More than once a girl has blushed when I asked something about "Raw Food" (Raw is often just associated with porn - if you don't know what that is, don't ask!)
Prepare - Often gets blank stares or a polite nod that really means they don't have the foggiest idea what you mean!
Fix - Is it broken? How to fix cooked food (dead food) into good food (living food)? It just can't be fixed!
I think part of the problem is that even the dialect here, I have not really found a word that translated well to raw. People assume that except for fruit, most food needs to be cook! If I ask my wife what "Hilaw" means in English she will answer "not cooked" or more often "not YET cooked!" (Implying you must cook it!). Even "Kinilaw" which literally means "this not cooked" or "this raw" implies that you will pour vinegar all over it! Kinilaw na Isda (raw fish soaked in vinegar) Kinilaw na Guso (raw seaweed soaked in vinegar).
So when you are going to cook your sprout salad or cook your green smoothie or cook your favorite raw vegan food...
What word do you use instead of cook?
This morning I asked my wife, "what did you cook for breakfast?"
Last night she commented that she was "almost through cooking dinner."
It is not a problem between us, before raw food we would "cook" a tomato sandwich or "cook" a garden salad or even "cook" a banana split! Obviously we did not apply heat to these!
We first noticed this with our kids. They are at that age when start testing their parents. They remind us that "we do not cook!"
If that weren't enough, we are teaching other people to cook raw food - oops, I did it again! Well, that was actually a mistake, but it is a real good example of exactly the kind of problem we are facing.
It finally came to a head with the innocent question of "How can I make cooked food good?" Read that "good" as "raw!"
I read somewhere that because of computers that average American cannot understand most of the hundreds of thousands of words in the English language anymore, but only has a vocabulary of the 50,000 words in most computer spell checkers. If that is the case, the average Filipino who doesn't leave the Philippines likely speaks English with just 1/10th of what a spell checker has! Or likely less! Often English words in the Philippines have a single meaning (instead of the many that an American may use).
I am looking for a replacement for the word cook!
Here are some considerations on how things do not translate well.
Raw Food - More than once a girl has blushed when I asked something about "Raw Food" (Raw is often just associated with porn - if you don't know what that is, don't ask!)
Prepare - Often gets blank stares or a polite nod that really means they don't have the foggiest idea what you mean!
Fix - Is it broken? How to fix cooked food (dead food) into good food (living food)? It just can't be fixed!
I think part of the problem is that even the dialect here, I have not really found a word that translated well to raw. People assume that except for fruit, most food needs to be cook! If I ask my wife what "Hilaw" means in English she will answer "not cooked" or more often "not YET cooked!" (Implying you must cook it!). Even "Kinilaw" which literally means "this not cooked" or "this raw" implies that you will pour vinegar all over it! Kinilaw na Isda (raw fish soaked in vinegar) Kinilaw na Guso (raw seaweed soaked in vinegar).
So when you are going to cook your sprout salad or cook your green smoothie or cook your favorite raw vegan food...
What word do you use instead of cook?