Texas Gates and Canadian Bacon

I should probably add English Muffins and French Toast to the list. Here we talk about names which describe things unrecognizable to the natives.

Canadians visiting the US or the Caribbean are offered Canadian Bacon on the breakfast menu. Having no idea what is meant, they’ll order it only to discover it’s just run of the mill pea-meal bacon, something that Canadians eat, but only on occasion, and not thinking of it as especially Canadian.

In Canadian farming country, especially out West, the Texas Gate is ubiquitous. Generally crafted from a series of parallel pipes over a ditch, the ingenious invention allows one to drive a vehicle across, but cattle will balk, afraid of stepping through the large spaces. Especially effective if the pipes are set up so as to roll on touch. Texas Gates are brilliant, but Texans have never heard of them. They have the same thing, but with a different name.

English Muffins are generally known as muffins or crumpets in the UK. And while we’re at attributing food names, the poor bird we call a turkey is the Indian Bird in French, and accurately called the American Bird in Turkish. And French Toast is pain doré (golden bread) in French.

Attributing things, good or bad, to “the other guys” is easy. Too easy. Thus we get scotching a good idea, Dutch Courage, and welshing on a deal. A French Kiss is a mixed blessing, and an American Screwdriver (a hammer) is a slur on American craftsmanship. Johnny Canuck is a worldwide image of the big, honourable, but insufferably naive Canadian.

In a funny, quirky, and politically correct world there are lots of things we can’t say, but linguistic sloppiness around attribution to the “other guy” is OK, mostly I would imagine because the other guy isn’t in on the conversation.

Perhaps because we’re behind a Chinese wall.